House of Representatives debate on the Conspiracy Bill begins. The controversial legislation expected to become “the main event” of this Ordinary Diet Session as the government and the opposition parties draw battle lines.
The Draft Resolution of the Japanese Communist Party 27th Congress contains valuable insights about how the global superpower is viewed by sections of Japanese political left.
Donald Trump’s comments about the potential need for the United States to retract its responsibility to defend Japan helps conservative Japanese politicians bolster this East Asian nation’s military posture.
Host Michael Penn interviews Rob Fahey about the prospects for and the challenges ahead of the Japanese opposition parties, led by the Democratic Party.
Well, they’ve done it again. Just when you see glimmers of hope that Japan’s opposition parties might just be getting their acts together, they go and show you once again just how incompetent they really are.
Lower House member Takaya Muto tweeted on July 30 that the arguments of students protesting against the security bills “are based on the selfish and extremely egoistic thought of not wanting to go to war.” Since then, his tweet has gone viral in Japan: It was retweeted more than 6500 times and has sparked outrage in the media.
Former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, 91, explains why he supports public protests, and why he joined young demonstrators outside the Diet building to speak against the Abe War Bill.
At the 93rd anniversary event of the Japan Communist Party, Chairman Kazuo Shii offered his view on how the so-called “Legislation for Peace and Security” will make future Japanese governments even less able to resist US government demands that they participate in foreign wars.
Once again today Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has declared it. As the House of Councillors begins its deliberations on the Legislation for Peace and Security, the people are told that the passage of these bills is necessary and must be done now—in this Diet session. There is no alternative. Japan’s national security is now under threat like no other time in the postwar period.
There is probably no better method of predicting what people and institutions might do in the future than to have an accurate understanding of their behavior in the past. So much of what is popularly taken as surprising and “unpredictable” might easily have been foreseen by a better knowledge of the contexts, experiences, and the previous actions of the players involved in the construction of an event. When powerholders attempt to suppress the records of official behavior, it is therefore not simply the concern of a handful of cloistered intellectuals, but a matter that can be expected to have real-world impact on future policymaking and the fate of ordinary citizens.
