HONG KONG — If any good is to come from the murder of cameraman Kenji Nagai on the streets of Yangon, it must be that Japan recovers its moral voice. So far there has been a small stirring of conscience and murmurs that aid may be cut as a mark of dissatisfaction with the murderous Myanmarese military regime. This is a start, but is not sufficient.
As a country with a strong Buddhist culture that understands the savagery that military rule can bring and has suffered mass killings from fire-bombings and nuclear weapons, Japan has a unique standing. As a country that then renounced war and eschewed military might to show great economic enterprise and recover from the ashes of war, Japan is singularly placed to offer moral leadership. This could be a prelude to discovering its own 21st century role in the world.
Having said that, it will require a leap of imagination that Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa and the bureaucrats of all the relevant ministries have been lacking. Perhaps Sadako Ogata, as the head of Japan's aid organization, a former professor at a Christian university and a leading United Nations official, can remind the politicians to think of Japan's global role as the first Asian power to join the industrialized world.