On March 20,1995, a deadly nerve gas released in Tokyo's subways killed 12 people and injured more than 5,500 others. The terrorist attack was bungled. Had the bombing been carried out competently, the death toll might have exceeded 10,000. Nevertheless, Japan was shocked. By its own reckoning it had achieved prosperity without the attendant violence and social decay that plagued the United States.
Although Tokyo is one of the world's largest cities, it had long been considered one of the safest. The violent crimes that plague most of the world's other large cities were almost nonexistent, and terrorism perpetrated by a Japanese citizen was unthinkable. Thus, when it was discovered that the subway crime was perpetrated by Shoko Asahara, the apocalyptic guru of the Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) cult, the country was shocked.
Related terrorist events soon followed. On March 30,1995, the chief of Japan's national police agency was shot outside his home. On May 5 a hydrogen-cyanide gas bomb was discovered in a rest room before it detonated. On May 15 a bomb exploded at Tokyo's main airport.
In late May of that year, Asahara and thirty-three of his followers, discovered in hiding, were arrested and indicted as the perpetrators of the subway killings. An attempted retaliation followed on June 21 when a group of his followers hijacked a Japanese jet with 365 people on board and threatened mayhem unless Asahara was released. In mid-July cult members allegedly planted two cyanide gas bombs in Tokyo subway stations. Neither bomb detonated properly, and there were no injuries.
By October police had extracted Asahara's confessions to the subway attacks as well as several other crimes. By this time 177 members of the cult had been indicted. In April, 1996, the cult leader was brought to court for trial on seventeen charges, including murder. Because justice in complicated cases tends to be extremely slow, it was believed that the Asahara trial would continue for at least a decade. Since 99 percent of all criminal defendants in Japan are convicted, however, the outcome was virtually assured. The sentence was expected to be death by hanging.
During the early 1990's more than twenty corporate executives were murdered, many by professional hit men, for various business "mistakes" supposedly perpetrated by their companies. In February, 1998, on the eve of the Nagano Winter Olympic Games, the leftist Revolutionary Workers Association lobbed three homemade rockets into a cargo plane area of Tokyo's main airport. Although damage was minimal, the group claimed they had defeated Olympic security and had made a statement against Japan's military alliance with the United States.
Despite these isolated incidents, Japan remains one of the safest countries in the world. The incidents of terrorism have been few, and their impact has been minimal. However, any large metropolitan area is vulnerable to attack by terrorists who have access to weapons of mass destruction and no qualms about using them.
Tokyo, Japan's capital and largest city. (PhotoDisc)
Japan entered the twenty-first century as a nation that still had a highly developed economy and a comparatively stable political environment. Nevertheless, it was troubled by new domestic political uncertainties, by complicated relations with the United States, and by the continuing heritage of Japan's role in World War II.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which had ruled Japan since the end of the American occupation, remained in power but its hold was weaker than it had been earlier. Candidates from new political parties increasingly challenged the LDP. On April 11, 1999, Shintaro Ishihara, a nationalist politician and co-author of a nationalist tract titled "The Japan That Can Say No," was elected governor of Tokyo as an independent candidate. Among other controversial positions that he held, Ishihara argued for changing the Japanese constitution to make it possible to build up the nation's armed forces and obtain nuclear weapons.
A series of prime ministers followed in fairly rapid succession as the twentieth century neared its end. On April 2, 2000, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who had been elected in 1998, suffered a stroke; he died six weeks later. While Obuchi lay in a coma, the Japanese Diet, the legislative assembly, approved the Liberal Democratic Party's Yoshiro Mori as the new prime minister. However, Mori rapidly became known for making provocative remarks and was seen as doing little to improve the country's economic situation. With growing opposition, Mori announced his resignation on April 6, 2001, and was replaced by Junichiro Koizumi on April 26 of that year.
The economic disputes with the United States, Japan's chief ally, were aggravated by a series of mishaps and controversies. Nationalists such as Shintaro Ishihara advocated the reduction of U. S. military forces in Japan. American military bases were also unpopular with many of those who lived around the bases. Opposition to the American military presence increased when, in 2001, several American servicemen in Okinawa were accused of sexual harassment and rape in a number of incidents. American-Japanese relations were also troubled after an American navy submarine, the USS Greeneville, accidentally rammed and sank a Japanese fishing boat in February, 2001, killing teachers and students from a Japanese fisheries school.
Six decades after World War II, Japan had still not managed to put the legacy of the war behind it. Japan and Russia had still not concluded a formal peace treaty at the opening of the twenty-first century. Russia continued to occupy the islands north of Japan known as the Kuril Islands and talks between the two nations had not resolved the issue of sovereignty over these territories.
Many of the nations that had been occupied by Japan during the war complained that Japan refused to pay compensation and that Japan had not expressed adequate regret for the women of Korea, China, the Philippines, and other nations who had been forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial forces. Japan's neighbors were outraged in 2001 when the government in Tokyo approved a history textbook that gave a positive view of Japan's colonial rule of Korea and parts of China. The Asian countries that had been occupied by Japan were angered once more when Prime Minister Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine to the Japanese war dead on August 13, 2001. Among others, the shrine honored several Japanese leaders who had been executed as war criminals.
G. R. Plitnik Updated by the Editors
World History
