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.
In case anyone is wondering how Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pulled off his coup against the postwar Japanese Constitution in just two-and-a-half years in power—and thus fulfilling his lifelong dream of restoring Japan as a nation with pride—here’s the process in seven simple steps.
A policy begins when it is announced by its policymakers, but it can be a much trickier matter to judge when a policy ends. Still, we may now say with some degree of confidence that the era of Abenomics is coming to an end. This is not dependent on whether today’s market meltdown in China is just a blip on the screen or the signal for something much more significant.
Former Japanese leader says the focus should be on diplomacy and friendly relations.
The first round of the unified local elections on April 12 showed once again that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party are in firm control of the nation. More than two years after the December 2012 general elections, there remains no sign whatsoever that the opposition parties are on the rebound or can even put up a decent fight against the ruling coalition.
In the year 2011 the Obama administration rolled out a new policy called the “Pivot to Asia,” which was supposed to herald a shifting of the United States’ attention and resources to the Asia-Pacific, deemed to be the most important geography for the emerging 21st century.
Japan Innovation Party leader Kenji Eda couldn’t have framed the events in starker terms when he discussed the issue of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank at a press conference last Thursday: “It was a victory for Chinese diplomacy and a complete defeat for Japanese diplomacy,” he declared.
The history of Japanese war crimes committed during the Pacific War, and who should take responsibility for them, is a very involved one. It took numerous expert historians and years of research to come to the conclusion that Japan was guilty of abducting Korean and Chinese women to use them as prostitutes for the Japanese Imperial Army: the so-called comfort women issue.
The Sankei Shinbun has never been a newspaper that shies away from controversy. In a country that still struggles with its recent history and that is in the midst of allegedly far-reaching reforms, several of the conservative newspaper’s strongly opinionated pieces have given rise to controversy, raising questions about whether or not some of the newspaper’s activities could be called journalism at all–or whether “rightwing activism” would be a better label.
The group sometimes called the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” (ISIL) murdered freelance journalist Kenji Goto and his friend Haruna Yukawa. The various messages that ISIL sent through Goto’s voice to the world demonstrate clearly that they are listening to the debates in the world’s media, and we therefore can understand that ISIL murdered Mr. Goto in full knowledge of the humanitarian nature of his work and the fact that he personally bore no enmity toward Muslims or their causes.
