Posted on 05/10/2002 7:29:16 AM PDT by liberallarry
It was an alliance of two Asian states that felt awkward about their geographic affiliation. Fifty years after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Japan and Israel, it appears this week that the awkwardness has not dissipated, and the alliance still awaits materialization.
The ties were first formed when Japan regained its sovereignty after nearly seven years of rule by American occupation authorities, whose presence was imposed on Japan with its surrender at the end of the Second World War. With the resumption of its sovereignty, Japan began to weave a network of international relations but, like Israel at the time, found itself confronted by a wall of suspicion and hostility. In Japan's case, these feelings were being broadcast primarily by the nations of Southeast Asia and the East European bloc.
The need for international recognition was mutual and thus, on Israel's fourth independence day, on May 15, 1952, two weeks after the American occupation of Japan ended, diplomatic relations between Japan and Israel were established in a modest ceremony. The diplomatic outpost that Israel opened in Japan was the first that the Jewish state set up in Asia, while for Japan, the representative office it opened in Israel was its first diplomatic mission in the Middle East.
In October 1956, three weeks before the outbreak of the Sinai Campaign, Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett landed in Japan. Sharett was paying a state visit to Asia despite the political tension in the Middle East. He remained on the Asian continent, much to Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's delight, until after the Sinai Campaign was over. Sharett's first stop was a visit with the Japanese emperor. The invitation reflected Japan's low international standing rather than the standing of the Israeli representative. It is difficult to imagine any Israeli cabinet minister receiving such an honor today.
At precisely 10:30 on that morning, "according to the hands of the clock on the wall," the Israeli foreign minister wrote in his diary, "the door was opened and a short, elderly gentleman, dressed in an extremely simple manner, his head bowed a little, entered the room. He shook my hand, a smile on his lips, invited me to sit down and began speaking to me in Japanese." Sharett conveyed greetings from the president of the State of Israel, and the conversation then proceeded to the topics of the Middle East and scientific research in Israel. Then, after precisely half an hour had passed and "when the hands of the clock marked, to the second, the end of the hour," the emperor "rose, bade farewell, and left the room."
Sharett's impressions were one-sided because the Japanese did not attribute to a distant country like Israel any significant role in the process of economic recovery that was unfolding in their country. Even as early as the 1950s, the Japanese perceived their relationship with Israel through the prism of their relationship with the United States. Thus, a decade after Sharett's meeting with the emperor, as Japanese exports soared, a sizable portion of the Japanese public tended to view the maintenance of relations with Israel as one way of improving the sales of Japanese goods on the American market.
Japan's dilemma
In 1963, the diplomatic level of the missions in both countries was raised to that of embassies and, since the mid-1970s, the staff of the Japanese embassy in Israel has included a military attache. Nevertheless, the Japanese refused to strengthen their ties with Israel any further, because Japan was very dependent on Middle Eastern oil and feared an Arab boycott. Then, as now, Japan avoided "over-involvement" in crisis-ridden regions or in regions where it had limited commercial interests.
In 1966, the Arab League opened an office in Tokyo with the express purpose of tightening the boycott against Israel. The Arab League office gradually attained the cooperation of the majority of Japan's largest corporations and even secured the tacit agreement of the Japanese government. Therefore, over the next few decades, while Japan's international commerce skyrocketed, its commercial ties with Israel remained low-key and, for most of that period, the Japanese even had a small deficit in their trade relations with Israel. After the Six-Day War of June 1967, Israel became the pariah of intellectuals and leftist circles in Japan, while the protest against the War in Vietnam and the student revolt in Japanese universities provided fertile ground for the intensification of hatred toward a country about which the Japanese public knew very little.
When the Yom Kippur War broke out in October 1973, Japan was one of the first targets of Arab pressure, given its total dependence on Middle East oil. An oil embargo on Japan threw its economy into a nose dive, and generated panicky domestic buying among its consumers. The Japanese association of manufacturers demanded that its government break off relations with Israel. Fearing that such a move could lead to a serious rift with the U.S., the government in Tokyo did not in the end sever relations with Israel. Nonetheless, Japan did embark upon an anti-Israel policy, which expressed itself in its voting pattern in the United Nations, in pro-Arab declarations and in unofficial avoidance of commercial ties with Israel.
Toward the end of 1973, the secretary of the Japanese cabinet called on Israel to withdraw from all the territories captured during the Six-Day War and expressed support for the Palestinians' right to self-determination. In the wake of this declaration, the U.S. severely reprimanded Japan over a foreign policy issue for the first time since the end of the American occupation of that country.
This pattern of pressures reflected Japan's dilemma during the next two decades. Even when the oil embargo was finally lifted, the price of oil continued to be five times higher than its level before the crisis, and the Japanese economy entered a severe recession - its first since it began its post-World-War-II economic recovery. The message was clear. Over the next few years, Japan invested heavily in the Arab countries, providing them with massive loans and supporting their position at the UN, although it did not vote in favor of the organization's anti-Zionism resolution. The Japanese media considered Israel a negative entity and that attitude reached a climax in the wake of the War in Lebanon. In 1985, for example, the mass-circulation Japanese daily, Asahi Shimbun, published a survey of reliable countries. Out of the 30 countries listed, Israel was in last place.
No longer negligible
Nevertheless, commercial relations between the two countries continued to develop, albeit slowly. In the late 1960s, Israel began to export diamonds to Japan and this commodity quickly became the core of Israeli exports to that country. Meanwhile, the Subaru automobile company, a subsidiary of the giant Japanese corporation Fuji Heavy Industries, began to export vehicles to Israel.
Subaru was a small company and was thus less influenced than other Japanese firms by Arab pressures. Unlike European models, Subarus were reasonably priced for the Israeli consumer and were quickly discovered to be highly reliable. Sales soon soared. Subaru models, which were originally greeted with scorn by the Israeli public, became, a decade after the imports had begun, the major means of transportation for the expanding Israeli middle class. During that period, the Israeli market became Subaru's second most important overseas market. Other Japanese corporations gradually understood that the Israeli market could no longer be considered negligible.
In the latter half of the 1980s, there was a slight thawing in the relations between the two nations. Japan - whose dependence on oil, in general, and on Middle Eastern oil, in particular, had diminished - began to show a friendlier attitude toward Israel. In 1985, Foreign Minister Yitzhak Shamir paid a state visit to Japan and, three years later, Japanese Foreign Minister Sousuke Uno visited Israel, becoming the first Japanese cabinet minister to ever visit here.
In early 1989, Emperor Hirohito passed away at a ripe old age, and Israeli President Chaim Herzog attended the funeral, afterward participating in talks with key Japanese political leaders. Herzog's journey was preceded by a lively debate in Israel as to whether an official representative should be sent to attend the funeral ceremony of a former ally of Adolf Hitler. The Japanese very much appreciated the fact that the debate ended with the decision to send Herzog to the funeral as Israel's representative.
Nonetheless, a significant change in the relationship began only in the wake of the Gulf War in 1991, when Arab unity hit a new low and American strength was supreme. At the time, it seemed that, within only a few short years, the Japanese economy would catch up with its rival, the American economy. However, despite its economic might, the level of Japan's political involvement was so low that the country gave the impression of being a sumo wrestler with a giant's body and a tiny head. Many people in the international community and in the Japanese public were now demanding that the government in Tokyo display a pattern of political behavior commensurate with the Japanese economy's clout.
Although Japanese soldiers did not participate in the war itself because of constitutional prohibitions, Japan acceded to the American demand that it participate in the funding of the war. Two months after the war, the Japanese government declared its intention of improving relations with Israel. Furthermore, the Japanese public was impressed by the fact that Israel was a target for Iraqi Scud missiles even though it did not participate in the fighting.
China's role
Japan's increased political involvement had primarily commercial consequences. Also in 1991, Japan's largest automobile manufacturer, Toyota, opened a branch in Israel and, in the wake of Toyota's move, representatives of most of the major Japanese firms followed suit. Trade between the two countries in the year of Japan's about-face displayed a dramatic increase, reaching a total of $1.4 billion - a small sum for the Japanese but some 5 percent of Israel's foreign trade that year.
In 1992, China established diplomatic relations with Israel and China's neighbor to the west, India, quickly followed suit. China's growing strength and its increased influence in the Middle East were a matter of concern for its neighbor to the east, Japan. In 1994, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was invited to visit Tokyo and, the following year, Japanese Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama paid an historic visit to Israel. In 1997, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reciprocated and proposed to the Japanese that they participate in Israel's Arrow anti-missile missile defense project. His Japanese hosts smiled but were alarmed by the prospect of such a close connection with Israel, especially in the field of armaments. Over the previous decade, the scope of Japanese exports to the member states of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) doubled, reaching a total of more than $20 billion, while the import of oil from those countries still supplied half of Japan's energy needs.
Japanese companies have, nevertheless, invested in Israeli high-tech projects and the Japanese government has expressed its readiness to help in the solution of the Palestinian problem. Japan is one of the major donor-nations involved in various projects in the Palestinian Authority, and its representatives have participated and even taken a leading role in a number of working and negotiating groups in the talks between the Palestinians and Israelis. In addition, Japan provides economic aid to Egypt, Syria and Jordan, while Japanese soldiers have participated in UN peacekeeping forces on the Golan Heights.
Japanese-Israeli trade has stabilized in recent years, reaching a plateau of $2 billion a year, although there has been a significant drop since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada. Israel exports polished diamonds, computer software, other high-tech products and a small quantity of agricultural products to Japan, while Japanese exports to Israel consist primarily of cars and trucks, machinery and electronic consumer items.
From the cultural standpoint, on the other hand, the relationship between the two countries is very one-sided. Two small Christian groups, the Makoya sect and the Beit Shalom community, believe that the ultimate salvation of humanity will emerge from Israel. However, except for these two groups and a few hundred Japanese who established communes in the 1960s along the lines of the kibbutz model, the silent majority in Japan displays little interest in Israel. In fact, this silent majority perceives the entire Middle East as a culturally benighted and politically turbulent region of the world.
Quiet invasion
In Israel, in contrast, Japanese culture has made deep inroads, even if it has done so in a very quiet manner. This quiet invasion is expressed here, for example, in the interest Israelis take in Japanese films, in the animated Japanese movies that are a hit among Israeli children and youth, in the passion for Japanese art forms (from ceramics to martial arts), in the expansion of Japanese studies in academia, and even in the fashionable trend toward Japanese cuisine.
In recent years, Japan seems to be displaying a certain degree of reticence over active involvement in the Middle East, perhaps because of a sober-minded lack of faith in the prospects for peace, or because of a desire to wait on the sidelines for things to settle down. The Japanese attitude toward Israel is still fueled by their country's relationship with the U.S., and is now being fueled as well by their relationship with China and by their interests in the Arab world. Japan has no ambitious political pretensions concerning the Middle East, and its primary considerations are - and have always been - economic. The rise of China and diminished American involvement in Southeast Asia could lead to a Japanese armament program and could increase Japan's political involvement in the world. That scenario could change the nature of Japan's connection with the Middle East, but such a development is not anticipated in the near future.
Dr. Rotem Kowner is the director of the Program of Japanese and Asian Studies at the University of Haifa.
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