Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has just won a 2/3 majority in both of its houses of legislature, enabling it to amend its Constitution, which had been imposed by the United States after World War II. The party wants to change the Constitution because it enshrines “the Western European theory of natural human rights,” including the freedom of speech.
Many in the party, including the Prime Minister, belong to a group that believes Japan was in the right during World War II. These lawmakers want to rebuild Japan’s military capacity and to return to worship of the Emperor.
From Josh Gelertner, Japan’s New Fascism | National Review:
This week, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partners won a two-thirds majority in the legislature’s upper house, to go along with their two-thirds majority in the lower house. A two-thirds majority is required in each house to begin the process of amending Japan’s constitution. And amending the constitution is one of the central planks in the LDP’s platform.
The constitution was imposed on Japan by the United States after the Second World War; it has never been amended. Why should it be amended now? As Bloomberg reports, the LDP has pointed out that “several of the current constitutional provisions are based on the Western European theory of natural human rights; such provisions therefore [need] to be changed.”
What has the LDP got against the “Western European theory of natural human rights”? you might ask. Well, dozens of LDP legislators and ministers — including Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe — are members of a radical nationalist organization called Nippon Kaigi, which believes (according to one of its members, Hakubun Shimomura, who until recently was Japan’s education minister) that Japan should abandon a “masochistic view of history” wherein it accepts that it committed crimes during the Second World War.
In fact, in Nippon Kaigi’s view, Japan was the wronged party in the war. According to the Congressional Research Service, Nippon Kaigi believes that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia” during WW2, that the “Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate,” and that the rape of Nanking was either “exaggerated or fabricated.” It denies the forced prostitution of Chinese and Korean “comfort women” by the Imperial Japanese Army, believes Japan should have an army again — something outlawed by Japan’s current constitution — and believes that it should return to worshipping the emperor.
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Well, nationalism is back. Fascism is coming back. Japan is a potentially very powerful country. It would make an interesting counter to China. But that’s all we need, another global hot spot–a war-like nation with a chip on its shoulder–adding Japan to China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the world-wide ISIS caliphate.
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