NYT: Japan Heads to Iraq, Haunted by Taboo Bred in Another War

[kskiska]

TOKYO, Nov. 18 — Not one Japanese soldier has been killed, or has killed, in combat since the end of World War II.

That remarkable fact is being repeated here often these days, precisely because, as Japan prepares to send ground forces to Iraq, things could change in the near future. The death of a soldier, a sad though common reality for most nations, would be a pivotal point in Japan's postwar history.

The government twice pushed back the date of deployment because of mounting violence in Iraq, evidently wary of the public's reaction to any casualty. But the government's hesitation runs deeper than that. While Japan's wartime leaders sent more than two million soldiers to their deaths, its postwar leaders are proud of having avoided a single combat fatality. A single casualty would tarnish that record and, some fear, reopen the Pandora's box of ultranationalism, which thrived more than a half-century ago.

Especially toward the desperate final stages of World War II, Japan used its men as if they were mere ammunition, dispatching countless numbers on suicide missions. "Duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather," went the imperial rescript to soldiers.

Contrast that to the saying that came to symbolize postwar Japan's official attitude toward death.

In a 1977 hijacking of a Japan Airlines plane, the government gave in to demands in order to win the release of the 156 passengers. As the prime minister at the time explained, "Human life is weightier than the earth."

Now, Japan seems to be groping its way somewhere between these two extremes, cautiously, hesitatingly.

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http://nytimes.com/2003/11/19/international/asia/19LETT.html?hp

[Art_from_Ark]

1. Dear New York Times

Japan is groping with this problem precisely because it is being pressured, as it was in 1991, to violate its Constitution by the same country that forced Japan to renounce war in said Constitution.

Another Bu$h, another war in Iraq, another effort to force Japan to send troops where they don't belong.