【纽约时报 20150117】日本之未来

满仓

【中文标题】日本之未来
【原文标题】The Shape of Japan to Come
【登载媒体】纽约时报
【原文作者】ANALEXIS DUDDEN
【原文链接】http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/17/opinion/the-shape-of-japan-to-come.html




在上个月的日本选举中获得政党胜利之后，首相安倍晋三再次提出他的誓言，要让日本摆脱历史的束缚，尤其是二战失败的阴影。安倍先生和他的支持者把那个时代的描述认为是“受虐狂的呻吟”，以及是对迈向他所谓的“新日本”障碍。他们建议修改日本宪法中“永久放弃国家主权发动战争”的条款。

这些志向在日本外交部去年4月份在网站发表的一张地图上表露无遗，并且被翻译成12种语言。地图上的日本领土超越了国际上普遍认可的疆界，以“协同”——日本“固有领土”——的名义整合了很多周边国家声称拥有主权的岛屿。网站声称，这些岛屿是日本不可分割的一部分。

实际上，安倍政府的扩张主义倾向会削弱日本的经济利益和战略利益。

“协同”所推崇的日本疆界回避了历史问题，尤其是日本如何获得这些岛屿控制权的历史问题——通过与中国和俄罗斯的帝国战争；通过与朝鲜半岛的战争；通过对原住民的同化和屠杀。

因此日本陷入诸多领土纠纷当中。中国和台湾在与它争夺尖阁列岛，北京称其为钓鱼岛，台北称其为钓鱼台。韩国声称对竹岛（称其为独岛）拥有主权，从1954年开始就在那里驻军。俄罗斯声称对日本所谓的北方领土拥有主权，那是位于北海道东北部千岛群岛中的4个岛屿。俄罗斯人从1945年开始在那里居住，目前有2万居民。

在联合国海洋法公约的条款保护下，日本已经拥有的庞大的渔业和价值高达3.6万亿美元的海底矿藏。这些有争议的岛屿会进一步提升它的海洋储备。

“固有的”日本

东京急不可待地声称对争议岛屿拥有主权，政府在新地图中强调了3个区域。



根据美国能源信息管理局等机构的估算，中国东海已探明，加上预测的石油储备高达2亿桶（全世界每天消耗9000万桶液体燃料），和1到2万亿立方英尺的天然气（美国在2013年消耗了26万亿立方英尺天然气）。日本和中国在争夺这片区域17％的面积。

千岛群岛南部的一座火山中蕴藏着铼，这种稀土元素的熔点是喷气机引擎设计师所梦寐以求的。日本与朝鲜半岛之前的海底还有大量未探明的甲烷化合物。当2013年在当地成功萃取出天然气之后，日本石油天然气和金属公司的一位发言人说：“日本终于拥有了自己的能源。”

这些富有的矿藏似乎足够让日本做出声称拥有这些领土的决定。政府在2012年的燃料进口费用高达2500亿美元。2011年3月份的海啸让福岛核电厂倒塌，将其拆除所造成的损失预计高达900亿美元。

但是日本的边缘政策正在让自己失去对这些资源的控制权。联合国海洋法公约并没有规定陆地主权的归属，它允许在有争议的水域多方合作开发。但是，一旦纠纷升级，合作的计划往往会搁浅。

中国和日本在2008年同意共同开发中国东海的4片天然气储藏地，但是计划在第二年搁浅，因为中国决定自己着手开发。安倍先生的最高纲领主义政策让这些开发计划不大可能再次提上日程，有日本参与的新计划似乎也是遥遥无期。

安倍先生的领土修正主义有其战略考虑。“协同”中的暗示是对1951年结束日本与盟军之间二战的《三藩和平条约》中的部分条款置之不理。条约重新施划了日本的领土，从战争期间的日本帝国——从中国北方一直到瓜达尔卡纳尔岛——变成今天大家熟悉的样子。（部分岛屿，比如冲绳，在后来被归还给日本。）当时有很多日本人，包括安倍先生的祖父岸信介——他曾经被作为甲级战犯指控——对此勃然大怒，说千岛群岛对日本人是“至关重要的”。

大约在同一时间生效的另一份协议——1951年的《美日安全条约》——中，美国将“在日本国内驻扎武装力量”，目的是“抵挡针对日本的进攻”。1960年双方修订条约，日本获得了有限的自卫武装权利，两国“在日本国施政的领域下，如果任何一方受到武力攻击”时，可以采取一系列的行动。这些条款在今天依然有效，因此美国政府对于日本领土的定义变得非常重要。

华盛顿和东京的官员们目前正在考虑，如果日本的和平与安全受到威胁，双方的责任分别是什么。一个棘手的问题是美国在另一份安全协议中肩负着双重责任，它需要同时保护日本和韩国，因为双方之间的领土纠纷可能会引发冲突。换句话说，“协同”在启动美国战后安全承诺的同时，也在挑战这些承诺。

安倍先生对历史的复仇主义态度，是他对日本“再一次闪亮登上世界舞台中心”愿景的重要原因。但是对历史的曲解削弱了这个国家的核心利益，以及它在世界上的位置。安倍先生的党派对宪法的修改意见中包括，日本公民“有义务捍卫国家的固有领土、领海、领空”和争议岛屿。草案中还提到，“所有公民必须遵守宪法”，也就是说触犯宪法可能会危及公民的权利，甚至公民身份。安倍先生希望为日本争取得更多，但真正的收获可能很少。




原文：

Bolstered by his party’s victory in Diet elections last month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has renewed his vow to free Japan from the fetters of the past, especially its defeat in World War II. Mr. Abe and his supporters view the prevailing accounts of that era as “masochistic” and a hindrance to taking pride in what he calls the “new Japan.” They propose to modify the article in Japan’s Constitution that states the Japanese people “forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation.”

These aspirations have been laid out in a map of Japan that the Japanese Foreign Ministry published on its website last April, with translations in 12 languages. The map extends beyond Japan’s internationally recognized boundaries, incorporating in the name of ryodo — or the “inherent territory” of Japan — many islands claimed by neighboring countries. Those lands, the argument goes, are integral to Japan’s very being.

In fact, the Abe government’s expansionist view undermines Japan’s interests, both economic and strategic.

Ryodo promotes a notion of Japan’s territory that circumvents history, particularly the history of how Japan laid claim to these islands in the first place — through imperial wars with China and Russia, through wars of conquest against Koreans, through the extermination or assimilation of indigenous peoples.

Partly as a result, Japan is embroiled in many territorial disputes. China and Taiwan contest the Senkaku Islands, which Beijing calls the Diaoyu and Taipei the Diaoyutai. South Korea claims Takeshima (calling it Dokdo) where it has stationed military police since 1954. Russia claims sovereignty over what Japanese know as the Northern Territories, four islands in the Kuril chain northeast of Hokkaido where Russians have lived since 1945, numbering about 20,000 today.

Under the terms of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), Japan already has access to vast fisheries and rides up to $3.6 trillion in seabed materials. The disputed islands would add much more.

‘Inherent’ Japan

Tokyo is more aggressively claiming island groups that have long been in territorial dispute. The government highlighted these 3 areas on a new map.

According to some estimates, including by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the East China Sea holds 200 million barrels in proved and probable oil reserves (the world consumes around 90 million barrels of liquid fuels each day) and between 1 and 2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (the United States consumed about 26 trillion cubic feet in 2013). Japan and China contest nearly 17 percent of the area.

A volcano on one of the southern Kurils has rhenium, a rare-earth metal with a melting point that makes jet-engine designers dream. There are also vast quantities of untapped methane hydrate in the seabed between Japan and the Korean Peninsula. After gas was extracted from similar deposits elsewhere for the first time in 2013, a spokesman for the Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation said, “Japan could finally have an energy source to call its own.”

The lure of such riches might seem like reason enough for resource-poor Japan to claim these territories. The government spent $250 billion on imported fuel in 2012. And the cost of decommissioning the nuclear reactors at Fukushima after the meltdown following the March 2011 tsunami is expected to reach at least $90 billion.

Yet Japan risks losing access to many of these resources because of its brinksmanship. UNCLOS does not determine sovereignty over land, and it allows for joint development agreements in waters around contested territory. When disputes heat up, however, they naturally tend to scuttle any joint schemes.

In 2008 China and Japan agreed to explore together four gas fields in the East China Sea. But the project was scuttled the following year, after China went at it alone. Mr. Abe’s maximalist policy only undermines the prospects that this development project could be revived, or that new ones involving Japan might be struck.

The costs of Mr. Abe’s territorial revisionism are also strategic. Ryodo implicitly dismisses as partial the terms of the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, which formally ended World War II between Japan and the Allies. The agreement redrew Japan from the massive empire it had become during the war — stretching from northern China to Guadalcanal — more or less into the country familiar today. (Some islands, notably Okinawa, reverted to Japan in the intervening years.) Many Japanese at the time, including Mr. Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi — who was accused of being a Class A war criminal — were infuriated, claiming in particular that the Kurils were “essential” to the Japanese.

In a separate agreement that went into force at the same time, the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1951, the United States would “maintain armed forces of its own in and about Japan” in order “to deter armed attack upon Japan.” By the time the treaty was revised in 1960, Japan had acquired limited self-defense forces, and the two countries undertook various commitments in case of “an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan.” These still stand today, hence the critical importance also for the U.S. government of properly defining what Japan is.

Officials in Washington and Tokyo are currently reviewing each side’s responsibilities in the event of a threat to the peace and security of Japan. One fraught issue is the United States’ dual obligation, under separate security arrangements, to defend both Japan and South Korea because one could attack the other over territory they both claim. In other words, the very notion of ryodo challenges the United States’ postwar security commitments even as it risks triggering them.

Mr. Abe’s revanchist view of the past is central to his vision of a future in which Japan “once again shines on the world’s center stage.” But it distorts history in a way that undermines the country’s major interests and, arguably, its identity. The constitutional changes advocated by Mr. Abe’s party include an “obligation” for citizens of Japan to “defend the nation’s inherent territory, inherent seas and inherent skies,” disputed islands and all. The proposed draft adds that, “All citizens must honor the Constitution,” suggesting that failure to do so could endanger their rights, maybe their citizenship. In his bid to claim more for Japan, Mr. Abe may reap less.