What stance should Japan take in a world dominated by the American superpower? Is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi no more than an errand boy for bullyboy George W. Bush, as a Shukan Gendai headline implied last March? Is he an incompetent know-nothing who has casually thrown away Japan's precious pacifist Constitution, as charged by Japan's former ambassador to Lebanon? Or is he, as the editorial writers of the Asian Wall Street Journal (1/19) see it, a praiseworthy leader who recognizes that Japan must cast off its outdated constitutional restrictions and shoulder more of its global responsibilities?
In 2003, which began with the invasion of Iraq, flirted with crisis in North Korea, and ended with the dispatch of Self-Defense Force troops to Iraq, international affairs dominated domestic debate to an unusual extent.
Japan's weekly magazines, for example, devoted 736 pages to Iraq and 544 pages to North Korea, according to DaCapo (2/4). Three women's magazines that usually cover celebrity news -- Josei Jishin, Josei Seven, and Shukan Josei -- made room for financial advice (second, with 89 pages), and even addressed the pension crisis, Iraq and SARS.