Japan: land of the rising tourist numbers?

Itsukushima shrine, near Hiroshima. Photographs: Alamy

The Asahi beer is ice-cold. Naoki Doi takes sips from it between bites of curry. The bespectacled tour guide has asked me and my family to eat fast: he's taking us around some of Kyoto's outstanding shrines and temples, and there's a lot of them to see.

He is, he says, relieved to have some business again. In March this year, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck off the coast of East Japan, sending a devastating tsunami towards the shore. The tsunami wiped out entire towns across the country's Pacific coast, and caused a meltdown at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear plant. But while Japan has rebuilt large parts of the damaged areas, tourism in the country took a huge hit. Kyoto may be 500 miles south of Fukushima Prefecture, but it still felt the impact.

"I had 40 or 50 bookings for May onwards, all from foreigners," says Doi. "They all cancelled. Every one. Every reservation. I had some locals coming for tours, but nobody else …My income fell to about 30% of the usual. I got some money from the bank, a temporary emergency loan."

Kyoto is a city known both for its temples and for its traditional ryokan inns with tatami-matted floors, futons and paper screen walls. The night before, we'd stayed at the Tamahan Ryokan, which bills itself as a completely traditional inn (despite having super-fast Wi-Fi in the rooms).

Two of us opted for the Japanese breakfast: it came in lightning waves of tiny plates, hot, cold, rice, boiled tofu, egg custard, grilled mackerel. It's a meal you really have to be very awake to eat. The Japanese have some of the best food on earth but – for the western palate at least – perhaps not the most appetising before 9am.

The major tourist attractions in Kyoto are eerily quiet. The imposing Ryoanji temple is, Doi says, usually rammed with visitors seeking a glimpse of its exquisite zen gardens. Today, there's plenty of space on the steps in front of the main rock garden. Every so often there's a thump as someone in the entrance hall removes their shoes. A quiet zen garden is always beautiful – even if, in this case, it's quiet for the wrong reasons.

Ryoan-ji rock garden, Kyoto.

After our tour of the temple, Doi-San takes us to the huge Kyoto Handicraft Centre, which sells traditional Japanese artworks (as well as the obligatory anime action figures). Usually at this time of year, the centre's four floors are bustling, but today they're quiet.

"We used to have a lot of people," says shop assistant Kaori Masaki. "But it dropped right off after April. Now, people don't want to come to Kyoto. They have a big imagination, but they don't know. Japan is very beautiful, and very safe. We want people to come here so we can show them."

The earthquake and tsunami may have caused physical damage, but the damage to the tourism industry could be longer lasting. In February 2011, according to the Japan National Tourism Organisation, the country had 680,398 visitors. In the months following the earthquake, this plummeted – April saw 295,826 tourists, down a staggering 63%. The country still faces an uphill battle to convince visitors to come back. Negative perceptions about safety in Japan persist in the foreign media – not helped by continued questions over whether radiation has leaked into the water and food chain. While we were in the country, the Japan Times would report that levels of radioactive caesium that leaked from the Fukushima plant were equal to 168 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

Our trip took us over much of Japan's main Honshu island, from the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama to the countryside of Hakone. It's breathtakingly beautiful. In Miyajima, a heavily forested island off the coast south of Hiroshima, we walked down to the shore from our hotel. A tame deer wandered up, his nose questing for the plastic cup of flavoured ice I'd picked up from a stall. It was the school holidays, and there were plenty of families out. Ahead of us, out on the water, was the Itsukushima Shinto shrine. This Unesco-listed monument is in the form of a magnificent red gate, or torii that seems to float on the water; it is floodlit at night. In the Miyajima Grand Hotel Arimoto, we sat at low tables to eat platters of staggeringly fresh, beautifully-arranged sashimi and drink yet more Asahi.

It was all wonderful, yet this island – one of Japan's biggest attractions – sees hardly any foreign tourists. We spot a group of American men relaxing on the beach – turns out they're sailors on shore leave from the military base in Okinawa.

Lake and mountains in Hakone

A few days and several Shinkansen (bullet) trains later, we're in Hakone, a hilly town close to Mount Fuji. The Gora Tensui hotel has views across the mountains, from a bar where you can order a cocktail while your feet soak in a hot bath. Yet here, too, it's eerily quiet. Manager Sekitaitei Iishida tells us that we're the first non-Japanese tourists he's had in over two months.

Despite the apparent lack of non-Japanese visitors in the country, Kylie Clark of the Japan National Tourist Board says numbers have been climbing again – in July, 561,700 people visited (for comparison, more than 879,000 came in July 2010). "During April and May, airfares to Japan from the UK had become very high," says Clark, "often over £1,000 for a direct London-Tokyo flight. These prices have now come down. The containment of the problem at the Fukushima plant, more affordable flights, great deals on hotels and Tokyo now being back to its fabulous, well-functioning self are factors encouraging people to once again visit Japan."

• Flight Centre (0844 800 8660, flightcentre.co.uk) has a range of flights to Japan, including a direct Virgin Atlantic return to Tokyo for £547. You'll find plenty of good hotel deals, too: the Tamahan Ryokan in Kyoto (+81 75 561 3188, tamahan.jp) charges £90 a night per person with breakfast, and yes, they offer a Western one if boil-your-own-tofu doesn't appeal. Miyajima Grand Hotel Arimoto, (+81 829 442411, miyajima-arimoto.co.jp) has Japanese and western-style rooms from £110 a night. The Gora Tensui (+81 0460 86 1411, gora-tensui.com has doubles from £400

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Crouching dragon, rising sun

Crouching dragon, rising sun
By Yong Kwon

Beijing has finally achieved its aspiration to be a force to be reckoned with on the high seas. The long-awaited launch of China's aircraft carrier signaled the incremental readjustment of power relations in East Asia. However, the rise of one power does not necessarily translate to the decline of all others in the vicinity. The rise of China as a naval power will inevitably highlight the indispensability of Japan and prompt Tokyo's ascent to a position of greater political and military importance in Northeast Asia.

Recently, Professor Robert Farley drew parallels between military conditions today and those in the 1920s when Japan and the United States challenged the naval supremacy of Great Britain. [1] Noting the economic burden of an arms race, he lauded the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty and recommended a new treaty

 
between India, China and Japan to limit the size of their fleets.

However, Beijing has yet to show any signs of budgetary or economic difficulties in providing for massive naval buildup. Furthermore, considering how internal opposition to naval arms control in Japan in the 1920s ultimately caused Tokyo to withdraw from the treaty in 1934, there is no reason to believe Beijing would abide by, much less initiate, control measures on its own longtime military objectives.

In addition, just as advancements in naval aviation undermined the effectiveness of the 1922 Washington Treaty, future advancements in maritime military technology may well void any agreements that the nations forge today.

Responding to the new political, economic and military realities in the west Pacific, Japan will have an increasingly pivotal role in diplomacy and security in East Asia. Three reasons already make Japan a natural counterweight to the growing influence of China. First, Japan maintains significant diplomatic relations with all the regional players and can act as a regional arbiter; second, upholding Japan's territorial integrity will contain China's surface fleet; third, Japan is militarily capable of contributing to regional security.

It's been noted that when a country is an economic giant, it will inevitably be a political giant as well. [2] Japan has used its economic prowess to deepen its diplomatic contacts throughout the region since regaining its autonomy in 1952. After normalizing relations with South Korea in 1965, Japan also made diplomatic overtures to North Korea.

Although Tokyo has yet to recognize the government in Pyongyang, Japan was the first capitalist country that North Korea turned to for trade and investment. [3] Most importantly, North Korea still desires greater political and economic interaction with Japan. This ongoing relationship places Tokyo in a key position to be involved in inter-Korean negotiations as an arbiter.

Japan also consistently sought closer economic and diplomatic ties with both the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. Although the dispute over the Kurile Islands have long soured the relations between Moscow and Tokyo, since the mid-1990s successive Japanese governments have pursued general economic linkage with Russia rather than previous attempts to trade economic aid for territorial concessions.

The 1997 Yeltsin-Hashimoto Plan committed Japan to the economic development of the Russian far east and Sakhalin Island, promising continued investments that Moscow desperately needs to reach its long-desired goal of exploiting the vast reserve of natural resources in Siberia. [4] These economic ties with Russia provide Japan with inexorable political capital that can be leveraged to further stabilize and secure the region against sudden changes in the balance of power.

Geographically, Japan's deep reach into the East China Sea also makes Tokyo a key player in the strategy to limit Beijing's naval force. The dispute over the Senkaku islands (called the Diaoyu by China) arose in full in the 1990s when China leveraged its burgeoning political status in East Asia to extend its territorial claims.

The People's Liberation Army Air Force frequently infringed on Japanese air space and showed interest in exploiting the mineral resources around the contested islands. With the completion of an aircraft carrier, Beijing's capacity to further up-the-ante in disputed waters has drastically increased. Thus it is not surprising that Japan's 2011 Defense White Papers cited the growth of China's military reach as a key security concern.

Although Washington has always maintained an ambiguous position regarding its obligations in the case of a Chinese incursion of the Senkaku islands, in December 1996, the Pentagon did note that the islands were included in the terms of the US-Japan Okinawa Reversion Treaty of 1971, thus lending weight to Japan's position over China's claim.

The United States prevails upon a more diplomatically viable position of sustaining the status quo in Northeast Asia; Dokdo to South Korea, the Kurile Islands to the Russian Federation and the Senkaku Islands to Japan. This diplomatic and military coalition remains the most practical means of keeping China's ambitions at bay. Therefore, Tokyo's position regarding its concept of territorial integrity has significant bearing on the direction of multilateral cooperation.

Japan is also increasingly capable of contributing to the security of Northeast Asia. The Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force maintains six guided missile destroyers built around the Aegis combat system and it plans on expanding its helicopter carrier fleet which could eventually accommodate F-35 jet fighters, fifth generation stealth fighters capable of vertical launch and landing.

New guidelines established in Japan's 2011 Defense White Papers stated that Tokyo intended to augment the defense capabilities of its southern frontier by improving the Self Defense Force's and mobility and response-readiness.

Japan's diplomatic, military and economic role in the security of the region fulfills the role that Tokyo sought since the 1960s and 1970s when prime minister Eisaku Sato and president Richard Nixon discussed the possibility of Japan playing a larger role in the security of Northeast Asia.

With the nation coping with the consequences of the nuclear disaster at Fukushima and the Democratic Party of Japan failing to show political leadership and assertiveness, current conditions at home look grim. However, it is also taking forward steps to bolster its political position in the region.

New Prime Minister, Noda Yoshihiko decided not to visit the controversial Yaskuni Shrine, thereby reducing potential areas of conflict with South Korea and China. Furthermore, the proposed joint naval exercises between Russia, Japan and the United States, the intrinsic economic and political ties with Seoul and its diplomatic contacts with Pyongyang stands as a testament to Tokyo's increasingly predominant political role in the region. [5]

The next decade will be as much Japan's decade as it will be China's.

Notes
1. Robert Farley, "Over the Horizon: Toward a Tokyo Naval Treaty?" World Politics Review, August 17, 2011.
2. GerdLeptin noted this explicitly in a lecture given at FreieUniversitat Berlin in April 1994.
3. Armstrong, Charles. "Juche and North Korea's Global Aspirations." NKIDP Working Paper #1, Apr. 2009.
4. Randall E Newnham, "How to Win Friends and Influence People: Japanese Economic Aid Linkage and the Kurile Islands." Asian Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Winter, 2001), pp. 247-260.
5. "Russia, in order to contain China, to conduct joint naval exercises with Japan and United States." Yonhap News (article in Korean), September 1, 2011. Citation suggests Nihon KeizaiShimbun as the original source.

Yong Kwon is a Washington-based analyst of international affairs.

(Copyright 2011 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)

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Chances of big quake below Tokyo rising

The Yomiuri Shimbun

The possibility of a huge plate-boundary earthquake amplified by simultaneous moves in two or more focal areas beneath Tokyo has been increasing since the Great East Japan Earthquake, according to the University of Tokyo's Earthquake Research Institute.

The institute said that since the March 11 disaster, pressure on the tectonic plates beneath the city has changed and two or more focal areas may move simultaneously, resulting in a massive quake.

The institute intends to continue monitoring and assess the possibility of a huge earthquake.

The tectonic makeup of Tokyo and surrounding areas is complicated, with two ocean plates subducting below a land plate on which the Japanese archipelago is located.

There have been many earthquakes in this area, as both plate-boundary quakes, which are caused by friction between the plates, and inland quakes, which are caused by faults in the plates, can occur.

The average number of quakes measured at magnitude 3 or more in the five years preceding the March 11 disaster was about eight a month.

The institute discovered that the number of small-scale plate-boundary quakes that are not felt by people has drastically increased following the March 11 earthquake.

Also, the preliminary observed number of magnitude-3 or larger plate-boundary quakes between March 11 and Aug. 20 rose about fourfold in an area 60 to 70 kilometers below northern Tokyo Bay.

Similarly sized plate-boundary quakes occurring 40 to 55 kilometers below southern Ibaraki Prefecture have increased about 20-fold.

The number of inland quakes has not drastically increased, but the institute said the types of the quakes have clearly changed.

There have been huge quakes with shallow focal points below Tokyo and surrounding areas in the past. The 1923 magnitude-8 Great Kanto Earthquake occurred in southern Tokyo Bay.

The government's Central Disaster Management Council has maintained that magnitude-8 quakes will not occur in the near future. But the Great East Japan Earthquake has largely changed conventional thinking about the region's seismology.

Naoshi Hirata, a researcher at the institute and a member of the government's Earthquake Research Commitxtee, said, "If there is drastic plate movement, there is no guarantee that the scale of the quake will be in line with the government's prediction of up to magnitude 7.3.

"In addition to looking at the intervals of recurrence of Great Kanto Earthquake level quakes, it's necessary to review the predictions," he said.

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Rising superpower floats an aircraft carrier

LOS ANGELES — China's new (and first) aircraft carrier isn't fully operational yet. But whatever its ultimate naval potency, we know that it does at least float! It's currently in a mainland dock for further dressing up and hosting of crew training before setting sail.

We recall that the very idea of China even acquiring an aircraft carrier, when originally floated by Beijing, was not popular elsewhere. Hearts sank around the world, then enamored with China's declared policy of "peaceful rising." Why would a truly peaceful-rising country need an aircraft carrier?

The answer is that the Chinese apparently want what the Americans have. It's not that China is preparing for war (as far as anyone knows) with the United States. It's simply behaving as any rising power has throughout history. It now has serious money to throw around, so why not have a serious military to throw around, too?

You could perhaps wish otherwise, but then you'd be guilty of seriously wishful thinking, if not self-delusion. So let's sit at the feet of Harvard's Joseph S. Nye Jr., who explains how the world really turns — and how rising powers tend to burn their money on arms — in his masterful and essential new book "The Future of Power" (Public Affairs Press).

It goes like this: Even under the inward-looking Mao Zedong, China marshaled a large army and of course had a tranche of nuclear weapons. His successor Deng Xiaoping kept China's focus on economic modernization and "warned his compatriots to eschew external adventures that might jeopardize this internal development," as Nye writes. Even so, the People's Liberation Army always was at the top table: China's leaders were no Gandhi-pacifists decked out in Nehru jackets.

The former dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government rightly credits the "peaceful rising" advertising to current China President Hu Jintao, who stylistically preferred what might be called a foreign-relations approach of "soft power." This clever term was practically invented by Nye and is the exact title of his previous book, a best seller. "By accompanying the rise of its hard power with efforts to make itself more attractive," he writes, "China aimed to reduce the fear and tendencies that might otherwise grow among its neighbors."

That worked quite well for a time but two things served to undermine it. One was China's new feistiness in seeming to assert every single territorial claim it has in the Pacific against its neighbors. That sent off alarm bells throughout the region. Countries, such as Malaysia and Vietnam, which in the past had little appetite for openly hooking up with the U.S. were suddenly inviting Uncle Sam to dinner. Nye understands their alarm: "Over-confidence in power assessment (combined with insecurity in domestic affairs) led to a more assertive Chinese foreign policy behavior in the latter part of 2009."

The Harvard professor, who has held positions in both the U.S. State and Defense Department, takes the view that China has to be careful not to lose its sense of balance, scare its neighbors half to death and play into the hands of those in the West who are convinced that military conflict with China is inevitable. A consensus over that would trigger a U.S. military buildup of potential Cold War dimensions.

Even so, Nye, and many others, worry whether China is "beginning to deviate from the smart strategy of a rising power and violating the wisdom of Deng, who advised that China should proceed cautiously and skillfully keep a low profile'."

That was certainly good advice for China when Deng was alive. But to hope that China will continue to low-key it, especially on the naval front, when the United States preeminent Seventh Fleet continues to bob in Pacific waters, is not realistic. If early on the U.S. had taken the initiative to lower its own naval profile in the Asia-Pacific, maybe a strategic bargain might have been struck. But with its treaty commitments to Japan and South Korea — and a bunch of other stuff — the U.S. was never going to do that. China wants to do its own thing, anyhow.

Thus, the Chinese naval buildup — and it is significant — is less alarming than logical. After all, Beijing's interests sometimes do conflict with ours. For instance, it views both Taiwan and Tibet as integral parts of core China, not as aggressive acquisitions — potential or actual. The central government will appear to lack credibility if it has no muscle. That's how many Chinese see it.

Thus, some measure of tension — rising, falling, whatever — is inevitable. But war is not. Smart diplomacy on both sides can work wonders. That's why Nye's book "The Future of Power" is such pertinent reading. He explains, clearly and so very knowledgeably, why soft power can be more powerful and effective than the harder kind. Elites on both sides of the Pacific should make reading this smart book a must read if they really are mutually committed to a peaceful rising.

Syndicated columnist Tom Plate's latest '"Giants of Asia" series book, "Conversations with Thaksin," will be published by Marshall Cavendish International next month. He is the distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. © 2011 Pacific Perspectives Media Center

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