Reminder of belligerent past

Japan's aggressive attitude toward neighboring countries is a throwback to its bellicose history of the early 20th century

Sino-Japanese relations have nosedived since hawkish Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara unveiled his plan to "purchase" Diaoyu Islands from their "private owner" five months ago. For Beijing, the highly charged "privatization-nationalization" political soup Ishihara and the Japanese central government have cooked is eerily reminiscent of the early 1930s when right-wing extremists hijacked Japan's foreign policy as a restless Japan drifted toward wars, one more treacherous than the other.

One wonders how a local politician - who is 80 years old and should have been overwhelmed by the administrative burden of the one of the world's largest metropolitan areas - gets the time to maneuver himself into the driver's seat of Japan's foreign policy. While behind-the-scene deals between Ishihara and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda cannot be ruled out, the "change" in the ownership of the Diaoyu Islands and its devastating impact on the 40-year tacit understanding between China and Japan to maintain status quo on the islands' issue, raises a vital question: Who actually controls Japan's foreign policy?

Such a question may seem absurd for a culture that values hierarchy, obedience and discipline.

A quick glimpse into Japan's modern history, however, reveals that the country also revels in the opposite values. A look at the most important events of the 20th century that Japan instigated shows that many of them were actually triggered by rebellious lower-level functionaries without explicit orders from their civilian or military superiors, paving the way for Japan's fateful plunge into larger conflicts.

Officers of the Japanese Guandong army in China's northeast region, for example, were responsible for the murder of Chinese warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928. Although Japan had been pursuing an expansionist policy in China, the Japanese army's plot still took Tokyo by surprise. Tanaka Giichi, then prime minister and retired general of the Japanese army and former two-time war minister, insisted that the responsible officers be court-martialed. The Japanese army, however, openly defied the order, and under growing criticism from the Diet and even Emperor Hirohito, Tanaka resigned in July 1929. That was the first time, but by no means the last, when lower-ranking Japanese military officers had staged a coup de force against the civilian government. On Sept 18, 1931, the Japanese Guandong army went into action again with a mysterious "Manchuria incident" that started Japan's 14-year violent occupation of China's territories.

The Japanese navy was full of radical young officers then who opposed Japan's signing of the London Naval Treaty that limited the buildup of the signatory countries' navies. In October 1930, a right-wing youth shot at and seriously wounded Osachi Hamaguchi, then prime minister, for supporting the treaty. Hamaguchi died 10 months later. This was followed by the killing of another prime minister, Inukai Tsuoshi, by 11 navy officers in May 1932. On Feb 26-28, 1936, 1,483 troops of the Japanese Imperial Army led by young officers occupied downtown Tokyo, killing several cabinet members, including two former prime ministers.