When former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi formed a bond in the mid-1960s with Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon over their shared anti-communist views, little did he know that he was sowing the seeds that would eventually take the life of his beloved grandson, Shinzo Abe.
Many commentators portrayed Article 8 of the new Part Time and Fixed Term Employment Act as the point at which Japan finally recognized the principle of same work-same pay for regular and irregular workers. But one word threatens to undo its promise–“unreasonable.”
This SNA Speakeasy features Ulv Hanssen of Soka University on the theme of “Anti-Korean Hate Books in Japan.”
Former Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara, who died February 1, was an evil man. Any honest obituary would admit as such.
Recent revelations regarding the Japanese government’s purchase of US military drones underlines the East Asian nation’s unwillingness to refuse the “requests” of their US allies as they relate to the acquisition of weapons systems.
The Covid pandemic has gradually unleashed political and social forces in Japan that have lifted its underlying xenophobia to the surface, and thus transformed its culture from one of attraction into one of repulsion for many of its previous admirers.
Ahead of Donald Trump’s second visit to Japan in 2019, a Japanese hotelier invited the US president’s former chief strategist and senior advisor Steve Bannon to give a “special lecture” in Tokyo. That hotelier’s name is Toshio Motoya.
Japan has a race problem. As I’ve catalogued for a quarter century, there are “Japanese Only” signs and rules on businesses nationwide. Refusing entry and service to all “foreigners” on sight, they exclude people who don’t “look Japanese.”
SEALDs, short for Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy, was a student activist organization in Japan that provided an important spark to the large-scale protests against then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s 2015 “Legislation for Peace and Security” (i.e. the Abe War Law), deemed by the vast majority of Japan’s legal scholars in the field to be unconstitutional.
The 500 Dot Com casino bribery scandal was yet another instance of major corruption that first emerged in the Shinzo Abe era.
