Japanese Politics

[Verso Sciolto]

Abe's Defence Minister Inada under fire for going out as her troops sent to aid Kyushu

These are people in charge. Ideologically extremely dubious. Entangled in one scandal after another. Incompetent in the execution of their duties.

This is the Japanese leadership some posters here consider capable of managing Japan's domestic policies and changing roles abroad. How long will they be insulated from justified criticism? Contrary to assertions, quite a few people in Japan are getting fed up with Abe, Suga and Inada for very good reasons.

[Ithekro]

There is a mixed naval war games to go on in the Indian Ocean between the Americans, Japanese, and Indian navies, with each using carriers....to practice to potentially counter Chinese moves in the region.

[Verso Sciolto]

Renho discloses family registry as critics call move setback for minorities

[...]“But I want to stress that nobody else should ever be forced to accept demands for such a disclosure in future. I’ll try my best to create a society where people will never be pressured to reveal their family registry — based on their nationalities, the color of their skin, their hair, their name and their blood — to prove they’re no different from Japanese,” she said, calling herself a “symbol of diversity.”

Japan Times, by Tomohiro Osaki, July 18, 2017

[Verso Sciolto]

Abe to speak on favoritism claims at committee sessions next week

"Claims that Abe may have been involved in the approval process for a new veterinary school run by Kake Educational Institution, chaired by the prime minister's friend Kotaro Kake, have contributed to a plunge in Cabinet approval ratings and the LDP's crushing defeat in the Tokyo metropolitan assembly election this month."

[...]

"Next week's sessions may also end up discussing claims that Defense Minister Tomomi Inada earlier this year allowed officials to conceal the existence of controversial activity logs of Japanese peacekeepers in South Sudan."

Mainichi. July 20, 2017.

[Verso Sciolto]

Mainichi - "BREAKING NEWS" - July 27, 2017
"Defense chief Inada to resign over troop data cover-up claims".

Hopefully that will have further reaching repercussions.

Mainichi July 21, 2017:
"Yet, instead of ousting Inada, Prime Minister Abe protected her. The fact that Inada has continued to make blunders has only served to highlight the misguided decisions made by the prime minister. As it was Abe himself who scouted Inada and brought her into his Cabinet, the problems she creates have a very direct impact on the Abe government as a whole."
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles...4000c#cxrecs_s


Edit: Inada's press conference on Friday morning made the resignation official.

[Verso Sciolto]

Renho resigned.

[AnimeFan188]

Would Japanese nukes stop North Korean aggression? Tokyo
taboo weakens amid NK testing:

"As North Korea advances its nuclear ambitions with yet another test of a long-range
missile system, the once unthinkable has started to go mainstream in Japan: a discussion
of the idea that Japan needs to have a nuclear deterrent of its own to survive in an
increasingly unstable region."


"Today, experts tell Fox News the idea that Japan can and should possess nuclear
weapons on its own soil, whether they are domestically developed or provided by the
U.S., is no longer the exclusive realm of Japanese extremists.

"There are some Japanese security analysts who are starting to think about stationing
nuclear weapons in Japan and they are mainstream. That is new in Japan," said Mark
Fitzpatrick, Washington Executive Director of the International Institute for Strategic
Studies and author of the book “Asia's Latent Nuclear Powers.”"

See:

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/08...k-testing.html


Will North Korea's nuke program and China's increasing assertiveness cause Japan to
go nuclear?

[Ithekro]

Naw. Japan need to go more creative for a WMD. Orbital Ion Cannons, colony dropping, or space battleships.

[Toukairin]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Naw. Japan need to go more creative for a WMD. Orbital Ion Cannons, colony dropping, or space battleships.

Think I'm not the only one wanting that to happen on North Korea.

[Verso Sciolto]

No more Hiroshimas.

From the website of the Peace Memorial Museum:
Communicating the Message of Hiroshima to the World.

From The City of Hiroshima - Peace Declaration website, the concluding remark from, About the Peace Declaration:

"So that no other people in the world would have to suffer tragedies like those experienced by Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Hiroshima will continue to plead in the Peace Declaration for the removal of nuclear weapons from the world and the establishment of lasting world peace.

[Verso Sciolto]

黙祷 終わり

Nagasaki Peace Declaration in 11 Languages

[Verso Sciolto]

Japan's Deputy PM Regrets Saying Hitler Had 'Correct Motivations'
( Bloomberg, August 30, 2017 - By James Mayger and Maiko Takahashi)

How many times have this Aso's real thoughts about Hitler and the nazis spilled out now? How many more "slips" will he "regretfully" have to retract until we're finally rid of him?

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Verso Sciolto

Japan's Deputy PM Regrets Saying Hitler Had 'Correct Motivations'
( Bloomberg, August 30, 2017 - By James Mayger and Maiko Takahashi)

How many times have this Aso's real thoughts about Hitler and the nazis spilled out now? How many more "slips" will he "regretfully" have to retract until we're finally rid of him?

Well, since America's current leader is a Nazi sympathiser, the answer is never.

[SeijiSensei]

Looks like Abe hopes the rising belligerence of the DPRK will help give him a resounding electoral victory.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/25/w...-election.html

Seizing on anxiety over tensions about North Korea and the opposition’s weakness, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan called Monday for an early election next month.

Mr. Abe’s announcement came just hours after Tokyo’s popular governor, Yuriko Koike, officially introduced a new national party, taking advantage of momentum built over the summer, when a local party she founded drubbed Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democrats in a metropolitan election in Tokyo.

With Mr. Abe hoping to consolidate his power so he can push a revision of Japan’s pacifist Constitution and run for a third term as leader of the Liberal Democrats, Ms. Koike’s announcement is likely to add uncertainty to what had looked like a sure victory for Mr. Abe.

Sadly Koike Yuriko doesn't seem likely to change matters much if at all.

Ms. Koike can be a confusing figure for feminists, given her backing by ultraconservative groups that believe women belong in the home and that call for the whitewashing of Japanese World War II atrocities, including the enforced use of Korean “comfort women” as prostitutes. She is a political hawk, supporting the revision of the country’s pacifist Constitution as well as a stronger role for the country’s self-defense forces, as Japan’s military is known.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/01/w...-governor.html

[SeijiSensei]

Will Yuriko run for the Diet?

She has just two more days to declare. If she really wants to be Prime Minister, she'll have to take this route, but maybe she's waiting for the next election?

Just hours before Mr. Abe called late last month for the early election, Ms. Koike unveiled her new party — Kibou no To, or Party of Hope — calling it a “reformist, conservative” alternative to “vested interests.”

Her announcement set off a cascade of political dominoes: the opposition Democratic Party first offered to free all of its candidates to run under Ms. Koike’s umbrella, but after she said she would submit them to a litmus test, the left-wing branch of the Democrats formed yet another new party.

“This is an unprecedented level of disruption in Japanese politics,” said Tomoaki Iwai, a professor of politics at Nihon University in Tokyo.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/w...iko-koike.html

[Key Board]

what's her party's platform?

seems to be anti-war/anti-nuclear/pacifist stance?

[SeijiSensei]

No, she's a hawk who supports the revisions to the Constitution Abe has mooted. Read my comments in the posts above or follow the links.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

No, she's a hawk who supports the revisions to the Constitution Abe has mooted. Read my comments in the posts above or follow the links.

It is really unexpected, that the sudden public support for amending the Constitution is really triggered by the lack of faith in the United States. For decades, the main argument for having a small army is because America had Japan's back. But this has become weakened because the United States choose a literally incompetent man as their commander in chief.

[SeijiSensei]

My understanding is that the pressures to rewrite the more pacifistic clauses in the Japanese Constitution go back much further than 2016. Trump may have aggravated the problem, but he is certainly not the reason. Domestic Japanese politics play a greater role. For instance, here's an article from The Economist that was published in 2013:

Ever since its founding in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has wanted to write a constitution to replace the ultraliberal one which America drafted for the devastated country in a matter of days in 1946. Throwing off the framework imposed by the former occupiers is the life’s work of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister. Along with a hoped-for rebound in the economy, rewriting the constitution lies at the heart of his notions for a revived Japan.

https://www.economist.com/news/asia/...le-back-future

[Key Board]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

No, she's a hawk who supports the revisions to the Constitution Abe has mooted. Read my comments in the posts above or follow the links.

sorry. It wasn't clear to me because she wants to eliminate nuclear power to Japan while Abe is for it
from a foreigner's point of view, Abe has always been a war hawk and Koike was an unknown to me