Japan Move to Hoist Flag’s Status Rekindles Debate

TOKYO —  Japan’s lower house of parliament voted overwhelmingly Thursday to grant legal status to the nation’s flag and imperial anthem, despite polls showing that more than one in three citizens object to official recognition for what they see as symbols of Japanese militarism.

Approval by the upper house of parliament is expected to come swiftly, ending months of debate that has reflected both Japan’s perennial unease over its behavior during World War II and its desire to establish a comfortable and confident national identity for the coming century.

The anthem and flag, a red circle on a white background, have been in use for more than a century but never formally legalized. Japanese conservatives see the move as a step toward making Japan a “normal country” where patriotism need not be viewed as sinister.

But many liberals and pacifists argue that the emblems under which Japanese troops once colonized and brutalized their Asian neighbors are not appropriate symbols of statehood for the new millennium. Schoolteachers and administrators, who have been battling the Ministry of Education for decades over the issue, question the government’s pledge that it would not make homage to the flag and anthem compulsory.

The national flag is symbolic of the rising sun. A similar flag with curving rays emanating from the circle is the Japanese military flag, which isn’t used in civilian life.

Despite the controversy, the bill passed on a vote of 403 to 86, reflecting the surprising new power of the year-old government of Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi.

The prime minister came into office last July after his Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, suffered a crushing electoral defeat that left the party without control of the upper house of parliament. But Obuchi skillfully wooed the hawkish Liberal Party into a coalition, then began courting the dovish New Komeito party, which is backed by Japan’s largest lay Buddhist organization, the Soka Gakkai.

On Saturday, the Soka Gakkai leadership is expected to formalize an alliance with the LDP and Liberal Party that will give the coalition complete command of parliament. Together, the ruling bloc will control 71% of the seats in the lower house and 56% of those in the upper house--an accomplishment that is especially notable given Japan’s prolonged economic woes.

“Japan hasn’t seen a government so dominant in parliament in over 50 years,” said John F. Neuffer, a political analyst at Mitsui Marine Research Institute. Passage of the flag and anthem bill was made possible only by the tripartite coalition and the growing irrelevance of an opposition once led by the now-minuscule Social Democratic Party, he said. And the recession makes it “not a bad time for politicians to engage in a bit of patriotic flag-waving.”

“The LDP has wanted to do this for decades,” Neuffer said. “The opposition is gone, the LDP is strong, and the LDP can get away with it now.”

But pushing the flag and anthem bill through parliament could have a political price, warned Norihiko Narita, political science professor at Surugadai University in Saitama prefecture. “It will not be a plus in the next election,” which Obuchi is obliged to call by October 2000, Narita said. “Parliament members are slightly more nationalistic than the general public.”

A June poll of 1,103 Japanese by state-run NHK television found that only 4% objected to the Japanese flag, which is flown, for example, at sumo games and the Olympics.

The song, “Kimigayo,” a paean to the emperor taken from a 10th century anthology of poetry, is more problematic. NHK found that 18% of respondents called it “inappropriate” as a national anthem. Its title is customarily translated as “His Majesty’s Reign.”

The government has declared that the song refers to the emperor as a symbol of the sovereign power that resides with the people. But older people recall singing it as a tribute to Hirohito, the wartime emperor, who was held to be a living god.

The music, first penned by an Englishman in 1870, was rewritten a decade later to make it more “dignified.” But as with the U.S. national anthem, many citizens find it difficult to sing, especially a cappella.

Still, it is not the flag and anthem themselves but rather the move to designate them as official state symbols that seems to raise hackles. The NHK poll, for example, found that 33% objected to legislating their adoption, while 47% supported such legalization.

The debate typically becomes most heated during the early spring graduation season, when students and teachers in some schools boycott ceremonies at which the flag is hoisted and the anthem sung.

Obuchi introduced the legislation this year after the February suicide of a Hiroshima principal who was caught between the Ministry of Education demand that the flag and anthem be included in the ceremony and the adamant refusal of the pacifist teachers union to do so.

Recently, however, the tussle over the symbols has evolved into a debate over whether Japan should play a more assertive role in Asia and whether the government is becoming more nationalistic, as domestic critics and some of its Asian neighbors assert.

Already, media in South Korea, North Korea and Singapore have weighed in with reports that the flag and anthem are evidence of a Japan that intends to remilitarize.

But some Japanese believe that inculcating patriotism in the young is especially desirable in an era of globalization that threatens to swamp national identity. Moreover, assertions of national identity may be reassuring to a populace that saw a North Korean Taepodong 1 missile fly over its territory in August, shares a neighborhood with a resurgent China and depends on the U.S. for its defense.

“Japan is becoming more nationalistic,” Narita said. “It’s partly the Taepodong effect, partly the sense that Japan’s position in the world economy is slightly declining, and partly the perception that the U.S. is bypassing Japan and tilting toward China.”

But in the post-Cold War period, the definition of nationalism and national interest is changing--and that is what the renewed debate over the Japanese flag and anthem is really about, argued professor Kenichi Matsumoto at Reitaku University in Chiba prefecture.

“Precisely because this is an era in which things, money, people and information can easily transcend national borders, only countries with strong and united national identities will survive,” Matsumoto said.