Latest / The Front / Japan is about to arm itself to the teeth. How angry will China get?

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Japan is about to arm itself to the teeth. How angry will China get? · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, February tenth, twenty twenty six. Taxpayers are funneling
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  Speaker 1: seventeen point three million dollars per annum to unions, a
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  Speaker 1: figure that's more than doubled since Anthony Albanzi came to power.
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  Speaker 1: The Australian's revealing today a fifty million dollar federal grant
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  Speaker 1: for unions to explain Labour's own workplace reform laws. That's
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  Speaker 1: an exclusive live now at the Australian dot Com dot
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  Speaker 1: a U one nation is on the rise as the
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  Speaker 1: coalition struggles to find its way, but Pauline Hanson's party
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  Speaker 1: has no chance of forming government. If an election were
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  Speaker 1: held now, that's the takeout from a news poll exclusive
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  Speaker 1: to The Australian. One Nation would have received just twenty
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  Speaker 1: nine percent of preferences from Coalition, Greens and independent voters
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  Speaker 1: and would struggle to win seats from Labor. Japan's about
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  Speaker 1: to change everything in our neighborhood, electing a prime minister
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  Speaker 1: who wants to end eight decades of pacifism and massively
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  Speaker 1: increase its defense spending and intelligence capabilities. Today North Asia
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  Speaker 1: correspondent Jonni Bishan joins US from Tokyo, where voters have
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  Speaker 1: overwhelmingly endorsed Sunai Takaichi, the politician famous for picking a
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  Speaker 1: fight with China. At the end of World War Two,
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  Speaker 1: the ancient warrior Society of Japan ended with abject humiliation, surrender, disarmament,
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  Speaker 1: and occupation, an.
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  Speaker 2: Unforgettable ceremony marking the complete and formal surrender of Japan
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  Speaker 2: in the Bay of Tokyo itself.
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  Speaker 1: For more than eight decades, Japan has stuck to its
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  Speaker 1: own constitutional guarantee it would have a self defense force
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  Speaker 1: only not a real military, and would be incapable of
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  Speaker 1: repeating the catastrophic overreach of the nineteen thirties and forties. Now,
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  Speaker 1: Japanese voters have elected a prime minister who wants to
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  Speaker 1: arm them to the teeth, Snai Takaichi, who said it's
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  Speaker 1: time for Japan to have a proper military, just like
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  Speaker 1: everyone else. Jonni Bashan is The Australian's North Asia correspondent.
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  Speaker 1: Yoni Let's start with Snay Takaichi. Who is she?
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  Speaker 2: Well, she's very different from the safe great suits of
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  Speaker 2: Japanese politics. Firstly, this is a historic win for Japan
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  Speaker 2: and for Takaichi. She's the first woman to be elected
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  Speaker 2: prime minister, although her popularity really seems to come down
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  Speaker 2: to her straight talking style. And this is something the
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  Speaker 2: voters on the street kept reinforcing to me whenever I
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  Speaker 2: fox popped them through Tokyo over the weekend. I'm here
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  Speaker 2: to Botford there like, you know our parudition, who marches
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  Speaker 2: my like a sinking and you know my idea. So
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  Speaker 2: she's traditional, she's conservative, she opposes same sex marriage, she
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  Speaker 2: doesn't agree with the idea that women should keep their
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  Speaker 2: surname after marriage. And then of course there's China, to
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  Speaker 2: whom she refuses to bow, so to speak. And while
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  Speaker 2: that's worried a cohort of the Japanese public, it's evidently
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  Speaker 2: resonated not just widely, but wildly with the electorate. And
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  Speaker 2: it's why they've delivered tuck Age. She and her coalition
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  Speaker 2: this historic supermajority in the lower House of Parliament on Sunday.
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  Speaker 2: That's cool.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's now got an undeniable mandate to go about
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  Speaker 1: reforming Japanese society. What's going to be her first move?
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  Speaker 2: Well, at the same domestic issues will probably take precedence.
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  Speaker 2: The end is weak, inflation high, and so is the
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  Speaker 2: bond market, which means investors basically don't feel entirely comfortable
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  Speaker 2: or secure lending the government money, so she'll have to
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  Speaker 2: fix that. She's already promising tax cuts, which everyone loves
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  Speaker 2: and everyone wants. Of course, the lower hanging fruit in
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  Speaker 2: Japan is going to be her promise on immigration. She
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  Speaker 2: wants to introduce language tests for foreign residents. This foreign
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  Speaker 2: resident business seems to have partly captured the politics of
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  Speaker 2: the election here, even though immigrants comprise a fraction of
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  Speaker 2: the population, many of them from China, from Vietnam, and
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  Speaker 2: to a lesser but prominent extent Kurdish people. And then
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  Speaker 2: the big one, of course, are the changes that Takehi
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  Speaker 2: has promised to the constitution, which stand to depacify Japan
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  Speaker 2: and constitutionally recognize that it does in fact have an army,
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  Speaker 2: not a self defense force. And that's something which breaks
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  Speaker 2: nearly eight decades of illegal fiction that's existed in this country,
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  Speaker 2: this idea, dating back to the nineteen forties after Japan's
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  Speaker 2: defeat in the war, that it was committed to nonviolence,
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  Speaker 2: while at the same time and since then building up
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  Speaker 2: one of the most sophisticated militaries in the region.
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  Speaker 1: The thing that rocketed Takaichi to global attention was that
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  Speaker 1: she picked a fight with China, which you don't see
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  Speaker 1: people in Asia doing very often. It means, back at
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  Speaker 1: your regular home in Beijing, you presumably can't order Japanese
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  Speaker 1: fish at your local restaurant. What was that all about.
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  Speaker 2: So that happened about one month after she assent it
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  Speaker 2: to power here in Japan, back in September, so just
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  Speaker 2: a few weeks after she takes a job as Prime Minister,
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  Speaker 2: she stands up in parliament and breaks long standing convention
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  Speaker 2: by talking about Taiwan and contingencies. And what she declares
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  Speaker 2: in the National Parliament is that in the event that
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  Speaker 2: China decides to attack or invade or conduct any style
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  Speaker 2: of adventurism in Taiwan, Japan would view it as an
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  Speaker 2: existential crisis for itself and may have to militarily interven.
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  Speaker 2: Now that's a lot of diplomatic language, but what it
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  Speaker 2: basically says is Japan would do something if China and
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  Speaker 2: Taiwan went at each other. And Beijing didn't like hearing
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  Speaker 2: that one bit straight away, A fur or erupted. There
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  Speaker 2: were bands on seafood, the Chinese instructed their tourists to
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  Speaker 2: stay away from Japan. There were bands on where earth
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  Speaker 2: exports going into Japan, and essentially like a mini Cold
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  Speaker 2: War erupted between these two nations, and that persists for
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  Speaker 2: the moment most if not for it spelled it now.
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  Speaker 2: It's something that when you're speaking to voters on the
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  Speaker 2: streets of Tokyo, there will be a cohort of people
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  Speaker 2: who will say, this is not something that we wanted
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  Speaker 2: for Japan. We did not want to pick a fight
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  Speaker 2: with our largest creating partner. This is not what the
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  Speaker 2: country needs right now. On the other hand, you have
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  Speaker 2: this enormous cohort in Japan, and clearly they exist because
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  Speaker 2: they've voted her into power so comprehensively, this enormous cohort
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  Speaker 2: who have said, we do need a spine in the region,
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  Speaker 2: we do need more defense spending, and we do need
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  Speaker 2: to assert ourselves militarily in a region where China has
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  Speaker 2: the power to exert economic sanctions on us at the
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  Speaker 2: drop of the hat.
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  Speaker 1: Sana Aitekiichi presumably doesn't actually want to have a war
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  Speaker 1: with China, which is the most powerful military in the world,
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  Speaker 1: probably by the United States. There's a certain, obviously domestic
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  Speaker 1: resonance to what she said. You know, she has got
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  Speaker 1: herself re elected with this resounding mandate because in part
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  Speaker 1: of talking tough like this, how much do you think
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  Speaker 1: she actually wants to provoke China in the way that
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  Speaker 1: she obviously has.
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  Speaker 2: There's no doubt that Sanae Take she does not want
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  Speaker 2: to provoke China into any further economic sanctions or at
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  Speaker 2: worst some kind of military conflict. That's not what she wants.
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  Speaker 2: It's not what the Japanese public wants. That's clear when
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  Speaker 2: you speak to anyone on the street and when you
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  Speaker 2: speak to the pundits in this country. However, there is
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  Speaker 2: a view that kowtowing to China is appeasement, and Sanaei
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  Speaker 2: Take she is pushing back against that idea, and it's
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  Speaker 2: why she's so forceful about displaying some backbone with the
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  Speaker 2: military and having the army entered into the constitution formally.
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  Speaker 1: China's in a state of flux at the moment. A
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  Speaker 1: couple of weeks ago, the head of the military just disappeared,
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  Speaker 1: Shi Jinping. He talks a lot about China. He talks
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  Speaker 1: a lot about Japan's war of aggression in the nineteen forties.
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  Speaker 1: World War two, China flexes its muscle in the region
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  Speaker 1: by building islands in the South China Sea, by sending
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  Speaker 1: spy ships to surveil the coast of Australia. There's a
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  Speaker 1: lot of flexing going on from China's point of view.
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  Speaker 1: Do you think the election of a sort of strong
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  Speaker 1: leader in Japan will shape how Shijinping thinks about invading Taiwan.
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  Speaker 2: I suspect that broadly in China, there is going to
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  Speaker 2: be a view that Sannai Takachi's brand of politics is
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  Speaker 2: what one academic described to me an academic from China
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  Speaker 2: as shadowy imperialism. So they seem to receive all her
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  Speaker 2: muscular nationalism and talk of increasing defense spending and having
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  Speaker 2: the military inserted into the constitution as of Japan that
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  Speaker 2: is trying to harp back to the country. It was
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  Speaker 2: China didn't want to see Sunai Takachi elected, although they
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  Speaker 2: did see this result coming.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up more of my conversation with Yanni Bishan. Until
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  Speaker 1: this election result, the most Australians were hearing about Japan
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  Speaker 1: was that they've had an incredibly tough winter that has yielded,
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  Speaker 1: of course, amazing snow for the people who like to
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  Speaker 1: go over to Japan to ski and snowboard. It's also
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  Speaker 1: resulted in several deaths. Three Australian tourists and many many
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  Speaker 1: people in Japan have died while doing things like shoveling
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  Speaker 1: snow off their own roofs. It's a real natural disaster
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  Speaker 1: in slow motion in Japan. Yani, you've spent the weekend
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  Speaker 1: in Tokyo. Paint a picture for me. What's it like?
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  Speaker 1: How cold is it?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's pretty cold. This is also very unusual for
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  Speaker 2: this election. It was held in February. This is not
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  Speaker 2: something that they traditionally do in this country decades since
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  Speaker 2: there's been an election held in February. And there's a
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  Speaker 2: reason for it. It's just very, very cold, and it
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  Speaker 2: affects voter turnout because large parts of the country, particularly
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  Speaker 2: up north, they get blanketed in snow and people don't
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  Speaker 2: want to go out. And you see, unlike Australia where
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  Speaker 2: we have compulsory voting, in Japan, you don't have to
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  Speaker 2: go out and vote. It's entirely voluntary, and that's why
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  Speaker 2: the voter turnout in this particular election, which was reasonably
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  Speaker 2: high and reasonably high despite the snow, is quite impressive.
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  Speaker 2: The other thing I'd say about Japanese elections, which is
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  Speaker 2: really different to what we're used to, is that they're
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  Speaker 2: just kind of not as lurid and not as chaotic
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  Speaker 2: as we've come to expect in Australia. I mean, yes,
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  Speaker 2: there are campaign ads, and there's core flutes and things
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  Speaker 2: of that nature, but not like we have in Sydney, Melbourne,
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  Speaker 2: Brisbane and Perth and the regions very very different over here.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, we are talking about a society. This is
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  Speaker 2: one thing that I noticed in particular. I mean, this
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  Speaker 2: is a society where if you're crossing the street on
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  Speaker 2: a busy road and there's no cars, there's no traffic,
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  Speaker 2: you'll just have a large amount of people gathering at
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  Speaker 2: street corners refusing to cross until the little man turns green,
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  Speaker 2: and people from other countries, myself included, will just stand
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  Speaker 2: looking around, going why isn't anyone crossing there's no cars, like,
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  Speaker 2: we're free to do so, but they will wait. It
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  Speaker 2: is orderly, it is civilized, and the election was thus
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  Speaker 2: very Japanese. If you'll permit me to say, so you
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  Speaker 2: walk around. There aren't core flutes, cable types every pole insight,
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  Speaker 2: there aren't gigantic billboards of grinting candidates, and it didn't
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  Speaker 2: feel as as in your face as we would have expected,
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  Speaker 2: particularly given what we're used to back home.
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  Speaker 1: You've had an incredible weekend, very busy weekend covering this election.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you're going to find time to get some
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  Speaker 1: Japanese seafood before you have to head back to Beijing.
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  Speaker 1: Jodi Rashean, thank you very much.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you