G8 SUMMIT IN HOKKAIDO
For those coming to Japan for the G8 Summit Meeting, here I extend an advice as my humble service.
PART I: 7 JULY 2005 TERROR
Yes, I must have been fixing my eye on Mr. Tony Blair standing before a TV camera in a garden.
The 7 July 2005 London bombings did not really fail to directly touch the nerve of the then British Prime Minister who never failed in displaying a heightened anxiety.
It was crystal clear that terrorists tried to harm the reputation of Great Britain by launching London subway bombings when the country was hosting the G8 Summit at the Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland.
Mr. Tony Blair made an urgent speech before flying back to London. Then, President Mr. George W. Bush also delivered a special comment in a mournful manner looking so genuine just like everybody in the world, including me, feeling so sorry for victims, though the US President also apparently failed in containing global terrorism.
However, Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi, then Japanese Prime Minister, must have got determined that he should set out political maneuvering to dissolve the Parliament, when returning home, and have the nation take a ballot for his number-one agenda, the postal reform, on September 11, 2005.
And, Mr. Koizumi returned, ran, and won overwhelmingly.
Consequently, nobody including Chinese Communist Party leaders would rather hysterically accuse Mr Koizumi’s offering prayers at the Yasukuni Shrine on August 15, 2006, since it happened to be 21 years after the last worship by a prime minster at the shrine for fallen soldiers on the very day when World War II ended for Japan 51 years before.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/14/AR2006081401425.html?nav=rss_world
But, the situation around this year’s G8 Summit, to be held on July 7, might be different for Prime Minister Mr. Yasuo Fukuda being regarded as an old politician with notably pro-China stance by some anti-Chinese conservatives in Japan.
PART II: PRO-BEIJING POLITICIANS
In the United States, traditionally politicians are largely divided into two: those who live on the Eastern-Establishment paradigm and those who do not.
But, in Japan, they are essentially divided into two: pro-Chinese and others.
There are two reasons for Japanese politicians to become politically pro-Chinese: traditional admiration for Chinese classics or ancient Chinese Civilization; and overpowering economic interests ever growing since late 1970's when Japan started to infuse huge aid into China.
Additionally, Japanese leftists love to find friends and comrades in the Chinese Communist Party, while China has often used an anti-Japanese card to strengthen their position domestically or internationally.
Yet, the Chinese Communist Party is so pragmatic as to choose Japanese friends more in the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP), the Federation of Economic Organizations of Japan, and a certain major Japanese Buddhist body than in Japanese political parties based on Marxism or quasi-Marxism who have no prospect of carrying out revolution in Japan at all.
And, most of lawmakers belonging to LDP would not hesitate to have Chinese friends, since Chinese can deftly appeal to Japanese politicians by leveraging their romantic attachment to Chinese classics or their strong inclination to whatever side benefits they can covertly enjoy.
Yet, Chinese leaders never miss true value each Japanese politician has for them.
And, Mr. Yasuo Fukuda, as a politician, seems to have had more value than any other politicians, since he was invited to China when he was the Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Koizumi Administration in August 2003.
It is because it is very rare that Chief Cabinet Secretary of Japan visits any foreign country. The position is highly domestic politics-oriented.
( http://hw001.gate01.com/sasaki-zuo/shinseiji23.htm )
Mr. Fukuda’s visit to China in 2003 is still regarded as a mystery in a Japanese political community, but Chinese leaders must have wanted to know the real intention in the then Prime Minister Mr. Koizumi’s visit to the Yasukuni Shrine despite a strong objection from China and a mild objection from the White House.
It tells the lack of ability of Chinese leaders in understanding the Japanese mind and heart.
It also tells how much they find value in befriending Mr. Yasuo Fukuda.
PART III: G8 SUMMIT IN JAPAN
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Japan will host the G8's 2008 Summit at the Windsor Hotel Toya Resort and Spa in Toyako, Hokkaido in northern Japan from July 7-9, 2008. Japan is still in the process of compiling and determining the 2008 agenda; however, sources to date suggest that the Environment, Africa, Intellectual Property Rights, and Nuclear Safety will be a prominent part of the Japanese focus.
http://www.g7.utoronto.ca/evaluations/2008hokkaido/2008plan/2008plan070921.html
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As there is a tight balance of power in the Japanese Parliament in these months, Prime Minister Mr. Fukuda has been taking a modest or humble attitude to opposite parties and the general public.
It looks like he is sacrificing his pride only to win a success in the coming G8 Summit.
And, the largest agenda in the coming summit meeting must be China.
In terms of energy, environment, and economy, G8’s dealing with China is crucial to keep the present international framework.
In this sense, Japan has a very appropriate prime minister presently, since Chinese leaders look like trusting Japanese Prime Minister Mr. Fukuda so much, though the Great Sichuan Earthquake occurred after EEE-Reporter’s visit to the Imperial Meiji Shrine.
PART IV: HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Mr. Yasuo Fukuda’s late father, Takeo Fukuda, was a top bureaucrat before and after WWII. Since he became the Minister of Finance in 1965, he underwent fierce factional fighting to finally assume the premiership in 1976, though political battles further ensued until his rival Kakuei Tanaka’s retirement from politics in 1990.
Kakuei Tanaka, outwardly the most loved and respected by China due to his feat in normalization of diplomatic relation between Japan and China in early 1970’s, died in 1993 and Takeo Fukuda passed away in 1995, though the latter was 13 years older.
The point at issue here is that Chinese Communist Party likes Mr. Yasuo Fukuda, a son of a top bureaucrat of the Empire of Japan that fought the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.
But, it is no wonder, since Chinese leaders know that Japanese elites before WWII liked China so much that they sent Imperial military to pacify, guide, and control China in the turmoil and civil wars since the debacle of the Ching Dynasty in 1912.
(The Sino-Japanese War is regarded today as a unilateral war of invasion by the Empire of Japan by everybody in China and Japan. But why did the Empire of Japan do it? Because a majority of Japanese were all so bad as Hitler?
Look at Europeans. They have been doing worse to Africans for centuries than Hitler did to European Judaists before and during WWII. But, today Europeans do not even call their invasion of Africa as a unilateral war of invasion of Africa.
After WWII, the Chinese Communist Party has been making war in, or violently expanding into, Central Asia, Tibet, Taiwan borders, Korean borders, Vietnam borders, Soviet borders, etc., while having supported Hitler-like regimes in Cambodia, North Korea, and Myanmar; on the other hand Japan has made no war after WWII.
The Sino-Japanese War must be allowed to be depicted in a different way, if victims of the war allow it.)
Indeed, the level of a culture mind inside a Japanese elite was traditionally measured by the extent how much he mastered Chinese classics.
It is not hatred which can be often seen in two warring countries in the world that drove Imperial military deep into China before WWII, which Mao Tse-tung, Chou En-lai, and other Chinese leaders who experienced the Sino-Japanese War must have realized.
The Empire of Japan could not understand why China so broken would not try to develop itself in cooperation with the far advanced country Japan. Moreover, then Chinese leaders did not look like observing teachings of great minds of ancient Chinese Civilization. So, the Empire of Japan had to eradicate villains and insurgents against the traditional virtue in East Asia from China.
However, the United States allied with China. The Empire of Japan was defeated by the United States in 1945. The Chinese Communist Party survived to establish People’s Republic of China based on Marxism in 1949.
And now in 2008, the G8 Summit in Japan is a big challenge for China, too. But it is a good luck for them that the incumbent Japanese Prime Minister is Mr. Fukuda but not Mr. Shinzo Abe or Mr. Jyunichiro Koizumi who both have a stronger tie with those who honor the Yasukuni Shrine very piously.
It is because Chinese people in general cannot understand the Japanese spiritual mind and heart.
(If Americans ask Europeans why they still respect the Vatican, they will think that Americans in general cannot understand the European mind and heart.)
Anyway, as Mr. Fukuda worked in oil business and experienced an overseas assignment to New York when he was young, the G8 Summit in Japan will be completed without any troubles.
And the world will peacefully muse that nothing drastic happens in Japan as usual (except that declaration called the Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1997).
Indeed, everyhting drastic but intangible is always happening in Japan, which made Japan the largest economy in the world, if America precluded, in the 20st century.
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Wu Qi, an ancient Chinese military strategist, scholar in the art of war, and general himself living around 4C BC, preached excellent morals for soldiers and generals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Qi
One of remarkable teachings, which a modern citizen in peace time however might feel hard to accept, is that "a warrior should abandon his desire for survival and hope for life when directly facing an enemy."
But, this teaching seems to have be forgotten or at most abused by Chinese leaders who mobilized farmers for any kind of wars in China.
(Yet, Allah must forbid Muslims to resort to this teaching in any situation, since what they today need is democracy and development of society and industry but not war.)
Yet, the essence of Wo Qi’s teaching was taken over by the Japanese samurai class.
The end of WWII is also the end of a very-long era, over 1,000 years, based on the samurai paradigm in Japan, too.
Nonetheless, Japan as the only live successor of the ancient Yellow River Civilization should preside over the global balance of power as such, in my humble opinion, without displaying mean desire for survival or shameless hope for life in the world full of Wars on Terror, Energy, Foods, Natural Resources, Global Warming, Territory, Money, and Religion.
(It is sultry today around Tokyo. But, Hokkaido is cool without the rainy season. I really want to fly there to drive around, say, on July 7, the day for the Festival of the Weaver or Star Vega.
Maybe Hokkaido is a Japanese Ireland or Scotland, though not Celtic at all, maybe like you…
http://www.fukuchan.ac/music/folk/danny-boy.html )
Mar 6:11 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them. Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.