A return to normalcy

When you put two chairs close together, then put yourself between them and begin lifting your body with your arms and swinging back and forth (as my daughter did yesterday afternoon), it's safe to assume everything is back to normal. And the feeling was strangely reinforced this morning when I opened the homepage of the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ, and saw that Gregory Clark had another one of his bizarre, "It ain't the fault of the authoritarians" opinion piece ("Puzzle awaits G8 delegates"). The focus of this article is mostly on the upcoming G8 summit in Tōya-ko 洞爺湖 in Hokkaidō 北海道 (where I spent a night during the summer of 1992), but Clark does manage to slip in a comment about recent events between Japan and Taiwan:

"Japan's muddled, nationalistic hard line over territory leaves it at loggerheads with all its other neighbors — South Korea, China and Taiwan. That the dispute with Taiwan over the Senkaku islands 尖閣諸島 should have led to a semi-formal break in relations is a much more serious setback for Japan's diplomacy than anyone in Japan seems to want to realize."

If one thing is clear above anything else, it's that Greg knows next to nothing about political developments in Taiwan (though I suspect he doesn't think so). Let's see...it was the Taiwanese premier that made the ridiculous remark about going to war, it was the Taiwanese foreign minister who recalled the unofficial ambassador to Japan back to Taiwan (with the latter being labeled a "traitor" by some KMT 中国国民党 legislators), and it was a group of right-wing Taiwanese politicians who sailed out to the Senkakus in an attempt to provoke trouble, and score a few points back home. While all this was going on, Mr. Ma 馬英九 was nowhere to be found, and even some in the sycophantic, pro-KMT media (like the China Post English newspaper) were calling for the government to get its act together before the situation got dangerously out of hand. The Japanese government, in contrast, remained calm, and offered apologies and compensation over the sunken fishing boat, while simultaneously reinforcing its claim over the Senkakus (and coming to an agreement with China over the gas disputes in the East China Sea 東シナ海, and having a Japanese destroyer pay a goodwill visit to a Chinese port). And Greg thinks this was a "serious setback" for JAPANESE diplomacy?! (Oh, and of course the South Koreans, Chinese and Taiwanese are never guilty of muddled, nationalistic hard lines over disputed territories!)

But what do you expect from a man who makes the claim that:

"...it was the same Washington that in 1951 almost certainly forced Japan to give up its legitimate rights to the disputed islands (meaning the Northern Territories 北方領土), as part of a secret U.N. deal with Moscow allowing the U.S. to use Guam as a military base — a fact that if admitted would greatly strengthen Tōkyō's position."

Perhaps I'm missing something, but what exactly is Gregory Clark talking about here? What "secret U.N. deal"? Why would the United States have needed the permission of the Soviet Union to use Guam as a military base, when the island had been an American territory since 1898 (and the last time I checked, still is)? Like I said earlier, things must be back to normal if Greg makes comments like these, without any evidence to back them up, nor any attempts to clarify the relevance of them to the topic(s) at hand. Details, Greg, it's all in the details.

Some things never change. Sigh...