This essay analyzes Japan’s fundamental misunderstanding of diplomacy by contrasting it with Chinese, Korean, and American strategic thinking, and examines how political concessions such as the Kono Statement functioned as a diplomatic defeat with lasting consequences.

The following is a genuine work that appeared while searching for a certain matter.
2016-10-31
The following is a genuine work that appeared while searching for a certain matter.
At present, Japan is unable to engage in any proper dialogue or negotiation with China or South Korea.
They impose their own convenient demands and rules, and when circumstances change,
they unilaterally pretend that even the rules they themselves created never existed.
While the United States seeks “only money,” China and South Korea demand
“money, territory, technology, power, resources, and even history itself.”
■The Japanese View of Diplomacy
Now then, why is Japan so completely subjected to the demands of China and South Korea.
This is because media that report only their favorable aspects while concealing their abusive and delusional statements,
along with biased education, have thoroughly stripped the Japanese people of any sense of crisis or “national defense awareness.”
As a result, in Japanese elections, an overwhelming number of voters do not use a candidate’s awareness of national defense as a criterion for selection,
and therefore candidates themselves do not emphasize this point.
Such a trend, however, is extremely dangerous for Japan.
Conversely, why are China and South Korea able to speak and act with such impunity.
This stems from the fact that other countries have discerned the distortions and weaknesses of the Japanese people as seen from the outside world.
To cite a simple example,
there is the tendency among Japanese people to mistakenly believe that “diplomacy means discussion.”
Diplomacy does not equal discussion.
Discussion is only a very small part of diplomacy.
Diplomacy consists of both sides making every possible effort to force the other country to accept their own position.
The ultimate objective of diplomacy is for each country to maximize its own national interests.
“Discussion,” “international goodwill,” “aid,” “dispute,” “war,” “media interference,” “intelligence,”
“alliances,” “private exchanges,” “sanctions,” and “blockades” are all forms of diplomatic means toward that objective.
In the first place, national representatives do not meet representatives of other countries in order to make friends.
They are employed with tax money “on behalf of the entire population of their country” in order to bring benefits to that population.
Every country has a responsibility to use various means and make every effort to achieve its own objectives.
When diplomacy is misunderstood as “discussion,”
people tend to believe that methods other than discussion, especially “intimidating methods,” belong only to barbaric countries,
and in extreme cases mistakenly think that “war and diplomacy are opposites.”
In reality, however, diplomacy is the result of all such methods acting in combination.
Just as a verbal quarrel over non-negotiable values and a physical fight over non-negotiable values are of the same nature despite differing methods,
discussion and war are not opposites, but parts of diplomacy that lie on the same continuum.
American representatives make every effort to minimize losses and maximize gains for the American people.
Chinese representatives make every effort to minimize losses and maximize gains for the Chinese people.
South Korean representatives make every effort to minimize losses and maximize gains for the South Korean people.
Japan, being excessively affluent, often misjudges this “objective” of diplomacy.
As an aside, if the United States Department of Defense and Department of State are mapped onto Japanese ministries,
both can broadly be considered equivalent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The difference between these “two foreign ministries of the United States” is that
the former oversees national defense and military affairs while conducting “military-related diplomacy,”
and the latter conducts “non-military diplomacy” similar to Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Department of Defense is the largest government agency in the United States.
These two wheels make American diplomacy robust,
but Japan lacks the larger of the two wheels.
For Japanese people who have an allergic sensitivity to all matters related to “the military,” this often becomes a blind spot,
but in global common sense, military power is not solely for war.
It also serves as a prerequisite for diplomacy and negotiation.
Of course, if issues can be resolved through discussion, that is the most efficient and peaceful outcome.
However, while discussion can occur between two people pointing guns at each other,
and also between two people who are both unarmed,
when one person is pointing a gun and the other has nothing,
even if it appears to be discussion, it cannot be called a genuine discussion.
Whether the armed person actually fires the gun is irrelevant here.
This is a matter of the conditions on both sides prior to discussion.
It is only a question of whether one possesses, is prepared, or is equipped.
Incidentally, aircraft purchased or license-produced by Japan’s Self-Defense Forces from the United States have at times
been modified at great taxpayer expense to remove offensive capabilities.
There have also been cases where aerial refueling equipment was removed so that the aircraft could not continue flying to other countries.
Criticism that spending money to render oneself powerless is a complete waste of budget has existed for a long time.
Although Japan has long been called a “wealthy country,” until North Korea’s provocations began,
there was little sense of crisis that the country was constantly being targeted by others, and even the launch of domestically produced reconnaissance satellites
required prolonged debate and procedures.
By contrast, other countries, such as China, have for decades deployed nuclear ballistic missiles aimed at Japan’s major cities,
and if these were to be launched, there is no doubt that Japan would suffer devastating damage within mere tens of minutes.
While endlessly reporting “Japan–China friendship,” the failure of Japanese media to report
this reality of “Japan’s current situation” is clearly abnormal.
Ordinary countries that correctly understand diplomacy as being “of the same nature and lineage as war”
fully recognize the reality that losing in diplomacy, like losing a war, causes tangible harm to their citizens,
and therefore do not compromise when it comes to protecting national interests.
They feel obligated to make every effort to minimize even the possibility of damage.
In that sense, the diplomatic settlement known as the “Kono Statement” is equivalent to a defeat.
A brief recap of what the “Kono Statement” is.
On August 4, 1993, Yohei Kono, then Chief Cabinet Secretary of the Miyazawa Cabinet, completely ignored historical facts
and issued a statement that politically compromised as if “the Japanese military had forcibly taken Korean women and made them sexual slaves.”
The Asahi Shimbun encouraged Koreans to come forward with the lure that “money could be taken from Japan,”
but in reality, so-called comfort women were “indirectly hired prostitutes under contract with Korean brothel operators,”
for which there was naturally no evidence whatsoever, and moreover, the issue had already been fully resolved, including all compensation, through treaties between Japan and South Korea.
Nevertheless, the South Korean side pressured Japan into a sentimental compromise, claiming that otherwise “the honor of the women who came forward would be damaged,”
and in order to settle the matter quickly, Japan accepted South Korea’s baseless falsehood that “the Japanese military forcibly took women and made them comfort women”
as the official position of the Japanese government.
This can be described as one of the worst examples of political diplomatic compromise.
Using this “Kono Statement” as a shield, pressure has been exerted on Japan from all directions up to the present day.
China and South Korea interfere in Japanese textbooks and children’s education, seek to force future generations of Japanese to apologize,
undermine the moral legitimacy of the Japanese people, and freely distort history as described above.
For ordinary South Koreans, this has become one of the justifications for viewing Japanese as enemies and for motivating anti-Japanese demonstrations.
There have even been cases in which Japanese schoolchildren on class trips were forced to kneel and apologize.
To be continued.
The above is taken from http://ccce.web.fc2.com/a.html.