Japan shouldn’t dishonor Emperor and Empress by inviting Xi Jinping

In 2019, the Japanese government announced that it would invite Chinese President Xi Jinping to Japan for a official state visit. It was a decision that must have made many Japanese think: why the hell?

Extreme oppression of human rights in Inner Mongolia, Tibet andXinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), encroachment in the South China Sea, the end of a nation, two systems agreement in Hong Kong (which was to last 50 years until 2047). More incursions in Japanese territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, the one-sided development of a gas field near the Japan-China midline in the East China Sea, and the making of history. Let’s not forget the global spread of COVID-19 due to camouflage. And there is the imposition of the new National Security Law in Hong Kong, which can rightly be called fascist law. The list is endless.

President Xi ignores human rights and is the supreme leader of a country that is destroying world order without batting an eyelid.

I have read the 66 articles of Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, which came into effect on June 30. crush both freedom and democracy in Hong Kong.

Obviously, President Xi intends to rule the world. For example, article 38 states:

This Act applies to offenses under this Act committed against the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region from outside the region by a person who is not a permanent resident of the region.

It would appear that anyone who says freedom and democracy must be restored to Hong Kong is subject to sanctions, regardless of where they live.

To date, I have transited through Beijing and Shanghai airports out of threeoccasions. However, I will now make sure to avoid flying through China at all costs, as even a minor like me could be detained.

Then there is article 65, the coup de grace:

The power to interpret this law is vested in the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.

By acquiring the power of interpretation, it becomes too easy to pervert the course of justice. The article recalls the strong repression of the Vatican against heresy in the Middle Ages. President Xi seems to want to act in the name of God.

In his book Dokusai no Chugoku Gendaishi (Bunshun Shinsho, editor, Japanese, 2019), Shizuoka University teacher Yang Haiying, originally from Inner Mongolia, explains the essential fear of China under Xi. In the mind of X:

There is no other part worthy of respect and coexistence.

At best, the only other countries that exist are formidable enemies like the United States and the former Soviet Union.

The inability to coexist with other ethnic groups means that there are no workable policies other than assimilation through large-scale mobilization and force.

Of course, I think to myself. In 2015, Xi suggested to then-US Secretary of State John Kerry that the United States and China form a new kind of relationship between the great countries, dividing the Pacific in two and ruling half each.

In President X’s mind, only the formidable enemy of the United States in China seems to exist.

Do not dishonor the imperial couple

Let us return to the issue of state visits. By visiting the ImperialRecently, I discovered the following on the Household Agency website:

State visits are treated as ceremonial and official events by the government. Foreign heads of state or their equivalents participate in receptions of the imperial family. Relevant invitations and receptions are determined at Cabinet meetings. For State Visiting Receptions involving the Imperial Family, Welcome Ceremonies, Conferences, Imperial Palace Banquets, and Tours focus around the Imperial Couple. The imperial couple and the rest of the imperial family wholeheartedly participate in the state visit receptions.

When deciding on state visits, the Japanese government must judgecarefully to see if the visitor deserves a warm welcome from the Imperial couple. Which makes me think: How did the government decide that President Xi deserved to be invited as a state guest?

The likely answer is not rocket science. The decision was probablyinfluenced by the PLD Secretary General Toshihiro Nikai. In a style similar to that of former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who normalized diplomatic relations between Japan and China in September 1972, Nikai is well known for leading business-oriented group visits to China, with a number of participants ranging from several hundred to several thousand people.

In May 2015, when there were tensions between Japan and China triggered by issues such as the conflict in the Senkaku Islands (Ishigaki Town, Okinawa Prefecture), Nikai took a group of around 3,000 people in Beijing to participate in a networking event at the Great Hall of the people. Asked about the purpose of the trip by an accompanying journalist from NHK, Nikai responded as follows:

At that time, the Chinese and Japanese political elite needed some kind of openness. So in that sense you could say it was a historic moment. Doing something proactive like this is important.

Nikai is not the only person who could have influenced the 2019 decision to invite President Xi. There is also Uichiro Niwa, who has praised Xi in the past as a relatively pro-Japanese and fair person. I wonder if Niwa now realizes how massively inaccurate his observation was?

Niwa, who rose from chairman of Itochu Corporation to ambassador of Japan to China while the Democratic Party of Japan was in power, once told author Yusuke Fukada: The future will see the dawn of an era of Greater China. Japan will have no choice but to exist as a vassal state of China.

Niwa also made the following comment to one of the weeklies in Japan after his role as Ambassador to China:

Japan, with its lack of resources, cannot survive without trading with other countries. The world’s largest market (China) is right on its doorstep, and Japan must take full advantage of it.

Niwa is a wise businessman, I don’t deny that. I suspect that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was reportedly concerned about the future of the Japanese economy, decided to take the advice of a high-profile niwas businessman, as well as Nikais’s lawyer. A fairly courageous political decision, some would say.

But I want people to remember something. Let us not forget that Prime Minister Abe was proud to tell the world that Japan had universal values, such as freedom, democracy, basic human rights, the rule of law and a market economy. As it stands, this approach appears to have changed. Looks like he ditched those values ​​and sold himself.

I don’t want to imagine this, but if President Xis’ state visit continues, videos and photos of the imperial couple speaking politely to the Chinese leader will be shown around the world.

As a result, the countries of Southeast Asia South china sea who suffered from China’s brutality, and European nations who eventually became cautious of China, are likely to make critical statements, such as, Japan has been blinded by the gigantic market next door and made his imperial couple welcome a fascist.

But that wouldn’t be the end.

It is inevitable that China will use the videos and photos as propaganda.

Thinking about this scenario reminds me of this photograph of Emperor Showa and the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, Douglas MacArthur. This is the one where MacArthur arrogantly stands in an open shirt next to Emperor Showa, who stands erect in a formal suit taken when MacArthur visited the Emperor on September 27, 1945.

The message in the photo where there is an emphatic difference between the victorious country and the defeated country is: you have been defeated. Now you will follow our instructions, no questions asked.

In the case of China, however, who makes and erases history without blinking, the approach he offers will likely be even coarser.

Therefore, in order to honor the imperial couple, Japan must not invite President Xi to the country as a state guest.

(Read the original column in Japanese, here.)

Author: Satoshi Kuwahara, Cultural News Section, The Sankei Shimbun