The North Korean government on Sunday ratcheted up tensions with the US by praising the Sony Entertainment hack, while threatening retaliation against any American response, despite denying responsibility for the act.
But while Washington’s focus is on Kim Jong Un and the Korean Peninsula, news of a potential complication for US long-term strategy quietly broke last week elsewhere in the region. Behind the story–itself buried by idle chatter about Seth Rogen and James Franco’s otherwise forgettable film–are the rise of communists and opposition to the US military across the Sea of Japan.
As the FBI was preparing to formally accuse North Korea of being responsible for the cyber-attack, on Thursday night, the State Department and the Pentagon issued a press release about a delay in revisions to the terms of the US-Japan alliance. Details about the changes had been previously expected to come before the end of the year, but the two agencies along with their Japanese counterparts jointly stated that they had to ensure “consistency between the revision of the Guidelines and Japan’s legislative process.”
What appears to be causing the snag to the plans–described by The Economist as “a change expected to draw heated public opposition”–is a small-but-stern rebuke delivered by voters after the Dec. 14 general election. While incumbent Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expanded the size of his coalition, significant sectors of the electorate appeared rather concerned about his defense policy and what it would mean for Japan’s constitutional limits on militarization. As a result, the Japanese Communist Party, with its anti-militarist platform, more than doubled its caucus in the the lower house of parliament. While it only will have 21 seats–a faction representing about 4.5 of legislators–its showing appears to have given Abe and the US some pause.
“It’s the only opposition party that really acts like one,” Tomoaki Iwai, a Tokyo-based Nihon University professor of politics explained to Bloomberg. Echoing this, an octogenarian pensioner who spoke to the news service said she cast her vote for the party because she “wanted to stop the LDP.”
“My generation still remembers the war, and I can’t let things return to that,” she said.
To compound the headache for the Pentagon and Japanese conservatives, the communists had a strong showing in Okinawa, an archipelago known by most Americans for playing host to US military bases. Its single-seat victory there–its first gain of the kind in 18 years, according to Bloomberg—mean the communists will be able to propose legislation in parliament.
Without explicitly mentioning the communists’ triumph, The Washington Post described the result as a “slap in the face for the LDP”–or rather another one, weeks after a gubernatorial candidate in Okinawa opposed to the US military installations emerged victorious. Newsweek described the votes as “a game-changer for base politics.”
Thus, as the Associated Press said in reporting the delay, Japanese and US officials are waiting “until the Japanese parliament considers new legislation that would allow its military to play an expanded role.” Japanese legislators, the wire service noted, “are expected to take up the bills after local elections in April.”
The full significance of both those votes will depend on what happens next in the fallout over the Sony hack. If North Korea’s statement on Sunday and Monday reports about its internet suffering “continuous connectivity problems” are accurate, it’s likely that the consequences will only grow over the coming months.
