Common But Differentiated Burden

It was a sweeping victory for incumbent mayor of the City of Nago, Okinawa, in the mayoral election on Sunday. Susumu Inamine, a firm protester against accepting U.S. Marine Air Base from Futenma to Henoko coastal area in his city, defended his seat with significant margin against Bunshin Suematsu, a former member of Okinawa congress and supported by current national administration led by Shinzo Abe. The reason is clear; the administration underestimated the anger of Okinawa.

Inamine got about twenty thousand votes out of forty-six thousand eligible voters, leaving Suematsu behind with margin of four thousand. Leading Liberal Democratic Party pushed Suematsu up with promise of huge amount of subsidy worth ¥50 billion, obviously too much, for development of Nago city. The headquarters of the party turned down personal election promises of its member legislators elected from Okinawa, which had been removing Futenma Air Base out of Okinawa. Why people in Nago turned their back to those policies?

Firstly, people in Nago already knew that those were empty promises. Abe persuaded the Governor of Okinawa, Hirokazu Nakaima, to accept Henoko relocation plan with a promise of quicker return of the land of Futenma Air Base to Okinawa than current plan. However, people in Okinawa knew that the promises would be proved to be true only when the government of Japan reaches a deal with the United States. There is no indication for the achievement so far.

Secondly, the government of Japan has not been able to explain why new runways had to be built in Okinawa. All people know that Okinawa is geographically close to Japan’s potential threats. To deal with them, U.S. Force has deployed a number of fighter jets in Kadena Air Base. Futenma is relatively used for practices of pilots. Why practices need to be done in a runway newly built on beautiful blue ocean? That is a simple question of Nago people.

For Okinawa, U.S. base is common but differentiated burden of Japan. As long as that difference is baseless, they think it should be common and equal. The attitude of the government has been based on discrimination of who do not want to see the real situation in Okinawa, namely bureaucrats who do not want to move from Tokyo. Even how the United States is serious about security in Northeast Asia, the problem will not be solved with disturbance of rigidity of central government of Japan. It is not the problem in Okinawa, but in Tokyo.