The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation

The Mansfield Asian Opinion Poll Database

View list of polls

View list of commentary

Return to Asian polls home page

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Oros is an assistant professor at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland, and co-author of Japan’s New Defense Establishment: Capabilities, Institutions, and Evolution (Stimson Center, 2007).

COMMENTARY (C07-3)

Listening to the People: Japanese Democracy and the New Security Agenda

by Andrew L. Oros

February 20, 2007

One of the great triumphs of American foreign policy in the past century was the nurturing of democracy in what is now the world’s second largest economy, third largest military spender, and former enemy of the United States: Japan. American and Japanese elites, however, have repeatedly been challenged to listen - and respond - to the views of the Japanese people regarding their preferences about Japan’s international relations, particularly in the area of military security. Japan’s democratically elected leaders, and their allies in the United States, regularly seek to push the envelope on what the Japanese public will accept. And at times in Japan’s past, they have blatantly ignored public opinion in order to pursue what they saw as an overriding national interest. Failing to listen to the people in a democracy poses great risks. Japanese and American leaders need to keep this in the front of their minds when considering how far to push the public in an attempt to re-orient Japan’s security practices to a new international environment.

The Mansfield Foundation’s new database of opinion polling in Asia offers easy access to several of the many polls taken in recent years which illustrate clearly the disconnect between mass public opinion and the views of Japanese and American leaders of the Japan-U.S. security alliance. Weston Konishi’s recent commentary (C07-2) usefully employs these surveys to contrast public speeches of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Taro Aso with public opinion on policy issues raised in the speeches. The high profile release last week of a report drafted by American luminaries in the management of U.S.-Japan security relations – a new “Armitage-Nye report” - provides another opportunity to contrast elite opinion with that of the Japanese public. Once again, a substantial disconnect between the aspirations of some elites and the views of the mass public is apparent.

Last week, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Joesph Nye - assisted by a dozen other former members of the U.S. defense establishment - released a new shared vision of Asia in 2020 and the role of the United States and Japan in it. Consistent with their previous report (released in October 2000) and numerous other U.S. government policy statements, this report presses Japan to move forward aggressively in changing its past security practices. The report calls for Japan to spend more on defense, develop greater military capabilities, send troops overseas more regularly and with less delay, abandon long-held principles restricting arms exports and the military use of outer space, and further deepen its working alliance with the United States. There may be strong arguments for each of these policy prescriptions, particularly from the U.S. perspective. Japan’s recent political leadership certainly seems to think so, given a range of policies adopted in the past five years. But what do the Japanese people think?

Shifting public opinions on security issues
Recent public opinion polling – such as the cross-national U.S.-Japan SAGE survey, conducted in autumn 2004 (http://subsite.icu.ac.jp/coe/sage/) – does illustrate a shift in public perception of a number of security issues, some quite surprising when viewed in a historical context, while in other areas a marked continuity is apparent. According to the SAGE survey, over 90 percent of Japanese considered the world a more dangerous place in 2004, compared to twenty-five years ago. Over half feared an attack on Japan from abroad. Nearly 80 percent believed Japan should play a more active role in international affairs, with three-quarters saying Japan should
exert more active international leadership. Such figures are consistent with polling conducted by the Yomiuri Shimbun five years previously, which found 56.5 percent of Japanese responding that Japan was very or somewhat likely to be attacked by a foreign country in the near future, and over 70 percent expecting a war or conflict in the near future in areas surrounding Japan that will threaten Japanese security (August 4, 1999, p. 15).

Yet, importantly, despite a clear sense of perceived threat, the conclusions a majority of Japanese draw regarding an appropriate policy response to such threats differ markedly from the responses of Americans polled under the same SAGE study. According to the 2004 SAGE poll, nearly half (47.7 percent) of Japanese view war as illegitimate or only “somewhat legitimate” even if one’s own state is attacked. Far less than one-quarter (21.5 percent) believe that a strong defense will result in peace, while almost twice as many (42.3 percent) believe that disarmament will. Strikingly, Japanese overwhelmingly (85.9 percent) believe that war can be avoided through international cooperation, versus 41.9 percent of Americans who view war as “inevitable.” When asked what is the most effective way of dealing with terrorism, nearly two-thirds (64.4 percent) of Japanese point to the United Nations, followed by over a third (38.6 percent) who encourage the fostering of new alliances using diplomacy (multiple responses were permitted). And here is one for those looking to Japan to play a greater military role in future: 54 percent of those polled in a January 2007 survey (P07-1) declare that if a foreign army attacked Japan, they would give in or run away - versus 33 percent who said they would fight. The poll does not ask about fighting overseas for Japanese interests, but one must assume the number of those willing would be even lower. Perhaps, then, it is no surprise that the Japanese public widely sees a shortage of those who “love their country” in Japan today: Sixty-three percent express in the same 2007 poll that Japanese should have a stronger “love of country.” But, as we see in the political controversy surrounding the Diet debate over education reform and promotion of “love of country,” how to address this issue - to move forward – is not at all clear.

Challenges to building a new consensus
Weston Konishi (Commentary C07-2) writes of the need for a “clearer public consensus” to emerge in Japan in order for Prime Minister Abe to secure support for his ambitious agenda. It is not sufficient for Japan’s political leadership to wait for such a consensus to emerge, however; a new consensus on Japan’s future international posture must be crafted. Just as in the turbulent 1950s, when innovative leaders like Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida worked hard to build a consensus on Japan’s future role, today’s political leaders must work hard to build a new consensus.

On this point, Prime Minister Abe and Foreign Minister Aso are doing exactly what they should be doing - not just proposing legislation and making back-room deals, but articulating eloquently and forcefully why Japan must move to in a new direction. The contributors to the new Armitage-Nye report also play a constructive role in
moving debate forward. But, unfortunately for Prime Minister Abe, leadership is one area where both his supporters and detractors find him lacking - with only 5 percent of his supporters citing this as a reason they support the Abe Cabinet (even when given a chance to express multiple reasons!), and 54 percent of his detractors indicating this reason (P07-3). In another survey, responses to a different question give one pause: the Asahi reports that 67 percent of those polled find the Abe cabinet “unreliable” in late January 2007, up from 34 percent in September 2006, immediately after the cabinet was formed. It is hard to expect a public that sees a cabinet as unreliable will trust it to take Japan in a new direction.

Considering what policies voters might actually want to see - as opposed to their opinions of those politicians and policies they are offered - is even more telling. A January Nikkei poll (P07-3) indicates that almost half of those polled (48 percent) do not express support for any single political party. This leaves open the possibility that voters would support a party or a politician that offered different choices. Asahi polling conducted the same month reinforces this perception. Half of those polled indicated that Prime Minister Abe is a politician “who is far from the feelings of the people” (P07-1). However, an even larger number, 69 percent, thought that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) was not fulfilling its duty as the main opposition party of Japan. And, tellingly, 60 percent expressed that they would like the DPJ to be a party “able to be in charge of political power.” These polling numbers combined suggest strongly that Japanese voters are seeking options.

However, it must be acknowledged it is not at all clear in what areas voters seek options. In some areas of foreign policy, Prime Minister Abe’s approval rating is higher than his general approval rating - such as in his postures toward China and North Korea, where 60 percent expressed support in the same January 2007 poll that only 39 percent expressed support for the Abe cabinet overall (P07-1). Moreover, in Nikkei polling the same month (P07-3), when those not supporting the Abe cabinet were asked to choose only one reason why, only 17 percent combined chose a topic related to foreign affairs while 22 percent lamented “money-and-politics” and 20 percent cited postal privatization.

Maintaining a defensive foreign policy
Paul Midford, in an excellent recent study, “Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism” (East-West Center, 2006), analyses an impressive range of public opinion polling over several years to assert that Japanese people are becoming more “realist” in their foreign policy views, but only in a “defensive” sense. He argues forcefully - and correctly, in my view – that Japanese today still are not supportive of “offensive” military action, that is, the use of force to resolve international disputes. The one area of substantial change in Japanese public opinion related to international activities of the Self Defense Forces (SDF), Midford argues, is in the marked growth of acceptance of overseas deployment of the SDF for disaster relief, rising from 54.2 percent in 1991 to 86.3 percent in 2000 (Midford, p. 18).

By contrast, only about 30 percent of Japanese supported deployment of the SDF to Iraq in the lead up to the deployment (p. 30). Here is a concrete example of how leaders can push the envelope of public acceptance at times. Prime Minister Koizumi took a gamble to support what he saw as a broader national interest, drawing on his strong general support rates and succumbing to heavy pressure from the United States to put “boots on the ground” (to cite a comment ascribed to the co-author of the new Armitage-Nye report). Happily, not a single SDF member was killed in combat over the now-ended ground deployment. Had this occurred, it likely would have sparked a political backlash that would have greatly limited Prime Minister Koizumi’s (or now Prime Minister Abe’s) ability to push the envelope again.

While a small majority did come to support the Ground SDF deployment to Iraq once it was in progress, this might be best explained by the clearly (and aggressively marketed) humanitarian aspect of the SDF mission. Moreover, when the question of extending the deployments was raised, again a large majority opposed the idea (Midford, p. 37). This aspect of Japanese public opinion, based on concrete, recent evidence, must be contemplated when considering Prime Minister Abe’s recent speeches in Europe, which declared that overseas deployment of the SDF will become a more regular occurrence in the near future.

While some argue that Japan today is on the verge of development of a new approach to international security affairs, one that could lead to a true “normalization” of Japanese security practices, attention both to trends in public opinion as well as the constrained nature of recent “new” security policies suggests that Japan is far from enacting a major shift. For most Japanese, the past fifty years of security practice is “normal” and they are not keen to depart dramatically from policies that have successfully kept a single Japanese soldier from dying in combat in over sixty years, and have seen Japan literally rise from the ashes to the second largest economy in the world today. The new Armitage-Nye report argues cogently that Japan cannot afford to sit contented with past practice and must prepare vigorously for the Asia of 2020, which will be characterized by a very different set of circumstances than Asia’s past sixty years. In this judgment the authors of the report are surely correct. However, convincing the Japanese public that a new course is necessary must precede implementation of a laundry list of changes to long-standing security practices based on the view only of elites.


PREVIOUS	NEXT

Listening to the People: Japanese Democracy and the New Security Agenda

PREVIOUS

NEXT