1# hayond
对楼主转载的这种“愤青”型的文章,读一读日本前首相————中曾根康弘最近就日美关系的
访谈录,或许会发现其更有哲理和更具深远的思考含义。原文如下:
The Saturday Profile
Japan’s Elder Statesman Is Silent No Longer
By MARTIN FACKLER
Published: January 29, 2010
TOKYO
ANY mere mortal might have reacted with dismay, even anger, if a group of brash newcomers threatened to undo the accomplishments of a lifetime. But from his Olympian heights as Japan’s most revered elder statesman, Yasuhiro Nakasone, the former prime minister, at first watched with sphinx-like calm as an inexperienced, left-leaning government swept to power, challenging Japan’s postwar political order and its close relationship with the United States.
Now, with his former party, the conservative Liberal Democrats, crumbling into disarray since last summer’s historic election, and his nation’s ties with Washington falling to their lowest point in years in a dispute over a base on Okinawa, he is finally speaking out. Mr. Nakasone, 91, a confidant of President Ronald Reagan whose six-decade political career stretched back to the American-led postwar occupation of Japan, has begun a busy schedule of interviews and speeches that would tire a man half his age.
Aware of his status as one of the few leaders revered across Japan’s suddenly fractured political landscape, Mr. Nakasone (na-ka-SOH-nay) is careful in choosing his words. But his message is nevertheless clear. He wants to tell his nation’s conservatives to pick up the pieces from their defeat, and he wants to tell his countrymen to keep a careful eye on a rising China.
But his most important message is for the new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, who came to power with promises to create a more equal relationship with the United States. It is possible, he says, for Japan to act more independently without alienating Washington, its protector and proven friend.
Mr. Nakasone also cautions against blowing the current disagreements with Washington out of proportion. When he was prime minister, in the mid-1980s, the strains on the relationship — from an undervalued yen and a string of trade disputes, to fears that Japan would buy up the American economy, to criticism of Tokyo’s anemic defense spending — were actually much more threatening than those of today, he said.
“IN my days, we had trade imbalances, and criticism of Japan taking a ‘free ride’ in national security,” said Mr. Nakasone, who retired from politics in 2003. “We don’t have those problems now. The relationship is much more normal. It is on a firmer footing.”
During an hourlong interview in his office in central Tokyo, Mr. Nakasone sat surrounded by the memorabilia of a political career in which he rubbed shoulders with the likes of Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev, and as a young lawmaker clashed with Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the head of the Allied occupation forces after World War II. He spoke in slowly crafted sentences, punctuated by frequent pauses, as if less sure of aging mental legs in tricky intellectual terrain that he had once traversed with ease.
Still, he remained very lucid on the solution to the current problems dividing Tokyo and Washington, including the simmering dispute over relocating a United States Marine base on Okinawa: Mr. Hatoyama should do as he himself had done, and work at building personal trust with his American counterpart.
As he spoke, Mr. Nakasone repeatedly pointed at a poster-size photograph of him and Mr. Reagan walking together through the woods of Camp David, smiling in identical windbreakers.
“That photograph there, I look at it every day,” he said. “The trust I shared with him supported our nations, Japan and the United States. And it became a source of strength to support the world” during the cold war.
“Have that sort of style,” he added, as if addressing Mr. Hatoyama. “Increase contact with President Obama. Spend as much time as possible together. I’m not talking about one or two hours. For example, have a meal together. After that, have a long after-meal conversation.”
DURING the interview, Mr. Nakasone showed flashes of the fiery nationalist who as prime minister proclaimed Japan an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” against the Soviet Union. He also displayed hints of the celebrated oratorical skills that once set him apart in a nation of colorless political leaders.
(未完待续)