Yes, Japan has an alt-right

July 2018, Langley Equire

Trump is 1930s

Timothy Snyder, Housum Professor of History at Yale, has just published On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. If you missed any of his book lectures, one is above and the one he gave to the Wilson Center in Washington is HERE.

In his New York Times op ed before the election (9/20/16) he describes the Russian fascist philosophy of Ivan Ilyin behind Putin's desire to crush Western democracy. A desire for an ordered world is more important than geo-political power. Snyder's is must reading for our troubling era.

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How a Russian Fascist Is Meddling in America’s Election

By TIMOTHY SNYDER

NEW HAVEN — The president of Russia, Vladimir V. Putin, once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as a “geopolitical catastrophe.” But the political thinker who today has the most influence on Mr. Putin’s Russia is not Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Communist system, but rather Ivan Ilyin, a prophet of Russian fascism.

The brilliant political philosopher has been dead for more than 60 years, but his ideas have found new life in post-Soviet Russia. After 1991, his books were republished with long print runs. President Putin began to cite him in his annual speech to the Federal Assembly, the Russian equivalent of the State of the Union address.

To complete the rehabilitation, Mr. Putin saw to it that Ilyin’s corpse was repatriated from Switzerland, and that his archive was returned from Michigan. The Russian president has been seen laying flowers on Ilyin’s Moscow grave. And Mr. Putin is not the only disciple of Ilyin among the Kremlin elite.

Vladislav Y. Surkov, Moscow’s arch-propagandist, also sees Ilyin as an authority. Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev, who served as president between 2008 and 2012, recommends Ilyin to Russian students. Ilyin figures in the speeches of the foreign minister, the head of the constitutional court and the patriarch of the Orthodox Church.

What are the ideas that have inspired such esteem?

Ilyin believed that individuality was evil. For him, the “variety of human beings” demonstrated the failure of God to complete the labor of creation and was therefore essentially satanic. By extension, the middle classes, political parties and civil society were also evil, because they encouraged the development of personalities beyond the single identity of the national community.

According to Ilyin, the purpose of politics is to overcome individuality, and establish a “living totality” of the nation. Writing in the 1920s and ’30s after his expulsion from the Soviet Union, when he became a leading emigré ideologue of the anti-Communist White Russians, Ilyin looked on Mussolini and Hitler as exemplary leaders who were saving Europe by dissolving democracy. His 1927 article “On Russian Fascism” was addressed to “My White brothers, the fascists.” Later, in the 1940s and ’50s, he provided the outlines for a constitution of a fascist Holy Russia governed by a “national dictator” who would be “inspired by the spirit of totality.”

This leader would be responsible for all functions of government in a completely centralized state. Elections would be held, with open voting and signed ballots, purely as a ritual of support of the leader. The reckoning of votes was irrelevant: “We must reject blind faith in the number of votes and its political significance.”

In the light of Ilyin’s rehabilitation as Russia’s leading ideologue, Moscow’s manipulations of elections should be seen not so much as a failure to implement democracy but as a subversion of the very concept of democracy. Neither the parliamentary elections of December 2011 nor the presidential elections of March 2012 produced a majority for Mr. Putin’s party or for Mr. Putin personally. Votes were therefore added to produce a decisive result.

Russians who protested the fixed elections were branded as national enemies. Nongovernmental organizations were forced to register as “foreign agents.” Mr. Putin even claimed that Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, “gave the signal” to the Russian opposition to go on the streets. The notion that defending democracy meant betraying Russia was perfectly consistent with Ilyin’s view.

Since then, Mr. Putin has relied on Ilyin’s authority at every turning point in Russian politics — from his return to power in 2012 to the decision to intervene in Ukraine in 2013 and the annexation of Ukrainian territory in 2014. Last spring, he claimed that the American intelligence services would intervene in the Russian parliamentary elections held this past weekend and in the Russian presidential elections of 2018. The question of whether anyone in the Kremlin actually believes this is beside the point. These claims of constant American interference are intended to show that the democratic process is nothing more than a geopolitical game.

While Russian leaders consciously work to hollow out the idea of democracy in their own country, they also seek to discredit democracy abroad — including, this year, in the United States. Russia’s interventions in our presidential elections are not only the opportunistic support of a preferred candidate, Donald J. Trump, who backs Russian foreign policy. They are also the logical projection of the new ideology: Democracy is not a means of changing leadership at home, but a means of weakening enemies abroad. If we see politics as Ilyin did, Russia’s ritualization of elections becomes a virtue rather than a vice. Degrading democracy around the world would be a service to mankind.

If democracy is merely an invitation to foreign influence, then hacking a foreign political party’s email is the most natural thing in the world. If civil society is nothing but the decadent opening of a rotting society to foreign influence, then constant trolling of media is obviously appropriate. If, as Ilyin wrote, the “arithmetical understanding of politics” is harmful, then digital meddling in foreign elections would be just the thing.

For a decade, Russia has been sponsoring right-wing extremists as “election observers” — most recently, in the farcical referendums in the Crimea and in the Donbas region of Ukraine — in order to discredit both elections and their observation. Since democracy is a sham, as Ilyin believed, then it is right and good to imitate its language and procedures in order to discredit it. It is noteworthy that the Trump campaign has now imitated this very practice, supplying both its own private “observers” and the advance conclusion about the fraud they will find.

The technique of undermining democracy abroad is to generate doubt where there had been certainty. If democratic procedures start to seem shambolic, then democratic ideas will seem questionable as well. And so America would become more like Russia, which is the general idea. If Mr. Trump wins, Russia wins. But if Mr. Trump loses and people doubt the outcome, Russia also wins.

From Moscow’s point of view, it is easier to bring down democracy everywhere than it is to hold free, fair elections at home. Russia will seem stronger if other states follow its course of development toward a cynicism about democracy that allows authoritarianism to thrive. So we might as well get used to the interference, and take sensible precautions. It no longer makes sense to carry out elections and regulate campaign finance as if such matters were of no interest to hostile foreign powers.

Americans have plenty of other reasons to reform the democratic process, but protecting their integrity should take priority. Paper ballots for every voter and public financing of campaigns, to give two examples, would make sense both for citizens and for the electoral system. A simpler democracy would be a more secure one — and a more exemplary one.

Abe’s revisionism nets own goals at home and away

What links Osaka, Seoul, Busan and Glendale, California? Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s championing of revisionist history

BY Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and APP member

Japan Times, March 11, 2017 

Since becoming a member of the Diet in 1993, Abe has been pushing for a more positive spin on Japan’s 1931-45 wartime record. To that end, he ushered through a law promoting patriotic education in 2007. More recently, his education ministry has issued guidelines for textbook publishers and educators that mandate instruction about various controversies, such as the “comfort women” system of sexual servitude, that conforms to the government’s stance.

In mid-February, in the early days of the Moritomo Gakuen scandal brewing in Osaka, Abe declared that he shared the ideological views of the school’s founder. This stalwart defense of Yasunori Kagoike has since crumbled as Abe has scrambled to distance himself from what has become the biggest crisis of his premiership.

But Abe’s defiant declaration is revealing because he was responding to questions about whether the educational philosophy at the school was appropriate. Parents say students were taught to use hate speech in referring to ethnic Chinese and Koreans. Students were also tasked with memorizing the 1890 Imperial Rescript of Education, which enjoined all Japanese subjects to pledge blind devotion to the Emperor in the pre-1945 era. U.S. Occupation (1945-52) authorities banned teaching students this rescript because it was considered to be a key element in the militaristic brainwashing that helped sustain Japanese imperialism between 1895 and 1945.

Abe didn’t repudiate the jingoism, racism and Emperor worship — all redolent of wartime Japan — inculcated among the children studying at Moritomo Gakuen. In fact, the planned elementary school at the heart of the current land scandal was to be named after Abe, until he requested that his name not be used for that purpose or for fundraising.

But his wife, Akie Abe, became the honorary principal of the school and praised its educational philosophy, saying that Japan needs more of the moral education on offer. In 2014, in a videotaped exchange, she asked the students if they knew whom her husband was and, prodded by Kagoike, they chimed up that he was the man protecting Japan from China.

Defense Minister Tomomi Inada also had a posting on the school website thanking the founder for sending his students to cheer on and wave flags for Japan’s Self-Defense Forces. Students were also encouraged to congratulate Abe on the passage of his controversial security legislation in 2015.

These are kindergarten children. Shamelessly brainwashing them in support of Abe’s security agenda is reprehensible and a worrying sign that Japan’s reactionaries are so desperate they will stoop to any measure to manipulate public opinion and fabricate support.

But it gets worse. The planned elementary school is being built on contaminated land, endangering the health of the young patriots. This lack of concern about the welfare of the children should disqualify the school from operating. The government gave the school funds to clean up the site, but one of the workers involved revealed he dug up some of the contaminated soil and was then told to rebury it, covering it with just a thin layer of clean topsoil.

Hmm. So, it would appear that the school went through the motions of a cleanup and pocketed the money the government gave them for this task, a sum that happens to be about the same amount as the school ended up paying the government to acquire the land. Thus the school seems to have funded this purchase with money from state coffers while getting an exorbitant discount into the bargain. (A similar plot of land nearby sold for almost 10 times what the school paid.)

In the Diet, this dubious land deal has raised many questions about Abe and his wife’s involvement and political interference in selling the land for a song. Conveniently, the government has destroyed documents related to the sweetheart deal. Abe opposes an independent probe of Liberal Democratic Party Diet members’ possible involvement, despite the LDP’s Yoshitada Konoike alleging that the school’s founder tried to bribe him. Soon thereafter the land deal went through at a lavish markdown, raising suspicions that some other politician was more biddable. The LDP’s opposition to summoning Kagoike to testify in the Diet makes it look like it has something to hide and is worried that he might spill the beans about unsavory dealings that could prove awkward.

Abe is the Teflon prime minister, having emerged from past scandals unscathed, but this time Abe’s support rate appears to have imploded, with one Nikkei poll recording a drop in backing for his Cabinet from 63 percent to 36 percent as anger mounts. Given that Abe has promised to resign if any evidence emerges that links him or his wife to the land deal, he must be certain there is no smoking gun. Yet you have to wonder about the coincidence of his reported visit to Osaka on the day of a meeting between Moritomo representatives and finance ministry officials, just as the Diet was in the middle of contentious deliberations about his security legislation, when his presence was crucial. One assumes he is too savvy to leave any trace, but plausible deniability or not, Abe has become the Diet’s pinata, just as he was in 2007 on the way to the ignominious end of his first turn as PM.

In China and South Korea, the fact that a school linked with Abe is teaching revisionist history and racial slurs targeting their people reinforces negative perceptions about him. In terms of public diplomacy, Team Abe has scored yet another own goal. Armed with a massively increased budget, Japan’s public diplomacy should be wowing the world, but the nation keeps getting mired in fights over its shared history with its neighbors.

The withdrawal of Japan’s ambassador to South Korea over the presence of a comfort woman statue in Busan, and a failure to remove a similar statue in Seoul, is silly. This diplomatic pout over statues is overwrought and counterproductive. Critics of Japan over the comfort women are setting the agenda, running circles around diplomats who seem willing to throw fuel on the fires of acrimony.

By overreacting, the government is ceding the initiative and ensuring that the media keeps shining a light on Japan’s damning past. And now it has taken the statue wars to Glendale, California, where it has filed an official opinion in support of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court regarding a lawsuit protesting the installation of a comfort woman statue in that city. This seems to be a violation of the 2015 deal with Seoul in which the two governments agreed not to give each other a hard time internationally over the comfort women issue.

Both at home and overseas, Japan’s revisionists are betraying the nation they ostensibly revere

The Abe Administration and The Japan Conference

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The Abe Administration is a Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference) Cabinet

By Mr. Yoshifumi Tawara, Director of Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, Tokyo, Japan

Originally published in Japanese in the Children and Textbooks Japan Network21 News, vol.111 (12/12/2016): 8-9. Translated by APP Senior Fellow William L. Brooks with permission from Textbook 21.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is an ultra-rightwing politician and an historical revisionist. His administration is an ultra-rightwing cabinet. In his third reshuffled cabinet, 16 ministers (80 percent; or 85 percent if Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism Ishii of the Komeito is excepted) belong to the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarians' Round-Table Conference (A.K.A. the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League), which is linked to the Nippon Kaigi (Full name: Japan Conference for Revising the Constitution and Assisting the Imperial Throne), Japan's largest rightwing organization.

In addition, a prime ministerial assistant and a deputy chief cabinet secretary, as well as 16 state ministers and 16 parliamentary vice ministers are in the same parliamentarian league. Adding up all of these positions from ministers to deputy chief cabinet secretary, Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League members make up 67.5 percent of the Abe Administration.

Establishment of the Nippon Kaigi and the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League

When and how were the Nippon Kaigi and the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League started? The Nippon Kaigi was launched on May 30 ,1997, as Japan's largest rightwing organization for the purpose of revising the Constitution and assisting Imperial Rule [Translator's note: Harking back to the Imperial Rule Assistance Association of the 1940s]. It was formed through the integration of two existing groups: the Nihon o mamoru kai (Society for the Protection of Japan), a rightwing organization founded in 1974, and the Nihon o mamoru kokumin kaigi (People's Conference/National Conference to Protect Japan, a religious rightwing organization founded in 1981).

On May 29, the day before the Nippon Kaigi was launched, the nonpartisan Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League was established for the purpose of completely backing and closely cooperating with the Nippon Kaigi.

The membership list of the Nippon Kaigi is not open to the public, so it is not easy to find out the parliamentarians who are in the Nippon Kaigi League. The author, however, has obtained the list a number of times since 1997. According to it, the Diet members who have joined the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League has continued to increase, from the original 189 members from both chambers at the start to 281 members as of September 2015. The Asahi Shimbun reported in October 2016 that there were 290 members.

Although the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League is nonpartisan, 90 percent are from the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The members from the LDP form a formidable force in the Diet (around 40 percent of the total of 717 members of both houses of the Diet). The key members of such a powerful rightwing parliamentarian league have been working behind the scenes to push up Shinzo Abe as LDP president and prime minister during his three administrations. Japan's politics is being shaped by the close cooperation between the Nippon Kaigi and its related parliamentarian league.

Nippon Kaigi and the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League Control Japanese Politics, Society, Education

The Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League is working on three projects: 1) "History, Education, and Family Issues" (chaired by Sanae Takaichi since 2007; others are the same); 2) "Defense, Diplomacy, and Territorial Issues" (chaired by Shinzo Abe); and 3) "Constitution, Imperial Household, and Yasukuni Issues" (chaired by Yoshitada Konoike). The project teams engage in discussions with the Nippon Kaigi through joint meetings of officials and other formats, and they carry out activities that bring requests and proposals of Nippon Kaigi to the government.

In addition, the Nippon Kaigi has held study group sessions bringing in such lecturers as journalist Yoshiko Sakurai, who is a key member of the Nippon Kaigi and lectures on such themes as the Constitution, defense, bases, territorial issues, the Imperial System, and crisis management. Other lecturers include Akira Momochi (professor, Nippon University), Osamu Nishi (professor emeritus, Komazawa University), Kazuhiro Nagao (professor emeritus, Chuo University), Michiko Hasegawa (professor emeritus, Saitama University}, Yasuo Ohara (professor emeritus, Kokugakuin University) , and Shiro Takahashi (professor, Meisei University).The lecturers actively pursued theoretical arguments armed with theoretical backing, as well as unity of purpose.

In addition to such activities, the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarians' League established two project teams, one on the Imperial System (June 2014), chaired by Seiichi Eta) and another on Constitutional Revision (chaired by Keiji Furuya). The two project teams carry out study sessions and policy-making.

The Nippon Kaigi and the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarian League meet on a regular basis with each other, and through such means as joint meetings of officials , share views of situations and policy courses. On October 7, 2007, the two organizations held a joint convention to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their founding. Through the close cooperation of the two rightwing organizations, they are able to have a profound influence on Japanese politics, society, and the educational system. More than just extending its influence, the Nippon Kaigi, through the activities of the parliamentarian league, is able to realize its policies and it can get the government to withdraw its own policies.

The Organization and Movements of the Nippon Kaigi and Its Accomplishments

Nippon Kaigi commands a force of 38,000 members across the country . There is a headquarters for the 47 prefectures and a total of 250 local branches. The Nippon Kaigi has developed a grassroots rightwing movement via the Nippon Kaigi League of Local Assembly Members, consisting of over 1,600 local assembly members, as well as via such organizations as the Nippon Kaigi-affiliated Japan Women's Association and the Japan Youth Conference. Centered on the local assembly leagues and other grassroots organizations, the Nippon Kaigi has promoted a people's movement, elevating itself to a frontline organization on specific topics. As a result, if its period as the Nihon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi is included, the Nippon Kaigi has accomplished results that have greatly influenced Japanese politics, society and education .

The following lists the main achievements:

• Enactment of the Era Name Law 
• Realization of government-sponsored celebratory events by the Emperor 
• Halting a planned change in the Imperial Household Law that would have allowed women to ascend the Imperial Throne 
• Enactment of national flag and anthem legislation 
• Expunging passages about "comfort women" from middle school textbooks 
• Revision of the Basic Education Law 
• Stopping a bill that would have allowed women to choose a name different from their husband's family name 
• Stopping a bill to allow foreigners to have the right to participate in regional politics 
• Revising the textbook screening system and strengthening the controls on textbooks 
• Bringing about the study of morality (dotoku) in schools 
• Broadening the movement to pay homage annually on August 15 at Yasukuni Shrine 
• Realizing the citation of government views in school textbooks about the widening xenophobia toward the territorial issue, and the choosing of a textbook published by lkuhosha. 

If one looks at it this way , it is clear that a fearsome plan has been revealed whereby the requests and tasks laid out by the rightwing organization Nippon Kaigi have been realized by the moves of members of the Diet and local assemblies in cooperation with the members of the Nippon Kaigi, local branches, and such other organizations as the Japan Women's Association.

Current State of the Constitution-Revision Movement by the Abe Administration and Nippon Kaigi

The Nippon Kaigi, looking toward realizing its long-cherished goal (which is also that of Prime Minister Abe) of revising the Constitution, formed in October 2014 the "People's Association to Create a Constitution for a Beautiful Japan" (Kokumin no Kai). It then put in every effort to build a grassroots movement to revise the Constitution that would bring about a "war-making country." The officers of the Kokumin no Kai are co-head Yoshiko Sakurai (who also heads the Minkan Kenpo Rincho (Private Ad Hoc Council on the Constitution), Tadae Takubo (chairman of the Nippon Kaigi) , Toru Miyoshi (honorary chairman of the Nippon Kaigi) director Yuzo Kabashima, and secretary general Akira Momochi.

Kokumin no Kai is aiming to gather 10 million signatures approving constitutional revision, and it is developing a grassroots movement calling for constitutional revision for the Nippon Kaigi.

The form of Nippon Kaigi activities are the same as when it was the Nihon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi, that is to say, "replacing the leftwing movement with a rightwing movement." It does so by covering the country from the regions to the center, by such activities as gathering signatures, pleading for support to the Diet members in each district, obtaining resolutions by local assemblies, sponsoring gatherings in each locality and large rallies in Tokyo, caravans across the country, and placing newspaper ads.

In the House of Councillors’ election in July 2016, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito gained seats, and when the seats not up for reelection are added, reached more than the two-thirds majority needed for amending the Constitution. Prime Minister Abe asserted, “We seem to have built a bridge (to revising the Constitution).” (From the Nippon Kaigi’s official magazine “Nihon no Ibuki (Breath of Japan)”, September 2016 issue)

Thus, the impetus toward constitutional revision is growing rapidly. The Nippon Kaigi, too, seeing this as the ideal chance for changing the Constitution, is strengthening even more its grassroots movement to do so.

With the ruling coalition’s win in the Upper House election, Yuzo Kabashima, the chairman of the Nihon Seinen Kyogikai (Japan Youth Conference), as well as the secretary general of the Nippon Kaigi, wrote the following in a September 30, 2016, “confidential” bulletin, “Japan’s Pride” News:

“With the ruling coalition obtaining the two-thirds majority in the Upper House election that is needed for revising the Constitution, I strongly feel the significant fact is that the world has changed on July 10. We are living in a completely new world.”

“It is close to a miracle that at the same time a situation allowing constitutional reform has emerged in both chambers of the Diet. And the G7 leaders all formally visited Ise Shrine.”

“Since the election was soon after that, it is only natural to think that it was a miracle. I am thankful for this situation having come about, and I would like to carry out our responsibility.”

At that working-level meeting, Kabashima touched on expanding the movement to gather 10 million signatures to support revising the Constitution, as well the movement to persuade local assemblies to adopt position papers seeking constitutional revision. The Nippon Kaigi announced that as of October 31, 2016, local assembly resolutions were passed in 35 prefectures, 56 towns or cities, and that the drive to reach 10 million signatures had reached 7.54 million as of July 31, 2016. It asserts that signatures will reach the 10 million mark by the end of the year. [Editor: it is unknown if this goal was attained.]

For additional details about the Nippon Kaigi and the Nippon Kaigi Parliamentarians’ League, please refer to my book, “The Whole Story about the Nippon Kaigi – The Actual Situation about that Unknown Giant Organization [Nippon Kaigi no Zenbo – Shirarezaru Kyodai Soshiki no Jittai] published by Kadensha.

Know your Abe Administration: A Guide

THE ABE ADMINISTRATION: ITS TOP 100 MEMBERS

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Free for APP members

On January 24, 2017, Asia Policy Point issued its 91-page directory of biographical and background information on all top 100 members of the current Abe Administration: 20 Cabinet Ministers and top appointed government officials. Seventy-four are Dietmembers and 26 are non-politicians such as academics and bureaucrats.

The officials are organized by government ministry and by last name. All known social media accounts are included. Automatic Google Translate can be very helpful in looking at these Japanese-language resources.

Each member’s known affiliations with 20 prominent conservative nationalist parliamentary leagues, caucuses, and issue groups are also identified. 

Included is a chapter describing these groups followed by a chapter of charts and graphs for you to visualize the strength and depth of these ideological memberships in the Abe Administration.

For perspective, a Japanese conservative nationalist is different from an American conservative in a number of critical ways. A Japanese conservative nationalist advocates big government; defends social welfare; is wary of individual rights and freedoms; believes in a central government headed by the Emperor under the Shinto religion; aspires to Japan’s independent defense, and rejects that Imperial Japan committed war crimes or started WWII.

The Power of Nippon Kaigi

Limited Influence over Politics [?]

[says Nikkei's headline, but the article text contradicts this conclusion]

Nikkei Shimbun, October 16, 2016. (in Japanese) Provisional translation for scholarly discussion by Asia Policy Point

Nippon Kaigi [Japan Conference] proposes constitutional revision, visits to Yasukuni Shrine, and the introduction of an education system that better reflects the intrinsic values of Japan to conservative politicians inside the Liberal Democratic Party, the Democratic Party and other political parties. It hopes to attract like-minded lawmakers. It calls for support for conservative politicians and backs them. In this way it maintains its influence.

“This gathering became my first step toward a career in politics,” said Defense Minister Tomomi Inada when as LDP policy affairs chief she attended an annual national convention for the commemoration of war dead that the Japan Conference co-hosted with other groups last year at Yasukuni Shrine.

At this year’s event, Yoshitaka Shindo, the minister of internal affairs and communications in the second Abe cabinet, was present and called for support for the Japan Conference’s activities. Inada and Shindo are two of the core members of the group’s bipartisan parliamentary league, Nippon Kaigi Kokkai Giin Kondai Kai (the Japan Conference Diet members’ council).

Participation Is Merely “Adding Names to the Roster”
This parliamentarians’ group convenes a general meeting once a year. At the meeting held in March, over 30 Diet members attended and decided on policies on such matters as how to lobby for holding a national referendum on constitutional revision.

Speculation that the Japan Conference has a greater say in the government’s policymaking is sparked by the fact that many incumbent cabinet ministers belong to the group. Though the roster of the latest membership is not made public, Prime Minister Abe and 15 of 19 cabinet ministers belong, according to a source familiar with the matter.

But [asked about their membership,] the offices of several cabinet ministers replied they “have never attended gatherings of the league.” One office staffer said, “We are not aware that we belong to the group.” Though it has a membership of about 290 politicians, only a handful of them – mainly senior old-guard politicians – are active.

Then how much influence does the Japan Conference actually wield over elections? A person with the Japan Conference says that it acts as a “node” of various conservative forces and consolidates them into a single organism. This becomes the source of its influence.

The Japan Conference maintains its influence by closely working with the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership (Shindo Seiji Renmei, or Shinseiren), which comprises religious groups, such as the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honcho). With the help of the Shinto community, it has been rolling out a campaign to collect 10 million signatures to revise the Constitution.

But the Japan Conference has a membership of about 38,000 people. While Nichiiren (Federation of Japanese Doctors), the political arm of the Japan Medical Association, delivers about 200,000 votes to the LDP every election, the Japan Conference has an extremely small organizational base and is not in the position to field its own candidates. Its activities are mainly funded by membership fees and it cannot afford to make political donations to conservative members.

With the Abe government shifting to a realistic approach, how to maintain the national momentum of conservative movements will become one issue that the Japan Conference needs to tackle down the road.

The key is how the Japan Conference will keep facilitating discussions on constitutional revision. Within the LDP, there has been talk of extending Abe’s time in office as the party’s president. On the surface, it stands to gain if Abe, who it backs, stays in power for a longer period of time, but matters are not as simple as that.

“Rather, we are concerned that there is a developing mood wherein constitutional revision needs not to be done quickly if there is an extension of the length of time the LDP president can remain in office,” said a policymaking committee member in the Japan Conference. There are fears the momentum of its national campaign for constitutional revision may slow.

Another worrisome issue is that its activities are not attracting wide support from the public. Birei Kin, a conservative critic and supporter of the Japan Conference, points out that “the same people always participate in its events” and deplores that its campaigns do not reach many.

The Abduction Issue Potentially Starting a New Fire

Now, the emperor, who is the greatest centripetal force of the Nippon Kaigi, also poses a new challenge for the organization. After the Emperor hinted that he would like to step down while alive, nervousness that the current emperor system (in which the Emperor plays a symbolic role) might change fundamentally is simmering inside the Nippon Kaigi. Although the organization on the surface follows the direction that “we must realize it if that is the Emperor’s will,” among the members opposition and push back are strong. For the Nippon Kaigi, the issue might start a new fire.

In recent years, new members recruited through the Internet, especially among the young, are increasing. That said, the trend of non-partisan groups’ conservatism is the real source of the growing attention paid to the Nippon Kaigi. If in the future the non-partisan groups’ preferences change, the possibility of the Nippon Kaigi losing influence certainly exists.