Friendless fascists pay high price to be Mr Right

Friendless fascists pay high price to be Mr Right
Cyzo (November)

Tokyo’s busier stations and holier spots frequently attract the attention of huge cordons of sound trucks with right-wing whackos blasting out messages aimed at imbibing the populace with the Yamato spirit, but Cyzo (November) notes that the cost of being an ultra patriot in modern day Japan is considerable.

Citing the case of Tokyo-based right-wing organization Byakkosha, Cyzo says it costs about 45 million yen to keep a well-drilled, maintained right-wing organization on the road.

Firstly there’s the vehicles themselves, with Byakkosha keeping a fleet of a sound truck and 10 support vehicles. The truck is an old bus the group bought from the JR Group for 5 million yen, while the support vehicles are all refurbished passenger cars or vans with an average price of 1.5 million yen apiece.

Outfitting the vehicles cost a pretty penny, with millions spent doing up the interior of the sound truck so that it’s as plush as the poshest Ginza nightclub, though Byakkosha got its interior on the cheap after Chairman Josei Inoue shut down the S&M Club he ran and used its furniture for the van.

Another 800,000 yen went to the painter who adorned the vehicle with a huge Japanese flag and patriotic slogans such as “respect the gods, revere the Emperor,” Cyzo notes.

Each of the vehicles in the group is also equipped with a flagpole to hoist the national symbol aloft, setting back the extremists a hefty 80,000 yen for each one in use.

Running the contingent costs the fascists a fair whack, too.

Gasoline alone costs about 100,000 yen a month, then there’s parking fees of 230,000 yen, exhaust filters requiring a 1.5 million yen outlay and insurance of 2 million yen.

Each time the convoy goes out on the road, the political party also has to foot a 2,000 yen charge to get a permit to operate a sound truck in the capital.

And then there’s the sound system used in the trucks, which the rightists invest in heavily to get their message across, forking out about 2 million yen for amplifiers and then another 12,000 yen for a decent microphone to speak into.

And what’s a decent paramilitary organization without a uniform? To get decked out in a typical right-wing organization’s pseudo-soldier clobber, it costs about 15,000 for the clothes and another 5,000 yen or so for the matching combat boots, but as a rule these charges are paid by individual members rather than the group itself.

One small bonus for the sound truckers is that the patriotic songs they blast out from their trucks and dating back to World War II and adhering Japanese to do such things as “smash the demon Americans and British” come almost free of charge courtesy of being passed on from older generations of fascists or simply being pirated from CDs borrowed from rental outlets.

But the group has to maintain an office as well, which can often mean having to find about 600,000 yen to cover such costs as rent and utility charges.

So, where do the ultra-right wing groups get all the money to fund their activities? Up until about 20 years ago, they largely got by on donations from sympathetic companies or politicians. They also made money by being commissioned to carry out harassment campaigns on behalf of others.

Now, though, ultra right-wing political groups in Japan are feeling the pinch, largely because many closely associate them with the yakuza. Ever since authorities started cracking down on organized crime in the early ’90s, the gaze of crimefighters has also fallen on the super patriots. Consequently, donations from outside organizations have pretty well dried up and most rightist groups like Byakkosha get by on the largesse of members. But where rightist groups could once be comprised of a rank-and-file committed to being professional agitators, now most do it only on a part-time basis while holding down regular jobs such as carpenters or painters.

Byakkosho’s Inoue runs a successful chain of noodle restaurants and funnels much of their takings into keeping afloat his fascist group.

Inoue notes that times are tough for rightists believing Japan waged a just and righteous World War II as the country becomes more sympathetic to the general global view of it being a vicious aggressor.

“Up until about five or six years ago, people on the streets sympathetic to our views used to give us presents of food and drink,” he tells Cyzo, adding that doesn’t happen anymore. (By Ryann Connell)

（Mainichi Japan） November 1, 2007

I never knew it cost so much money for a few minutes of random stupidity on the busy streets of Japan.  It looks like the destruction of the Japanese Bubble Economy also caused a significant dent on these uyouku.  Then again, maybe most people are just apathetic or realised that connections to such groups is simply bad for business and detrimental to Japan’s reputation abroad.

I also heard that now these uyouku rent vans from the same rental companies the left-wing uses in their protests.  Also, there are rumours that most of the rank-and-file uyouku are actually ethnic Koreans who follow these right-wing ideas because of the years of self-hate they developed by living as a traditionally discriminated minority in Japan and as a way to come to terms with their ethnic alienation there.

Huge Japan protest over textbook

Huge Japan protest over textbook

More than 100,000 people in Japan have rallied against changes to school books detailing Japanese military involvement in mass suicides during World War II.The protest, in Okinawa, was against moves to modify and tone down passages that say the army ordered Okinawans to kill themselves rather than surrender.

Okinawa’s governor told crowds they could not ignore army involvement.

Some conservatives in Japan have in recent years questioned accounts of the country’s brutal wartime past.

Saturday’s rally was the biggest staged on the southern island since it was returned to Japan by the United States in 1972, according to the Kyodo News agency.

Grenades

When US soldiers invaded Okinawa at the end of World War II, more than 200,000 people died.

Hundreds of them were Japanese civilians who killed themselves.

The textbooks, intended for use in high schools next year, currently say that as the Americans prepared to invade, the Japanese army handed out grenades to Okinawa residents and ordered them to kill themselves.

Many survivors insist the military told people to commit suicide, partly due to fears over what they might tell the invaders and because being taken prisoner was considered shameful.

The governor of Okinawa, Hirokazu Nakaima, told crowds the episode should not be forgotten.

“We cannot bury the fact that the Japanese military was involved in the mass suicide, taking into account of the general background and testimonies that hand grenades were delivered,” he said.

Japan’s Kyodo news agency said Saturday’s rally was the biggest staged on the southern island since it was returned to Japan by the United States in 1972.

This is what happens when much of the world approves of Japan’s revision of their accounts of world history with their East Asian neighbours. Like the Okinawans, many Chinese and Koreans protested the Japanese government’s decision to approve revised textbooks that justified Japan’s aggressive war during the Second World War. Although many Japanophiles tried to justify the governments official approval by pointing out that only a faction of high schools were sane enough to adopt these revisionist works, the fact that it was approved by the government without any opposing views and merely dismissing Chinese and Korean concerns as racism only encouraged these revisionists to “fix” their national history.

The fact that these same revisionists, emboldened by support for revised accounts of East Asian history, now begin to justify atrocities committed to their own taxpayers in Okinawa is just appalling. Some Japanese are actually stupid enough to justify this by saying these revisions, which are largely wholesale denials, are needed to help restore the national pride lost due to Imperial Japan’s loss during World War 2 and due to their war crimes against the region and their own citizens.

I would like to point to these people that Germany does not have any need to revise or even deny their past transgressions to restore their sense of pride. The Germans eventually restored their pride by first coming to terms with what the Nazis did, making amends with those who were wronged and then concentrating on their strengths to show a new Germany to the world.

It seems elements of the Japanese power structure along with their useful idiots, the Japanophiles, were able to concentrate their country’s national strengths to officially present a “new” Japan to the world in the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Yet, they still have yet to properly come to terms with what their Imperial government did and have trouble making clear amends with those they have wronged.

The Japanophiles and right-wing Japanese were able to convince the world that Chinese and Korean protests against revisionist works were racially motivated and downplay the significance of their revisionist views promoted to new generations of Japanese. Now I wonder how in the hell these same idiots will try to downplay and justify these revisonist lies being committed against their own taxpaying citizens. Surely, these people would surely be considered racists for having double-standards if these people decry the revisionist views taken against the Okinawans yet accept the revisionist views promoted in regards to their role in China and Korea during the World War 2.

Oh wait, some Japanophiles do justify the Japanese government’s revisions by claiming Western coverage of this incident from the start is wrong because they are from a non-Japanese view and therefore they are automatically ignorant of all things Japanese. Then there are those who will try to use local officials with opposing views to justify the revisions…what a bunch of tools. However, many will simply avoid the current issues and willingly remain ignorant (yet automatically side with the Japanese government) to continue their unrealistic internalisations of Japan, which will largely consist of Shinto shrine visits, anime, Japanese cuisine, Japanese pop culture, and even romanticised feudal history.

Fukuda wins LDP vote, assured of becoming next prime minister

Fukuda wins LDP vote, assured of becoming next prime ministerModerate veteran Yasuo Fukuda easily won election as president of Japan’s struggling Liberal Democratic Party Sunday, assuring his selection as the new prime minister in a Diet vote later this week.

Fukuda won 330 votes to former Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s 197 votes, the party announced, giving Fukuda 63 percent of the ballots.

Fukuda, 71, the son of a prime minister from the 1970s, has vowed to keep his country in the fight against terrorism, improve relations with Asia and address inequalities in the world’s second-largest economy.

Fukuda vowed after the vote to rebuild the popularity of the LDP, which has plunged under a year of scandals and policy missteps by outgoing Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who has been hospitalized since announcing on Sept. 12 that he would resign.

“You have chosen me even though I do not have much experience. I am prepared to do my utmost to live up to my responsibilities,” a determined-looking, unsmiling Fukuda said. “I will work to revitalize the LDP, to win back public trust, and push forward with my policies.”

The parliament was scheduled to vote on Tuesday, but Fukuda was guaranteed to win because of the LDP’s vast majority in the lower house, the more powerful of the two chambers.

Earlier in the day, Fukuda outlined his key policies: further engage North Korea diplomatically, push for extension of Japan’s naval mission in support of U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan, and give aid to rural regions left behind by the economic recovery.

Fukuda, who served as chief Cabinet secretary from 2000 to 2004, had the support of the major factions of the LDP. His dominance over Aso, a hawk who served as Abe’s foreign minister until August, was so clear by Sunday that morning papers had already given him the title of LDP president, and he was asked on NHK if he would choose Aso as his foreign minister.

Fukuda would inherit a political environment and LDP left in serious disarray.

Abe, 53, came into office a year ago with high support ratings and an unquestioned ruling coalition dominance in parliament.

But he quickly frittered away those advantages as his Cabinet overflowed with money scandals and he pressed ahead with a nationalist agenda while people demanded more attention to bread-and-butter issues such as pensions.

The LDP suffered a serious blow in elections in July for the upper house of parliament in which the resurgent opposition seized control of the chamber, heightening calls for snap elections for the lower house as well.

Abe apologized to the party for his sudden resignation in a message read after Fukuda’s selection, but said he would not resign as a lawmaker.

“I apologize to LDP President Aso and all LDP lawmakers, party members and most of all the Japanese public for causing this political vacuum,” Abe wrote. “I hope the new LDP leader will powerfully push ahead with his policies.”

Fukuda has arrived as an antidote to Abe. A sober, brainy party elder, Fukuda — son of a prime minister from the 1970s — has vowed to concentrate on down-to-earth issues such as economic equality and growth, while seeking warmer ties with the rest of Asia.

His first order of business will be pushing the Afghan measure through parliament, where the opposition has vowed to defeat it. Japanese tankers have been refueling coalition ships in the Indian Ocean since 2001, and the U.S. — Japan’s top ally and protecter — has been pushing for an extension of the operation.

Fukuda has argued that it was Japan’s responsibility to continue the mission to stabilize a world order that has allowed Japan to become prosperous and secure.

“We need to show our intention to continue the mission as a message to the international society,” Fukuda said earlier Sunday. “If this drags on too long we might send a wrong message to the world as if we were not committed to making that contribution.”

It was unclear, however, how long Fukuda would be able to stave off calls for lower house elections. He has termed such calls “understandable.”

Media reports said the LDP wanted to pass the Afghan measure and the national budget early next year before dissolving the lower house.

“When the public and lawmakers strongly voice a need to dissolve the parliament, I think it wouldn’t be good to resist that call,” Fukuda said on NHK. (AP)

Fukuda Yasuo is now the new Prime Minister of Japan, replacing Abe Shinzo who sent his entire power structure into a shitstorm with his right-wing nationalism and American interests at the expense of economic woes. It’s interesting to see how Fukuda gave a modest response to his selection as the LDP leader in constrast to the bold rhetoric pitched by Abe about turning Japan into a “beautiful nation”.

Some overseas Japanese I have spoken to wanted to see Aso take power, but I keep pointing out that it’s not going to happen since Aso represents a continuation of all that is wrong under Abe’s rule. They also complained that Fukuda is from a political family, but so was Aso, however Fukuda was given approval by Koizumi. If Fukuda was good enough for Koizumi and won’t ruin regional ties by making super fun trips to Yasukuni, then he is good enough for his entire party and his taxpayers.

Again, it’s too soon to say what will happen since there was so much optimism with Abe Shinzo last year, which he magically fucked up with one misstep after another. The best Fukuda can do is hammer out a compromise with Ozawa Ichiro over allowing Japan to refuel allies in Afghanistan since they can do under existing UN mandates but cancel all support to America’s War of Terror in Iraq since that is just an American need. If he fails miserably at this, then it looks like the LDP is going to lose more seats in the Lower House of the Diet to the normally-ineffectual DPJ.

Fukuda also needs to realise that everything in Japan is largely concerned with the economy. Again, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Fukuda will fail miserably and suffer from severe stress like Abe, if he fails to address this and resorts to other initiatives.

Party Chiefs in Japan Favor Veteran

Party Chiefs in Japan Favor Veteran
By NORIMITSU ONISHI

TOKYO, Saturday, Sept. 15 — Japan’s governing Liberal Democratic Party on Saturday appeared set to choose Yasuo Fukuda, a veteran lawmaker considered a force of stability, to become its next leader and Japan’s new prime minister.

Candidates to succeed Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as party president were scheduled to file Saturday for the Sept. 23 party election. But by the morning, Japan’s news media were effectively crowning Mr. Fukuda the country’s next leader.

The party’s factional leaders have overwhelmingly backed Mr. Fukuda to guide it through the crisis caused by Mr. Abe’s abrupt resignation announcement on Wednesday, according to news reports here. Of the party’s nine factions, eight have endorsed Mr. Fukuda, while Taro Aso, considered the front-runner until two days ago, was backed only by his own small faction.

It is not certain that all faction members will heed their leaders, and a sizable group of lawmakers are not affiliated with any faction. But Mr. Fukuda appeared to have enough support to win a majority of the 528 votes in the election, with 387 party lawmakers each holding one vote, and prefectural chapters holding 141 votes.

“If these were normal times, I wouldn’t come forward,” Mr. Fukuda, who was to make an official announcement of his candidacy on Saturday, told reporters on Friday. “But this is exactly a time of emergency.”

The speed with which the party factions rallied behind Mr. Fukuda, once he made his intention known, suggested they were seeking a pair of steady hands after an administration marked by scandals and gaffes.

At 71, Mr. Fukuda is a dour political figure who tends to make sarcastic and elusive comments — the opposite of the former prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, whom Mr. Fukuda served as chief cabinet secretary. But respected widely inside the party, with strong links to both the United States and China, Mr. Fukuda is regarded as a caretaker who could possibly fend off the newly empowered opposition Democratic Party.

Mr. Fukuda is an ideological moderate who pointedly distanced himself from Mr. Abe, a nationalist who pushed for a stronger military and patriotism in schools. Like other moderates in the party, Mr. Fukuda is thought to believe that under Mr. Abe and Mr. Koizumi, Japan has overemphasized its alliance with the United States at the expense of maintaining good relations with its Asian neighbors.

“With Japan-U.S. relations as the foundation, how do we strengthen relations with Asia?” Mr. Fukuda said Friday.

The Liberal Democratic-led government does not have to call a general election for two years, but it will face intense pressure to call one sooner and ask for a popular mandate. Mr. Abe was chosen by party members, and the intense maneuvering of faction bosses to pick his successor will create the strong impression that Japan’s prime minister has emerged from back-room deals.

Ozawa Ichiro, a former LDP politician, has a large axe to grind against his former party and is willing to use his new networks to destroy the LDP as we know it.  Fortunately, enough LDP politicians have gotten enough brains to throw their hat behind Fukuda Yasuo instead of Aso “The Asshole” Taro, who will carry on with the stupidity exhibited by Abe, Mori, and Koizumi.

Fukuda being described by a moderate is a sensible description since he really isn’t a liberal as he is also a supporter of constitutional reform and the idea of expanding the SDF’s role.  However, he is not exactly stupid like Abe by drawing on inspiration from World War 2 or assorted Japanese militarism to rally support and he is not the type to easily cave into pressure.

He is also a pragmatist, according to news reports, who wants to present Japan with a friendly image and adjust foreign policy by giving Asia greater if not equal attention as the United States is receiving. It would make sense to get a sane man like Fukuda to lead the interim government to make Ozawa look like the loose cannon and steal the DPJ’s thunder.

So let’s say Fukuda takes power. He would first compromise with Ozawa to not renew the current law but pass a new version that allows for deployments only under UN mandates. Currently there is a UN mandate in Afghanistan which would allow the SDF to help out in some capacity, but at the same time keeping them out of Iraq to help Bush’s War of Terror. In any case, Fukuda is a relatively better choice compared to Aso, Koizumi and assorted nutjobs in the LDP.

What led Shinzo Abe to resign?

What led Shinzo Abe to resign?
By Chris Hogg
BBC News

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has caused a political earthquake, rocking the establishment with his surprise announcement that he was stepping down.

The resignation news conference was a spectacle.

Japan’s normally more deferent press corps demanded angrily and repeatedly: “Why?”

They got little satisfaction from the answers he gave them.

So what is the real reason he has decided to go?

It is possible that a deal was done between grandees in his party, the Liberal Democrats (LDP), and their opposite numbers in the opposition.

Japan’s government needs to get parliament to give permission for the country’s self-defence forces to continue to provide logistical support to the US military in Afghanistan - a plan which has been opposed vigorously by the opposition.

Some suspect Mr Abe’s scalp may have been offered in return for opposition support for the controversial new law.

The United States has put a lot of pressure on the government to get the anti-terrorism legislation passed so that the supply operation for its troops can continue.

Mr Abe’s colleagues may have realised he had become an obstacle to getting that achieved, and therefore needed to be removed.

Ill health?

But that is not the only possible reason that has been given for Mr Abe’s decision.

Some analysts talk about concerns over his health - and rumours that he has been under great “strain” were confirmed by the chief cabinet spokesman, although he refused to give any further details.

But Mr Abe has just returned from a three-nation summer tour, and only last weekend showed no signs of illness during the Apec regional summit in Australia.

The suddenness of the announcement has of course led to speculation that there is something more sinister behind it, perhaps a further scandal that is yet to become public.

As for that, we will just have to wait and see.

It is possible that he has just, at last, come to realise what others have known for some days now - that he had been so weakened by the defeat in this summer’s elections for the upper house of parliament that he was prime minister in name only and had no power to get anything done.

The loss of the upper house for the first time in his party’s history did not just mean the opposition could block the continued deployment on the self-defence forces in support of the Americans.

It also meant that they could disrupt his whole legislative programme, should they have chosen to.

Weak link?

And as this first parliamentary skirmish got under way, perhaps Mr Abe, or more importantly those around him, realised that with him at the helm the ship would flounder.

Of course there will be those who say this is just business as usual. Japanese prime ministers do not usually last long.

Mr Abe’s predecessor Junichiro Koizumi was unusual because he lasted five years. Mr Koizumi’s predecessor, however, had lasted, like Mr Abe, just a year.

So we are back to the revolving doors of men in grey suits.

Mr Abe will be remembered for the success he had in rebuilding relations with China and South Korea.

But he will probably not be remembered for long.

In the meantime, as with any earthquake, there are likely to be aftershocks in the coming days, as Japan’s governing party tries to work out what it should do next.

It looks like Shinzo Abe has finally left the building and will revert to a regular MP who can visit Yasukuni until his head explodes, be a faction leader that promotes ultranationalism or continue operating in peer review groups for revising Japanese history.

In any event, Abe is not as bad as many people would like to believe since he did after all make an effort to restore functional ties with China and South Korea and pressuring most of his Cabinet to not make super-happy trips to Yasukuni on important dates. However, what got him hurt among his taxpayers were his priorities in promoting Japanese nationalism and becoming a better American puppet at the expense of Japanese citizens’ concerns over the economy, inequality, and related social reforms.

The movie “Bubble Fiction: Boom or Bust [バブルへGO!!～タイムマシンはドラム式]” explored some of the problems of the post-Bubble economy. It had the main character travel back in time from 2007 to 1990 at the height of the Bubble Economy era that took off during the 1980s. In this time, it was said that taxis would get obscene gratuities from people just to get picked up, parents would regularly get their kids Louis Vutton handbags, and simply graduating from a top-tier university would guarantee lifetime employment in a major corporation or government organisation. Also, it touched on a time when Japan was a top innovator in technology with resources devoted for advanced research and buildings to house such programmes.

I found it funny how the people who the main character knows in the present were actually more successful in the past. For instance, her unethical loan shark in 2007 was once a top university graduate who was friendly and worked in the Japan Long-term Credit Bank and the main character’s “Mama-san” was once a famous Geisha before the economy went to hell.

In real life, it seems a good number of schoolgirls tried to maintain their large allowances their parents once gave by prostituting themselves or worse just to be able to get a similar cash flow to buy luxury items. Many top bankers and white collar workers did get laid off and eventually became unscrupulous individuals just to survive. At the same time, many companies went through restructuring which cost them many resources that would have went to innovation and growth for these same companies.

Moreover, many Japanese youths are disenchanted over their futures since they no longer have the quality of life their parents and grandparents once enjoyed while the gap between the riches and the poors increases in Japan. These disillusioned young people begin to fall back on their national pride since they don’t think they will have anything else (honor, money, career, girlfriend, baby etc). These youths eventually develop antagonistic attitudes towards Chinese and Koreans that is not too different from how poor whites attack blacks. They figure since they have no future and frustrated at their own lives, they might as well fall back to their History of Greater Japan.

It’s problems like these that keep concerning the average Japanese taxpayer, who also wants to see their quality of life restored to something that resembled the Bubble Economy period. So far, Abe Shinzo has failed to do that and it doesn’t help that his Cabinet also misappropriated pension funds or acted naturally stupid in public. As a result the LDP were voted out of power in the House of Councilors in favour of the DPJ as a protest vote by the public rather than an outright approval of the DPJ itself. Abe should have resigned at the time instead of dragging it for a few more months just to prove that he was stubborn in getting things done his way.

Because of this, the Nikkei 225 took a hit earlier today because his snap resignation compounded to the current subprime fiasco, and the piss-poor Yen-Dollar exchange rate. Then, there are rumours he quit because of mounting stress from his American overlords to extend their military support to the United States, from internal strife in the LDP and from the loss of the upper house. Also, there is now speculation that he quit because of another potential scandal that could rock Japan, as if they didn’t have enough problems.

In any case, I think I will miss Abe Shinzo despite his mismanagement of Japan and for denying exploitation of comfort women. After all, Abe’s successor will be an even bigger asshole as Abe was to Koizumi. With that said, it looks like Aso “The Asshole” Taro will be tipped to replace Abe as the new Prime Minister in the coming weeks…

Japan still honors dissenting war-crimes judge

Japan still honors dissenting war-crimes judge
By Norimitsu Onishi
Friday, August 31, 2007

TOKYO: An Indian judge remembered by fewer and fewer of his own countrymen 40 years after his death is still big in Japan.

In recent weeks alone, NHK, the public broadcaster, has devoted 55 minutes of prime time to his life, and a scholar came out with a 309-page book exploring his thinking and its impact on Japan. Capping it all, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, during a recent visit to India, paid tribute to him in a speech to the Indian Parliament in New Delhi and then traveled to Calcutta to meet the judge’s 81-year-old son.

A monument to the judge - erected two years ago at the Yasukuni Shrine, the memorial to Japan’s war dead and a rallying point for Japanese nationalists - provides a clue to his identity: Radhabinod Pal, the only one out of 11 Allied justices who handed down a not-guilty verdict for Japan’s top wartime leaders at the post-World War II International Military Tribunal for the Far East, or the Tokyo trials.

“Justice Pal is highly respected even today by many Japanese for the noble spirit of courage he exhibited during the International Military Tribunal for the Far East,” Abe told the Indian Parliament.

Many of postwar Japan’s nationalist leaders and thinkers have long upheld Pal as a hero, seizing on - and often distorting - his dissenting opinion at the Tokyo trials to argue that Japan did not wage a war of aggression in Asia but one of self-defense and liberation. As nationalist politicians like Abe have gained power in recent years, and as like-minded academics and journalists have pushed forward a revisionist view of Japan’s wartime history, Pal has stepped back into the spotlight, where he remains a touchstone of the culture wars surrounding the Tokyo trials.

Abe, who has cast doubt on the validity of the Tokyo trials in the past, avoided elaborating on his views in the Indian Parliament or during his 20-minute meeting with Pal’s son, Prasanta. But the meeting’s subtext was not lost on some Japanese newspapers, which warned that it would hardly help repair Japan’s poor image among its neighbors.

After the war, conventional war crimes by the Japanese, categorized as Class B and Class C, were handled in local trials throughout Asia.

Twenty-five top leaders were charged with Class A crimes - of waging aggressive wars and committing crimes against peace and humanity, categories created by the Allies after the war - and tried in Tokyo by justices from 11 countries.

It was not clear why the British and U.S. authorities selected Pal, who had served in Calcutta’s high court and strongly sympathized with the anticolonial struggle in India. As an Asian nationalist, he saw things very differently from the other judges.

In colonizing parts of Asia, Japan had merely aped the Western powers, he said. He rejected the charges of crimes against peace and humanity as ex post facto laws and wrote in a long dissent that they were a “sham employment of legal process for the satisfaction of a thirst for revenge.” While he fully acknowledged Japan’s war atrocities - including the Nanjing massacre - he said they were covered in the Class B and C trials.

“I would hold that each and every one of the accused must be found not guilty of each and every one of the charges in the indictment and should be acquitted of all those charges,” Pal wrote of the 25 Japanese defendants, who were found guilty by the rest of the justices.

Pal also described the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the United States as the worst atrocities of the war, comparable with Nazi crimes.

The U.S. occupation of Japan ended in 1952, after Tokyo signed the San Francisco Peace Treaty and accepted the verdict of the Tokyo trials. But the end of the occupation also lifted a ban on the publication of Pal’s 1,235-page dissent, which Japanese nationalists brandished and began using as the basis of their argument that the Tokyo trials were a sham.

Takeshi Nakajima, an associate professor at the Hokkaido University Public Policy School whose book “Judge Pal” was published in July, said that Japanese critics of the trials selectively chose passages from his dissent.

“Pal was very hard on Japan, though he of course spoke very severely of the United States,” Nakajima said. “All imperialist powers were part of the same gang to him. His attitude was consistent.”

Casting subtleties aside, postwar politicians invited Pal to Japan several times and showered him with honors.

One of his strongest backers was Nobusuke Kishi, a prime minister in the late 1950s who had been a Class A war criminal suspect but was never charged. Kishi is Abe’s grandfather and political role model.

“For us, we were extremely grateful for Judge Pal’s presence - there was no other foreigner who said so clearly that Japan wasn’t the only country that had done wrong,” said Hideaki Kase, chairman of the Japan-India Goodwill Association, an organization founded in part because of Pal’s legacy.

But Kase, who once served as an adviser to Yasuhiro Nakasone, another former prime minister, said that he disagreed with certain parts of Pal’s conclusions, including his acknowledgment of the Nanjing massacre. Describing the massacre as a “complete lie,” Kase said that Pal had fallen victim to “Chinese and Allied propaganda.”

In many ways, Pal seemed to share the mixed feelings that many Indian anticolonialists had of Japan. As an Asian nation competing with the Western powers, Japan inspired admiration, but also consternation for its colonization of Asia, said Sugata Bose, a historian of South Asia at Harvard.

Bose said his great-uncle, Subhash Chandra Bose, the Indian independence movement leader, criticized Japan’s invasion of China but allied himself with Japan against the British.

“It is a complex view from South and Southeast Asia,” Bose said.

“There is some degree of gratitude for the help that the Japanese provided, to the extent that such help was provided. At the same time, there was also grave suspicion of Japan.”

Still, Subhash Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army, a popular armed force formed by Indian anticolonialists, accepted assistance from Japan.

“Judge Pal, as an Indian, would have known all about this,” Bose said. “And it may have indirectly influenced his views.”

Radhabinod Pal not only supported Japan during the Tokyo War Crimes trial because he actually believed in Japan waged war to fight against racism and liberate Asians from colonial rule, but as another way to protest European imperialism in Asia. Pal was so anti-British and possibly anti-European like many of his Indian National Army peers to the point of supporting the other side just because they were non-White. In his later years, he admitted to being a Japanophile during his 1966 visit to Japan and also admitted that he saw Japan’s war as a way to prevail the West.

It seems that the Allies decided to give an Indian judge a position to hear cases in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal because India at that time was going to become independent, and it would reinforce the existing Asian voices with the soon-to-be independent Filipino judge and Chinese judge. Although Pal decided to write a dissenting view calling the international tribunals a way to express “Victor’s justice” and to spite the European powers, he nonetheless acknowledged Japanese wartime atrocities as well as Allied excesses during the Second World War.

Pal concluded in the Tribunal with regards to atrocities such as the Rape of Nanjing and the Bataan Death March that, “the evidence is still overwhelming that atrocities were perpetrated by the members of the Japanese armed forces against the civilian population of some of the territories occupied by them as also against the prisoners of war.” It’s quite sad that Radhabinod Pal’s pro-Japanese defence in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal is the basis for contemporary Sino-Indian relations.

Protected: Mini-golf was fun

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Japan’s right wing re-emerges

Japan’s right wing re-emerges
Tolerance and dissent lose out to nationalist radicals’ rise

GEOFFREY YORK

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail

August 8, 2007 at 5:01 AM EDT

TOKYO — Three months after a shocking arson attack on a leading politician, about 800 nationalists gathered at a rally in Tokyo to give their vocal support to the arsonist.

The rally went almost without mention in the Japanese media. In the growing climate of fear and intimidation, the rising power of the nationalists has become a taboo subject.

The arsonist, a 66-year-old nationalist named Masahiro Horigome, has become a hero to many right-wingers in Japan. After his dramatic attack last summer, he was flooded with letters of support from fellow nationalists.

Although he was given an eight-year jail sentence, he has remained unrepentant and even boastful. “I feel the greatest sense of accomplishment at this point in my life,” he later wrote to a newspaper.

Violent nationalist groups are still a relatively small minority of the political spectrum in Japan, but their influence is far greater than their numbers would warrant.

They have succeeded in silencing many scholars, discouraging debate on sensitive subjects and helping shift the political mainstream toward more radical views.

Their growing influence is a symptom of a Japanese political culture that has become less tolerant of dissent on key issues of patriotism, national symbols and wartime history.

Mr. Horigome, a member of a right-wing group in Tokyo, launched his attack last Aug. 15, the anniversary of the end of the Second World War and the day when many Japanese politicians pay homage at the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 convicted war criminals are among the millions of war dead honoured.

Mr. Horigome planned to attack a business leader who had criticized the prime minister’s visits to the war shrine. He bought a large kitchen knife for the attack. But then he decided that he could not penetrate the business leader’s bodyguards. So he chose another target: Koichi Kato, a senior parliament member who had also criticized the visits.

He travelled to Mr. Kato’s family home and poured eight litres of gasoline inside the house, then ignited it with a lighter. The politician was not at home, but his house and adjoining office were destroyed in the blaze. His 97-year-old mother narrowly escaped death because she had gone out for a walk at the time.

The arsonist tried to commit hara-kiri, the ritual form of suicide favoured by samurai and military men, but botched the job. Police found him bleeding and arrested him.

Japan’s political leaders were largely silent. The prime minister at the time, Junichiro Koizumi, took two weeks to condemn the attack. The current Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was equally slow to show any disapproval.

An estimated 10,000 people belong to Japan’s hard-line right-wing nationalist groups, and their penchant for violence is increasing, according to Japanese police reports.

The militants have issued death threats and other warnings to politicians and scholars who criticize the governing authorities on nationalist issues. The left-leaning Asahi Shimbun, a major Tokyo newspaper that has criticized the Yasukuni Shrine visits, received death threats in mailed postcards this spring. Another newspaper was attacked last year by a right-wing nationalist who threw a Molotov cocktail at its head office because of its reports on the shrine issue.

Another nationalist severed the tip of his little finger and sent it to the office of a Korean group in Japan because he was unhappy with North Korea’s test-firing of missiles last year.

In April this year, a yakuza gangster shot and killed the left-leaning mayor of Nagasaki. Although the incident was reportedly inspired by a personal grudge, there are close connections between the yakuza (a Japanese organized crime gang) and the right-wing nationalist groups.

Mr. Kato, the victim of the arson attack, is now living with a police guard at his home. He still worries about the risk of an ambush as he enters his home at night. “Every time I go back home, I take special care,” he said in an interview. “The most dangerous point is the final 30 metres, so I change my pace quite often and I zigzag.”

Mr. Kato, one of the most senior members of the governing Liberal Democratic Party, said he is concerned about the growing threat to freedom of speech in Japan. “Ten years ago, I would have said that this is an exaggerated concern,” he said. “But people are less and less willing to talk about nationalist issues or the Yasukuni Shrine. Our society has become more nationalistic, and there is less freedom of speech.”

Five years ago, when he made comments about North Korea that the nationalists disliked, Mr. Kato received a series of letters containing bullets.

More recently, a prominent scholar who frequently appeared on Japanese television was sent a warning by the nationalists because they were unhappy with his comments on the Yasukuni Shrine, Mr. Kato said. “We know your children’s route to school in the morning,” the nationalists warned the scholar. He decided to abandon his television appearances.

There are other troubling signs of intimidation. Last year, the Japan Institute of International Affairs, sponsored by Japan’s Foreign Ministry, posted an online article that criticized the rising nationalism and the official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine. The article was denounced by a prominent right-wing journalist, who demanded an apology. Within 24 hours, the institute’s president complied, shutting down the site and asking for forgiveness.

In another incident, right-wing activists threatened a professor who had dared to suggest that women should not be excluded from succession in Japan’s imperial line. She was obliged to issue a retraction. And this summer, Japan’s defence minister was forced to resign after he provoked a huge uproar by suggesting that the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have helped to bring an end to the Second World War.

Historical revisionism is becoming more popular here. A new film denying Japan’s role in the Nanjing massacre, the slaughter of thousands of Chinese civilians by soldiers in Japanese-occupied Nanjing in 1937, is being promoted in Tokyo. There is growing support for the view that the Nanjing massacre was a hoax. More than half of Japan’s cabinet ministers have supported a political forum that calls for reform of Japan’s history textbooks to play down or deny Japan’s wartime atrocities.

Earlier this year, dozens of Japanese parliament members bought a full-page advertisement in The Washington Post to deny that Japan had coerced the so-called “comfort women” to provide sex to Japanese soldiers in China and Korea during the war.

Prime Minister Abe has brought some of these views into the political mainstream. At one point this year, he publicly cast doubt on the evidence that the comfort women were coerced into sexual slavery. Mr. Abe later apologized for his statement, but refused to acknowledge Japan’s responsibility for running the brothels during the 1930s and 1940s.

Within the past 10 months, Mr. Abe has won parliamentary approval for several of the long-standing demands of nationalists. He upgraded the role of Japan’s defence agency, making it a full-fledged ministry for the first time since the Second World War. He passed a law on “patriotic education,” requiring students to sing the national anthem and stand at attention when the national flag is raised. And he took the first steps toward eliminating the pacifist clauses from Japan’s postwar constitution.

As these issues enter the mainstream of government policies, some right-wing groups have become more extreme in an effort to grab the spotlight, Mr. Kato said. “They have become more and more violent,” he said.

One of the biggest problems, Mr. Kato said, is Japan’s failure to make an honest appraisal of its military expansionism from the 1890s to the 1940s. There is no museum in Tokyo that takes a neutral look at Japan’s 20th-century history. The vacuum is filled by a well-financed museum at the Yasukuni Shrine that portrays Japan as an innocent victim and courageous victor.

The museum gives a patriotic right-wing version of the entire period of Japanese military expansionism. It boasts that Japan achieved “victory after stunning victory” in the “Greater East Asian War” from the 19th century to the 1940s.

The museum never acknowledges that Japan invaded any other Asian country. To explain the Japanese occupation of northeastern China in the early 1930s, the museum blames China for fomenting an “anti-Japanese movement” that obliged Japan to send in its soldiers.

To explain the Japanese takeover of Beijing and Shanghai in 1937, the museum blames China for provoking Japan with various “incidents.”

To explain the widening of Japan’s occupation of China in the late 1930s and 1940s, the museum puts the blame on the “terrorism” of the Chinese Communists and the “prevailing anti-Japanese atmosphere” in China. It gives only a brief mention of the thousands of Chinese killed in the Nanjing massacre in 1937, describing the massacre this way: “The Chinese soldiers disguised in civilian clothes were severely prosecuted.”

The museum also blames the United States for the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Its exhibit on Pearl Harbor is headlined: Japan’s Quest For Avoiding A War.

Sources: the Economist, Far Eastern Economic Review, Kyodo News, japan101.com

Japan is at a crossroads. The entire country does not support this right-wing but they seem to be the ones in power and making all the decisions. From what I have heard from Japanese friends is the same slow shift in their personal thinking on issues to the right. The media and these groups are essentially brainwashing the population into believing their version of history and killing any real discussion. It certainly is a scary road ahead if Japan goes in this direction and it seems like the Americans are engineering a situation that will play off Japan against China in the near future.

What is troubling is the fact that progressive groups seem unwilling to confront or criticize these right-wing groups. In fact they seem to turn a blind eye to their activities or cave in to their demands.

“To explain the widening of Japan’s occupation of China in the late 1930s and 1940s, the museum puts the blame on the “terrorism” of the Chinese Communists and the “prevailing anti-Japanese atmosphere” in China.’ ” - Why does this remind me of Iraq and Afghanistan?

Abe’s political problems jeopardize Japan’s support for US Iraq, Afghanistan missions

Abe’s political problems jeopardize Japan’s support for US Iraq, Afghanistan missions

The Associated Press
Friday, August 3, 2007

TOKYO: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s shattering electoral defeat may threaten Japan’s support of U.S.-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, as an energized opposition seeks to redefine a key pillar of the country’s foreign policy — its relationship with Washington.

As the United States’ top ally in East Asia, Japan was a staunch supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, dispatching troops there in 2004-2006. Ground troops no longer remain, but Japan’s air force continues to transport coalition personnel and supplies from Kuwait to Iraq, while Japanese ships in the Indian Ocean provide logistical support for U.S.-led operations in Afghanistan.

While those missions have been unpopular with the Japanese public, many of whom say they violate the nation’s pacifist constitution, Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has always had enough political clout to keep up its support.

That is quickly changing.

Fresh off its victory at the July 29 elections for parliament’s upper house, the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan has declared it will oppose extending the military’s operation supporting coalition forces in Afghanistan.

The mission, which Japan’s parliament approved under a special law, expires in November. The LDP wants parliament to extend that law, perhaps for another year; the DPJ is making that difficult.

The Democrats have also said they want to end Tokyo’s Kuwait-based air operations, saying Japan’s international efforts should be channeled through the United Nations, not the United States.

“Our diplomacy should not be subservient to the U.S. ,” party Secretary-General Yukio Hatoyama said Friday. “We should express Japan’s position more assertively through our diplomatic and defense policies.”

The looming standoff over Japan’s foreign policy highlights Abe’s stumbling fortunes and a dramatic reversal of the stellar support he enjoyed when he took over from his popular predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, less than a year ago.

Promising to build a “beautiful Japan,” Abe won points for mending strained diplomatic ties with South Korea and China, and has boldly pushed to revise the constitution to allow Japan’s military to take a more active role in global security. Abe argued that Japan needs to ease its restrictions on the military to better enable its troops to help allies in times of crisis.

But a series of gaffes and scandals involving key ministers, as well as a huge pensions debacle, has greatly eroded Abe’s political capital, culminating in Sunday’s spectacular defeat — and forcing the embattled prime minister to turn inward, focus on rebuilding his Cabinet and clean up the pensions system.

But the Democrats will still struggle to force major change.

Although the opposition outnumbers the LDP in the upper house, the ruling coalition still controls the more powerful lower house of parliament and can shoot down most of the other chamber’s votes or motions.

Moreover, few expect the Democrats to suggest that Japan completely part ways with the United States. Japan remains heavily dependent on the U.S. for security, with some 50,000 U.S. troops deployed across Japan under a mutual security pact. Tokyo’s own Self-Defense Forces are strictly limited by the constitution.

“The parties will realize the need for some sort of compromise over Afghanistan,” said Tomoaki Iwai, a political science professor at Nihon University in Tokyo. “Both sides know the U.S.-Japan relationship is just too important for Japan.”

Still, Abe will likely be forced to make concessions to the DPJ, analysts say. Abe could agree to a much shorter extension of the Afghanistan mission, for example, or to strengthening parliamentary control — a measure that would make it easier for Tokyo to pull its troops out at short notice.

This possibility has U.S. officials worried.

Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, making a Tokyo stopover after attending Asia’s largest security conference in the Philippine capital of Manila, said Friday “it would be harmful to international interest as a whole” if Japan’s refueling support for U.S.-led anti-terror operations in Afghanistan were to be interrupted.

Members of Abe’s Cabinet have also heavily criticized the Democrats, with Defense Minister Yuriko Koike saying earlier this week that slighting the U.S. would be detrimental to Japan’s national interest.

Abe appealed to the Democrats for a compromise.

“The activities of the Self-Defense Forces are highly appreciated by the international society,” Abe told reporters Wednesday. “From that standpoint, I would urge the DPJ to cooperate.”

___

Associated Press writer Kozo Mizoguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

It’s about time the newly-strengthened Opposition asserts its independence in national security instead of doing their American overlords’ bidding in Iraq and Afghanistan.  If they are to continue their mandate in Afghanistan they should do it within the UN framework, which should not be a problem seeing that the JSDF has had much experience operating as UN peacekeepers in the 90s.

Their continued support for the United States has nearly got their journalists killed in Iraq.  Their support would further provoke attacks against Japanese nationals and business based overseas if they knew Japan was providing free fuel to US fighter jets, intelligence work off the the Indian Ocean, and transporting US ground troops into Iraq.  Fortunately, their journalists were captured and later released without harm unlike those poor Korean souls in Afghanistan.

The Taleban would be referred to in the past tense if the Americans actually did their job and annihilated them and Al-Qaeda when they had the chance.  Instead they decide to destabilise Iraq and outsource the Afghanistan mess to the Canadians and Europeans.  If the Bush Administration or any sane American knows history, they would know that the Canadians and the Europeans are incompetent in nation-building, counterterrorism and peace enforcement judging their records in World War II, their failure in stopping genocide in Rwanda and their inability to stop the conflict in Bosnia.

Only a retard like Bush would outsource crucial nation-building and counterterrorism work to the Europeans and Canadians without realising their inherent inability to perform such daunting tasks.  In any event, I hope the DPJ succeeds in repositioning Japan’s role in the American War of Terror and restores the SDF’s role as UN peacekeepers and as a national defence-force instead of American tools.

The humiliation of Shinzo Abe

The humiliation of Shinzo Abe
Aug 2nd 2007
From The Economist print edition

But without an opposition that is fit to govern, Japan may be stuck with its flawed ruling partyJapan’s politics

JAPAN has now had what by any standards were two extraordinary elections, back-to-back and less than two years apart. They were extraordinary not least because they had opposite outcomes. In 2005 the then prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, called a snap general election, arguing over the head of his own party the case for reform—in particular, the privatisation of the huge postal-savings system, fount of so much political patronage. The result was a landslide victory for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its junior partner, New Komeito. Yet on July 29th, in elections for half the seats in the upper house of the Diet (parliament), the LDP suffered at the hands of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) its biggest electoral defeat since its founding in 1955. For the very first time it has lost its dominance in the upper house. Despite this humiliation for his party and himself, Shinzo Abe, prime minister since September 2006, amazingly insists that he still has a mandate to stumble on. A spell of political turmoil in Japan seems all but guaranteed.

What changed in two years? That question requires three answers: one to do with the personality of Mr Abe, one with the legacy of Mr Koizumi and the last with Japan’s continuing aversion to painful but necessary reforms.

Mr Abe, by a million miles, is no Koizumi. Everyone knew that Mr Koizumi was a consummate showman and a hard act to follow: a possibly unique Japanese politician with a flair for the common touch. But Mr Abe, Japan’s first prime minister to be born after the second world war, was picked by his party as a worthy because youthful successor. Since then, alas, he has shown himself to be diffident, patrician and out of touch with people’s everyday concerns. On top of this came a seemingly unending series of scandals, gaffes and resignations that have tarnished his cabinet—the latest resignation came on August 1st. Voters appear to have flayed the ruling coalition in the upper house as punishment for Mr Abe’s priorities, incompetence and character (see article).

The second answer is that just as Mr Koizumi was responsible for the landslide victory in 2005, so he had much to do with the LDP’s 2007 defeat. Though by reputation an economic reformer, the biggest change he wrought was on his own party. He declared war on the factions and other networks of patronage through which money and power flowed, and which kept politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen in the same cosy bed. When party apparatchiks chafed, he threw them out or encouraged celebrities to run against them. (Mr Abe did nothing for his popularity by bringing some of the outcasts back.) Mr Koizumi helped smash the vote-getting machine on which the LDP could once depend, especially in the countryside. The LDP’s savage defeat in rural areas on July 29th is proof of his success. Mr Koizumi once said that he wouldn’t mind destroying his party in order to further his reforms. Judging from these election results, he seems to have done a pretty good job.

A third explanation for the voters’ vehemence may bode less well for Japan: that all along they were dazzled more by Mr Koizumi’s performance than by his message of painful change before gain. At least in part, Sunday’s vote was a vote against reform. With growth spreading through the urban parts of Japan, the sense of economic crisis on which Mr Koizumi played is past. Yet wages are stagnant, while the more depopulated parts of Japan are feeling little of the recovery. Indeed, Koizumi-era changes are starting to hurt: in particular, cuts in public-works spending and increases in local taxes as prefectures shoulder more of the fiscal burden. This was fertile ground for the DPJ’s leader, Ichiro Ozawa, who ran his campaign as the farmer’s friend and champion of the regions—just like the old, unreconstructed LDP.

Smash the old idols

Some political scientists see the election as a necessary step towards a long-cherished dream—a system of two parties competing on policy and alternating in power. Dream on. Mr Abe’s refusal to quit may underline the disarray his party is in, but it distracts attention from the corresponding mess in the DPJ. It may succeed in bringing Mr Abe down, perhaps later this year or early next, and an early general election may be called. Yet the closer it comes to real power, the more unprepared the DPJ, a ragbag of conflicting groups, will prove. Mr Ozawa, whose health is not strong, does not relish being prime minister, and his backroom style frustrates modernising colleagues. The DPJ shows no sign of being a party ready to hold power.

So an unpredictable period looms for Japanese politics, with the ship of state under the LDP likely to prove rudderless, accident-prone and even corrupt—and nothing better to be expected from the opposition. So what’s new? One bright thing: Japanese voters, once so respectful of authority, now appear quick to vote the bums out. Not for the first time, one-party rule in Japan seems doomed. Sadly, it is liable to limp on until an opposition that looks fit to govern emerges.

In a democratic system, voters will often use the ballot to provide feedback for the politicians in power. In Japan’s case, the people were clearly angry with Abe and his LDP for their lack of progress in economic reforms, for appointing essentially idiots to run their country’s key areas, and for loosing their pension records. It looks like much of the upper house elections were simply a protest vote against Abe’s misrule seeing that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is relatively ineffectual and composed of a motley crew of former LDP parliamentarians who left for new opportunities, liberals, reformers, and some right-wingers. The only thing the DPJ has going for them is presenting themselves to the Japanese electorate as the anti-LDP because they really have no other clear platform.

It is said that history looks kinder to political figures as time goes on. In the past many people thought Richard Nixon was a monster for Vietnam, promoting HMOs, and Watergate but he was seen as a mixed President for establishing the EPA, enforcing integrated busing, and even promoting equal funding for women and men’s sports. However, his later successor Ronald Reagan was later considered an even worse President for escalating the arms race with the USSR, invading Grenada, cutting taxes for the superrich, and for Iran-Contra.

Then again, Reagan was looked at kindly because he was a very approachable and charming individual who actually listened to others if they presented valid points and for creating a new class of wealthy Americans. Moreover, Reagan is seen as a better man and President than George W. Bush who is currently transforming America into a “Great Satan” that was always proven wrong in the past, for increasing the inequality gap, for missteps in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for allowing 9/11 to happen for his own benefit.

Back to Japan, it seems many people, including myself, considered Koizumi to be a great asshole Prime Minister of Japan for constantly visiting the Yasukuni Shrine in the most sensitive periods in East Asian history. The Japanophiles kept defending him because of his “Anime” hairstyle, for his love of the band X-Japan and for just being Japanese while the academics are able to point out the reforms he was making to domestic politics and the economy. In hindsight, Koizumi’s domestic policies were great for Japan since it greatly undermined the political machine that had promoted complacency and rampant corruption in the LDP and Japanese politics, while his economic reforms actually started the chain reaction that would eventually help Japan claw her way out of the “Lost Decade”.

However, Koizumi’s foreign policy was a complete trainwreck. He divided the Japanese people with his decision to ram through a law that would allow for token Japanese troops to be deployed in Iraq at his American overlord’s request, which was even opposed by the same right-wing Japanese who justify comfort women and deny the Rape of Nanjing. Koizumi fared even worse with his East Asian neighbours by repeatedly visiting the Yasukuni Shrine even when he was asked diplomatically by the Chinese and Koreans to stop in the name of East Asian ties.

Some people say Koizumi decided to cozy up with Bush to get people accustomed to the idea of Japan being a subservient American ally, while the visits to Yasukuni were done to appease right-wing LDP factions that he needed to make key reforms happen. Others would just say Koizumi is just a strange Japanese man and a product of postwar Japan’s confused national identity. Nonetheless, he will be looked upon more kindly for his attempts are reforming Japan’s politics and economy that his successor is seemingly bent on destroying.

Abe is in serious trouble when even Mori Yoshiro is calling for his resignation as head of the Liberal Democratic Party and as Prime Minister. Mori who was the same Prime Minister that continued golfing when a US Navy submarine sank a Japanese fishing boat, the same idiot who referred to China as “Shina” in public and the asshole who called for restoring Emperor worship. Abe is in serious trouble and his stupidity is really bad for business on top of taxpaying Japanese citizens.