Japan taken on nostalgic ride to imperial period
Abe
2 leaders ignore neighbors, try to get free from Peace Constitution
By Kim Tae-gyu
Can the world trust Japan?
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has shown respect for dead war criminals, while Taro Aso, deputy prime minister and No. 2 in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, talked about imitating Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party to usurp power and for Japan to project itself globally.
Apparently stuck in the past, Japan has been foundering, a fact that Abe and Aso are exploiting to maintain their hold on power, and in the process take Japan on a nostalgic trip back to the days of Hideki Tojo, Japan’s prime minister during World War II.
Korea, China and other nations resent this. And the rest of the world is worried about the emergence of an assertive Japan.
“Aso’s speech prompts big worries at a time when he is vying to revise the country’s post-war Constitution,” said Prof. Shin Yul of Myongji University.
“We must suspect that Aso’s words were not a slip of tongue, but an inadvertent disclosure of what is deep inside his mind,” Shin said. “Japan often followed the lead of its Axis partner, Germany, while pursuing its path to modernization.”
Aso called for a revision of the “Peace Constitution” imposed on it after it was defeated in World War II. He also mentioned the route the Nazis took during their rise to power by freeing themselves from the rules imposed on them after Germany was defeated in World War I.
“Although Aso took back his remarks, what is done cannot be undone. And you need to check what he said exactly.”
Aso said on the amendment of the constitution, “Doing it quietly, just as in one day the Weimar Constitution changed to the Nazi Constitution, without anyone realizing it, why don’t we learn from that sort of tactic?”
Japan’s Peace Constitution’s Clause 9 declares that the Japanese people would forever renounce war as a sovereign right.
“You should not be surprised to learn how knowledgeable Aso is of the history of the Nazi and Weimar regimes,” Shin said.
The revised constitution enabled Hitler to suppress opposition parties and start World War II, resulting in the death of millions, among them six million Jews.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a noted Jewish human rights group based in the United States, lashed out at Aso.
“What techniques from the Nazi’s governance are worth learning _ how to stealthily cripple democracy?” the center’s associate dean, Rabbi Abraham Cooper, was quoted as saying.
“Has Aso forgotten that Nazi Germany’s ascendancy to power quickly brought the world to the abyss and engulfed humanity in the untold horrors of World War II?”
After being defeated, Germany long reflected on its misdeeds under the watch of other countries.
By contrast, Japan has been spared from global scrutiny in helping it reflect on its misdeeds and undergo changes as in post-war Germany.
And that lack of supervision is giving way to rising nationalism, which can be identified as the same brand of ideology that swept Japan into the arms of imperialists.
Abe has even negated Japan’s past incursions and aggression in Korea and China before and during World War II, arguing that they were not invasions.
He also defended lawmakers who paid respect to the war dead at the Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the remains of 14 Class-A war criminals.