Japanese premier Yukio Hatoyama red-faced on Okinawa campaign pledges!

During his visit to the southern island on Sunday, Mr. Hatoyama faced angry protests by residents who had hoped to see the U.S. Marine Corps' Futenma Air Station moved entirely off Okinawa, instead of relocated to a less built-up part. Okinawa, which hosts more than half the 47,000 U.S. troops in Japan, has long sought to remove the bases, which are locally unpopular mainly because of noise, pollution and the risk of accidents and crimes. “I apologise to people in Okinawa as I could not keep to my word that I'll relocate the base off the prefecture,” said Mr. Hatoyama in a meeting with Okinawa governor Hirokazu Nakaima, shown on television. “As the Prime Minister, I have to say that I can't allow the deterrent power of the U.S. forces in Japan, including the Marine Corps, to decline, given that the security environment in East Asia remains fragile.” Yukio Hatoyama said.

Explanations and press quotes : "Opposition parties laid into Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Sunday for reneging on his promise to seek to move a contentious U.S. Marine base outside Okinawa Prefecture, saying that it has amounted to a betrayal of the wishes of local people. Hatoyama announced the plan to relocate the Futenma Air Station in Ginowan to an area around Henoko, a coastal area in Nago on the same main island of Okinawa, during talks with Gov Hirokazu Nakaima in the prefectural capital of Naha earlier in the day.

In so doing, he dashed the hopes of Okinawa people seeking to reduce the footprint of U.S. forces on their island. ‘‘It has become clear that, realistically, it is difficult to resolve the matter by the end of May,’’ Liberal Democratic Party chief Sadakazu Tanigaki said in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, referring to a deadline Hatoyama had vowed to keep in securing the agreement of the major parties concerned. ‘‘The next prime minister would find it difficult to work if the public thinks a remark about staking one’s job is as light as Hatoyama has made it seem,’’ he said, urging the prime minister either to quit or to call a snap general election.

Hatoyama said last month that he will stake his political fortunes on resolving the base question, as his government continued to review a bilateral relocation deal reached by the previous LDP-led government. Tanigaki said his party will consider submitting to parliament a no-confidence motion against Hatoyama.

Natsuo Yamaguchi, who heads the smaller opposition New Komeito party, criticized Hatoyama as not being qualified to be prime minister, telling reporters in the city of Saitama, ‘‘He betrayed the people of the prefecture by raising their hopes for Futenma’s relocation outside the prefecture. Hatoyama is trying to resolve the matter ‘‘in a fraudulent manner.’’

In a statement, Japanese Communist Party policy chief Akira Koike called Hatoyama’s action ‘‘the worst betrayal’’ of the people of Okinawa and the Japanese public, saying that the government’s effort to find a new relocation site has clearly broken down. Koike went on to call for an unconditional removal of the Futenma facility, whose closure and return to the Japanese side is tied to the relocation of its air operations to a coastal area of the Marines’ Camp Schwab in Henoko by 2014 under a 2006 agreement reached between Japan and the United States.

Your Party leader Yoshimi Watanabe called for Hatoyama to step down, telling reporters in the city of Chiba that the prime minister must take responsibility for raising the hopes of the people of Okinawa for Futenma’s relocation outside of the prefecture. Okinawa hosts the bulk of the facilities used exclusively by the U.S. military in Japan. Before coming to power, Hatoyama, as president of the then main opposition Democratic Party of Japan, said he would seek to relocate Futenma’s functions outside Okinawa to reduce the prefecture’s base-hosting burdens.

Insights on this new filibustering issue with professor Gregory Clark on the NBR Forum (opened source access)

http://bit.ly/bU8qXd

"A major factor allowing Hatoyama to volte face on the

Futenma issue has been the fuss over the recent

Maritime Self-Defense Force scuffle with the Chinese

military in the East China Sea. So now it is not just

North Korea as the hypothetical enemy justifying

continued US bases in Okinawa and a Japanese military

buildup; we now are told that the government,

including even Hatoyama, now lists a possible

confrontation with rising Chinese military might as a

reason for reneging on the promise to move bases from

Okinawa.

Nowhere, even in the pages of Asahi, do we find any

hint of realising what the East China Sea

confrontations are about, namely the failure to decide

between valid but rival EEZ claims. It is simply

taken for granted that the Japanese median line claim

is correct and that any Chinese attempt to operate on

the basis of their continental shelf claim being

correct proves aggressive intent (even if the Japanese

claim had some validity the Chinese cannot be expected

to weaken their negotiating position by seeming to

accept it; the Chinese claim also has weight and they

have in fact have made the very reasonable proposal

for joint development between the rival claims).

This strange Japanese ability to assume that in any

dispute - Northern Territories, Takeshima, Senkakus,

North Korean abductees, East China Sea - the Japanese

position is 100 percent correct and that any criticism

shows aggressive intent by the other side is worrying.

Only rarely, and in some cases never, does one find

any analysis hinting that the other side also has some

basis for its position. Those who do try to make such

an analysis find themselves quickly ostracized by the

Mood (Kuuki) that decides most things in Japan. (Who

said postwar Japan differs greatly from its prewar

version?) Indeed, even a chance posting on NBR can

give the Right the chance to do a lot of damage to the

author.

One understands why Washington sees little need to

disabuse Tokyo of this kind of naivety - it has its

own interests to pursue and if Tokyo's propensity for

the emotional and illogical pushes it in the US

direction then so be it. But long-term is it really

in US interests to let itself be dragged into ugly

confrontations by this Japanese inability to think

straight?

(For emotion and illogic, incidentally, little can

beat the current LDP (Tanigaki yesterday for example)

and other rightwing criticism of Hatoyama's Henoko

decision - namely that by not opting for Henoko he was

damaging the US alliance and friendship, and that by

opting for Henoko he has damaged Okinawan feelings,

and in either case he should resign.)

True, inability, or reluctance, to think about the

causes that precede effects and to accept that one's

own side sometimes carries blame is not a Japanese

monopoly. It underlay most of the Cold War rhetoric

and waste in the West. We see it today in the

knee-jerk reaction to the North Korean attack on the

South Korean naval vessel, which ignores the strong

likelihood that the North Koreans were simply

retaliating for a devastating attack on one of their

own naval vessels last year, and that the attacks were

in disputed waters which, as in the East China Sea

refusal to accept there is a problem which has to be

negotiated, guarantees further clashes, allowing the

hawks on both sides to do their worst.

But our Japanese friends do seem able to carry the

bias and one- sidedness even further than most. Their

claims they now face Chinese threats in the East China

Sea are worrying. Alliance supporters should start

doing their homework. Confrontations do not happen

with a bang, where blame can easily be placed. They

are usually the result of series of incidents where

rights and wrongs can only be decided by close study

of past claims and escalating events. In the East

China Sea we are now seeing the beginning of those

events. To date in the West the main result has been

a big yawn." (Gregory Clark, the NBR Forum)

Sources: agencies, The Independent, The Hindu,

Reporter's notes