This article sets out by demonstrating how a distinctively US bias has been mobilised in the media coverage of the “Futenma issue” in Japanese politics and Japan-US relations over the past year – not only in Japan, but also in the international press, such as in the Financial Times which intensively covered the base re-location. The Futenma issue, in short, refers to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government‟s much contested attempt in 2009-10 to re-negotiate the accord for the relocation of the US Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa that was struck between the USA and Japan with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) at the helm in 2006, after 13 years of cumbersome and controversial negotiations between Tokyo and Washington1. The way that bias has been mobilised around this issue is arguably consistent with the way that Japanese foreign and security policies are customarily analyzed in the media and academia, where “implications for the US-Japan alliance” – meaning “implications for the USA” are all too often being emphasised. The aim of the article is to challenge the predominant way of representing Japanese foreign and security policies, and to offer an alternative and arguably less US biased perspective on the Japan-US alliance relationship.
Futenma and the Mobilization of Bias-An Alternative Perspective on the Japan-US Alliance (with Linus Hagstrom) (ISPI Working Paper December 2010)
BERKOFSKY, AXEL
2010-01-01
Abstract
This article sets out by demonstrating how a distinctively US bias has been mobilised in the media coverage of the “Futenma issue” in Japanese politics and Japan-US relations over the past year – not only in Japan, but also in the international press, such as in the Financial Times which intensively covered the base re-location. The Futenma issue, in short, refers to the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government‟s much contested attempt in 2009-10 to re-negotiate the accord for the relocation of the US Marine Corps Air Station in Okinawa that was struck between the USA and Japan with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) at the helm in 2006, after 13 years of cumbersome and controversial negotiations between Tokyo and Washington1. The way that bias has been mobilised around this issue is arguably consistent with the way that Japanese foreign and security policies are customarily analyzed in the media and academia, where “implications for the US-Japan alliance” – meaning “implications for the USA” are all too often being emphasised. The aim of the article is to challenge the predominant way of representing Japanese foreign and security policies, and to offer an alternative and arguably less US biased perspective on the Japan-US alliance relationship.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
