Ozawa tells Korea what they want to hear

Politicians have a way of playing to crowds. To this end, Ichiro Ozawa is no different, and his latest comments to a Kookmin University audience in Seoul have marked a change in policy and diplomacy in the bilateral relationship between South Korea and Japan. Ozawa, political heavy weight and the current Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Japan told those gathered in Seoul that Japan must apologize for the “unfortunate period in modern history;” Thus referring to the Japanese rule of Korea from 1910 to 1945.

The tensions between Koreans and Japanese continue to this day and tensions often surface in relation to state visits to Yasukuni Shrine, in Tokyo by sitting Japanese Prime Ministers and Politicians. Koreans are particularly outraged because Japanese war criminals are enshrined at Yasukuni. Another tender spot in bi-lateral relations is the “comfort women” issue, surrounding treatment of Korean women by Japanese soldiers during the Second World War. The Japanese government continues to deny that it participated in orchestrated sexual slavery. Shinzo Abe, former Prime Minister stated in 2007, that, “there was no evidence to prove coercion.” Abe’s statements provoked negative reactions from Korea, and other Asian nations as well as Canada, the US and the Netherlands.

Current Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has in the past said that Japan should offer a formal apology to the comfort women and offer compensation to the victims of the scheme. This suggestion echoed by Ozawa in Korea this past weekend.
It is my contention that Japan should not offer such an apology and should show strength and pride when dealing with these international relations issues.

Successive Japanese governments have not been as strong a player globally as their economic might should suggest. The timid personalities that run Tokyo’s Diet have made the country a global backbencher. Of course, the Liberal Democratic Party, recently ousted by Hatoyama’s DPJ has been much of the problem in this apprehensive medley. The relative inexperience of the DPJ, or any party other than the LDP in governing Japan creates problems for Hatoyama and Ozawa as international spokesmen for Tokyo. The apologies should be less forthcoming, as they are offered by a new government, so close to the transfer of power from the entrenched LDP. Ozawa is riding the “International Friendship,” wave of Obama’s newness in international affairs and making good, by paying lip service to the Korea issue at a University in Seoul. Keep your apologies to yourself; even though they are likely to buy you political good-will, they are not your apologies to make.