Of Course Trump Made a Japan Samurai Joke
From the beginning, President Trump's trip to Asia did not seem promising. Politico put together a preview last week that detailed the president's preparations, and it was not encouraging: To start with, aides have tried to keep briefings short "to avoid overloading the president with details." Also, we learned that this trip could involve Donald Trump trying to resolve a dispute between Japan and South Korea "over so-called comfort women, the term for the women and girls who were forced to serve Japanese soldiers sexually during World War II." An outside adviser to Trump had a simple diagnosis: “That could be a disaster."
But it seems this president's ability to distinguish himself in the eyes of our Eastern allies is so potent he could start getting the job done before he even arrived. And so it emerged in The Japan Times, that nation's oldest English-language newspaper, that Trump has some intriguing views on the relationship between Japanese feudal history and North Korean ballistic missiles.
The revelation came ahead of Trump’s arrival in Japan on Sunday at the start of his five-nation trip to Asia. Threats from North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile development programs were set to be high on the agenda in his talks with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday.
Trump questioned Japan’s decision not to shoot down the missiles when he met or spoke by phone with leaders from Southeast Asian countries over recent months to discuss how to respond to the threats from North Korea, the sources said.
The U.S. president said he could not understand why a country of samurai warriors did not shoot down the missiles, the sources said.
Many have already sunk the slam-dunk snark-shot that katanas are a non-ideal weapon against cruise missiles. Gizmodo has expanded on The Japan Times' point that there were practical concerns around shooting the missiles down. These include that "the speed, altitude, and trajectory of North Korean ballistic missile tests" would have made them difficult to down, that the Japanese determined early on the missiles would land well offshore, and that a failed attempt would expose the shortcomings of Japanese and U.S. anti-missile technology, thereby weakening the allies' position in potential negotiations with the North Koreans.
These factors had logistical and geopolitical nuance, so they didn't exactly register for the president of the United States. But in the end, we all know this had very little to do with any of that. What the president was implying is that Japan has a legacy of "toughness" and "strength" to which it failed, in his eyes, to live up. Japan must be tougher and stronger, like the U.S. after his election.
No matter that pacifism, despite recent moves from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has been a pillar of Japanese sociopolitical culture since unhinged militarism in pursuit of empire led the nation to ally itself with Nazi Germany during World War II. Another factor, of course, was the horror visited on Japanese civilians by American nuclear weapons towards the conclusion of that war. But by all means, strap on that picturesque armor and launch the katanas.
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