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A group of 32 prominent Japanese citizens and scholars broke ranks with the Abe-Kishida Liberal Democrat policy of support for Ukraine in its territorial war with Russia in an appeal to the Group of Seven (G7) leaders, who met in Hiroshima in June, to seek a ceasefire of hostilities with Russia and half further deliveries of weapons to Kiev.
The Japanese statement, published in the Tokyo Shimbun and in English translation at The Japan Times, noted: “The conflict already shows signs of being a proxy war, with the outcome to be determined by weapons provided by NATO countries.” (Japan is in a unique predicament in regards to the Ukraine issue as the only member of the G7 that is not a member of NATO due to the fact that Russia has long since parted ways with that group of leading economies.)
“Although Ukraine is reported to have started a counter-offensive in earnest, we believe that both Russia and Ukraine should start discussions toward an immediate ceasefire since no party wants an all-out war,” said Haruki Wada, professor emeritus of Russian/Soviet history and Korean history at the University of Tokyo.
“Endlessly supporting Ukraine in the name of assisting its resistance but at the same time for the purpose of weakening Russia is nothing less than a tragedy of continuation of the death of both Ukrainians and Russians.”
Kenji Isezaki, another member of the group and professor emeritus (of peace and conflict studies) at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, asserted:
“The US administration wants Ukraine to thoroughly grind down Russia inside Ukrainian territories. Yet it is ambiguous as to whether Kiev should get back Crimea . If Ukraine wants to regain the peninsula, it has to extend the armed conflict inside Russian territories. On the other hand, Washington wants to avoid an all-out US-Russia war and therefore does not want Ukraine to carry the attack on Russian soil proper. Thus the war in Ukraine involves irreconcilable contradictions all the while Russians and Ukrainians are dying.”
The ceasefire proposal represents the first significant break with Japan’s unanimity on the side of Ukraine. (The Japanese have their own postwar territorial dispute with Russia over four northern islands.) Japan’s political establishment, even the majority of liberals, remain entrenched in the late prime minister Shinzo Abe’s pro-Ukraine war policy and therefore the academic group’s call for an immediate ceasefire is widely criticized or at least puzzling for the Japanese public. The hawkish majority in the Diet (parliament) claim that a ceasefire will result in accepting Russia’s gains in Ukraine as a fait accompli.
In rebuttal, Isezaki pointed out “The current war is an extension of the ethnic conflict once limited to the Donbass region, which started in 2014. Therefore a ceasefire at this point cannot be seen as being proposed too early.” A ceasefire is not a peace settlement but the laying down of weapons, hopefully leading toward an eventual settlement by the two opposing nations, he stressed.
Risks of Nuclear Escalation
Kumiko Haba, president of the International Studies Association Asia Pacific, explained that Hiroshima’s wartime history has shown that delay of a ceasefire can result in unthinkable war crimes. “It must not be forgotten that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were nothing less than tragedies victimizing ordinary citizens resulting from the Japanese government’s delay in accepting the Allied terms for peace,” said Haba, whose father was a surviving victim of the Hiroshima A-bomb blast. Japan eventually decided to accept the Allied declaration of July 26, 1945, but only on August 14 in the wake of the two A-bombings, which was 5 days after the nuclear blast at Nagasaki.
For these Japanese scholars, the harsh lessons from Japan’s wartime experience serves as a warning of the consequences of escalation in Ukraine and delay of a truce. “The threat of nuclear weapons and further combat over nuclear power plants is becoming increasingly real. Fighting must cease immediately.” Haba urged that the US, NATO, and Russia should each pledge not to use nuclear weapons of any type in the Ukraine war.
Warning that Britain is about to cross the nuclear threshold, Haba added, “What is dangerous in the Ukraine war is Britain’s delivery of depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine and Russia’s reaction in a deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. Britain should stop delivery immediately because the use of depleted uranium ammunition in Eastern Ukraine will cause long-lasting radioactive contamination, due to its a half-life of nearly 4.5 billion years, causing injury to both Ukrainians and Russians and contaminating food and animals.” American soldiers were exposed to radiation when the US used depleted uranium ammunition in the Gulf War, the Iraq War, Bosnia and Kosovo. The EU protested and the US apologized when Italian soldiers suffered radioactivity symptoms from the American military’s use of DU in Kosovo.
Peacekeeping Force of Asians and Africans
Both sides of the present conflict should pull back from the brink and accept a non-NATO peacekeeping force of Asian and African troops to prevent further hostilities and ensure security for civilians on both sides, Isezaki urged. “Our group’s basic stance is that Russia must stop its aggression against Ukraine and that the US and NATO must stop the proxy war in that country.” Isezaki served as Tokyo’s special representative disarming armed militia groups in Afghanistan. Earlier, he served in UN peacekeeping operations, as the provisional governor of the Cova Lima Municipality in East Timor, and in Sierra Leone in the UN Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration mission. At present, he is in the Philippines at the request of the UN to mediate between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front on a disarmament mission.
Averting World War III
The Japanese scholars also stressed that expansion of the Ukraine conflict beyond Europe must be averted at all costs. Wada said that the NATO conflict with Russia must be prevented from spilling over into Northeast Asia in the form of “heightened military pressure” in a region where security tensions are already heightened by the US and North Korea dispute over nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development and between the Washington and Beijing over Taiwan’s future.
The 32 members of the ceasefire advocacy group also includes Chizuko Ueno, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, who is a leading feminist sociologist in Japan; Tatsuru Uchida, professor emeritus of philosophy at Kobe College and renowned martial artist, who is an expert on Emmanuel Levinas, a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry; Yuko Tanaka, a former president of Hosei University in Tokyo, a historian of the culture of Japan’s Tokugawa period (1603-1868) and a TV commentator on social and political issues; and Soichiro Tahara, a veteran journalist.
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Tai Kawabata who is a freelance writer after working with The Japan Times from 1971 to 2019 (serving as chief editorial writer 2005-2013). The Japanese citizens’ group statement “Ceasefire Now in Ukraine and No War in Our Region” was published in the Tokyo Shimbun and in English-language version at The Japan Times and distributed to participants at the Hiroshima G-7 summit.
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