Takaichi's Constitutional Reform

Takaichi Pushes Her Conservative Agenda

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Asia Policy Point
Former editorial writer for the Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
June 29, 2026
 
With less than three weeks before the end of the current Diet session, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has accelerated work on her conservative agenda. Opposition parties have signed on to some of her agenda items, but others require additional support to build a majority in the Upper House. In some cases, Takaichi’s maneuverings have frustrated the opposition parties. 
 
Penalty for National Flag Vandalism
Article 92 of Penal Code prohibits damaging the national flag of a foreign country for the purpose of insulting the country. The law is intended to protect diplomatic relations with foreign countries. But Japan does not have any proscription on vandalism to its own national flag. Conservative lawmakers, including Takaichi, are dissatisfied with a situation in which defilement of the national flag of Japan goes unpunished.
 
Conservatives are proud of the national flag of Japan, or Hinomaru, which depicts a rising sun. They believe that paying respect to Hinomaru exemplifies patriotism. In wartime Japan, people were obliged to salute the Hinomaru hoisted along the streets. Although they may not hope to bring back that pre-war culture, the conservatives cannot abide insulting a symbol of Japan.
 
When they formed the leading coalition last October, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Japan Innovation Party (JIP) agreed on the terms of legislation to establish the “crime of damaging the national flag” in 2026 ordinary session of the Diet. Although the ordinary session was closed on January 23 when Takaichi dissolved the Lower House for a snap election, a special session was convoked after the election; this session is scheduled to adjourn on July 17.
 
The LDP approved a draft of a bill named the National Flag Vandalism Punishing Act in early June, on which the JIP agreed. Although the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) had been skeptical about the need for the law, it signed on after the LDP struck a provision that would have criminalized the posting of a scene of damage to Hinomaru on a social networking service. The bill was finally submitted to the Diet sponsored by the LDP, JIP, DPP and the ultra-conservative Sanseito. It also gained support of populist Team Miral and is expected to pass both chambers of the Diet.
 
It is highly unclear what interest the bill represents. The law will prohibit any age to Hinomaru “in a way that causes the public to feel uncomfortable or disgusted.” A violation will carry up to two years in custody and a fine of up to two hundred thousand yen. The sponsors of the bill have argued that the law will protect the feelings of people who think Hinomaru is precious and will prevent flag-vandalism in the future. The bill is based on the premise that Hinomaru is precious to everyone. It is unusual for the Diet to make a law with little factual basis for it.
 
The Diet has continued to entertain these strange discussions. Sponsors have cited such instances of supposed defilement of Hinomaru as tearing Hinomaru apart in a train station, stomping on Hinomaru, blotting it with increment, and livestreaming an act of vandalism. But streaming a recorded video of damage to the flag will not be punished. The sponsors have also created exceptions for disposal of an old flag, cutting off a flag that has twisted around ceiling light, and signing messages on Hinomaru for a national sports team.
 
The sponsors of the bill argue that the law will not force the people to pay respect to Hinomaru. However, the law will inevitably be coercive. Meanwhile, freedom of expression will be on the verge of erosion with a concern that not paying respect to Hinomaru might be punished even if the law does not obligate the people to love the Hinomaru.
 
Securing Imperial Family Members
The Speakers and Deputy Speakers of both chambers of the Diet submitted a “unanimous opinion” of the Houses on membership in the Imperial Family to the government of Japan in early June. The Takaichi government is preparing a bill to revise the Imperial House Law, an effort that is supposed to implement the unanimous opinion. It is possible, however, that the government is manipulating the process to favor the conservatives.
 
The unanimous opinion would allow female members to remain in the Imperial Family after marriage and would authorize the Imperial Family to adopt male members who had been in the male line of former Imperial Families. Retaining female members has broad public support. The adoption provision faces hurdles, however: current Imperial House Law unequivocally prohibits adoption and it receives less public approval than retaining female members. But conservative lawmakers firmly support adoption to ensure that the Imperial House is sustained by males in the male line.
 
On Friday, the 26^th, most major newspapers reported with some surprise that the Takaichi government was drafting an amendment to the Imperial House Law that would permit the male offspring of an adopted member of the Imperial Family to succeed to the throne of the Emperor. The draft would not place the adopted male member himself in the line of succession to the throne, but a son or grandson could join the line.
 
This move reflects the confidence of the conservatives on keeping the male line. One LDP conservative lawmaker, Hirofumi Nakasone, definitely remarked that Princess Aiko, the daughter of Emperor Naruhito, cannot become Emperor. “Nobody wants to be married with Emperor Aiko,” Nakasone added. JIP is still not satisfied with the provision of adoption, which is limited to a man 15 years old or older. The conservative bloc is not united on details of revision of Imperial House Law.
 
The “unanimous opinion” did not touch on succession to the throne and limited itself to the size of the imperial family. Centrist Reform Alliance argues that the draft of the Takaichi government does not reflect the unanimous opinion of the Diet. Article 1 of the Constitution of Japan provides that the position of Emperor derives from will of the people, and the Diet represents the will of the people. Without the full support of the Diet, the Takaichi government draft could destabilize the position of the Emperor.
 
Constitutional Amendment on Emergency Terms of Office
The LDP and JIP have sped up consideration in the current session of the Diet of a constitutional amendment that would extend the term of a Diet member in the lower chamber in the event of a national disaster. The Lower House Commission of the Constitution has been discussing this amendment. However, the Upper House has focused instead on election system of the house that would integrate some districts beyond the border of a prefecture. The parties have at least agreed to present such a change for a constitutional referendum.
 
Prime Minister Takaichi declared in the LDP national convention this past April that, by the spring of 2027, she would introduce a constitutional amendment. The Lower House commission has already proposed an emergency clause to extend the term of lawmakers in an emergency and to enable the Cabinet to issue orders with the same legal effect as laws enacted by the Diet. The opposition parties oppose the idea of giving the executive branch what is essentially the power of legislation.
 
The Upper House is not willing to discuss the emergency clause, because the constitution already provides that the Upper House will maintain the functions of the Diet when the Lower House is empty. Most parties can agree on the issue under review in the Upper House election – abolishing electoral districts beyond prefectural border to represent people’s will of every single prefecture.
 
But the integration of electoral districts was made to respect the one-man, one-vote principle that stems from the constitutional principle of equality under the law. In one rural district, a vote had 3.13 times greater value than those in an urban district in the 2025 Upper House election. Two concepts in the constitution, equality in value of one vote and implementation of autonomy, are competing each other

A minimum accomplishment of the parties in the current Diet session will be the revision of the National Referendum Act for constitutional amendments. It includes minor changes in the process of a national referendum. The bill was sponsored by the LDP, JIP, DPP and Sanseito. It passed the Lower House with the support of the Centrist Reform Alliance and Team Mirai. It is also expected to pass the Upper House in current session. Any further progress on wrapping up discussion of the details of a constitutional amendment in this session is unlikely. 

Japan's 2025 Upper House Elections II

Upsurge of a New Populist Party in the Election Campaign

By Takuya Nishimura, APP Senior Fellow, Former Editorial Writer for The Hokkaido Shimbun.

The views expressed by the author are his own and are not associated with The Hokkaido Shimbun.
You can find his blog, J Update here.
July 14, 2025. Special to Asia Policy Point

As Japan’s Upper House election campaigns enter their last week, policies toward foreigners in Japan have become prominent. Most parties, whether they are part of the current coalition or not, support the immigration of foreign workers to fill labor shortages.,

However, one small populist party, Sanseito [参政党, lit. 'Political Participation Party'; translated as the Party of Do it Yourself!! in English] appears to have attracted substantial support (largely at the expense of the LDP and Komeito) by arguing that the Japanese should operate the country by themselves and reduce their dependence upon foreign workers. This issue has now taken on considerable importance.

Sanseito was established in 2020 as an alternative to current traditional parties by reaching out to potential supporters via the Internet and social media. In 2022, the party’s leader, Sohei Kamiya, became the first party member to win election to the Upper House. In the Lower House election in 2024, the party garnered three more seats. Sanseito has about 150 seats in local assemblies, including the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly, in which the party won three seats in June.

Sanseito has adopted “The Japanese First” as its catch phrase in the Upper House election campaign, much like the terms “America First” or “Make America Great Again” used by U.S. President Donald Trump. The party is clearly right wing. In a July 3 press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club, Sanseito’s leader, Sohei Kamiya, listed four foreign parties that Sanseito felt closest to: the most conservative part of the Republican Party in the U.S., Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, the National Rally in France, and Reform U.K. in Britain.

Sanseito’s founding principle is anti-globalism. “There is globalism behind the scenes in our current economic stagnation, in which multinational companies collect money through deregulation, accelerating poverty and ruining the middle class,” Kamiya said in a debate of eight party leaders at the Japan National Press Club (JNPC) on July 2.

Sanseito’s party platform for the Upper House election includes regulations that would prohibit excessive entry of foreign workers and the purchase of real property by foreigners. Calling Sanseito by its nickname, the “Party of Do It Yourself,” Kamiya believes that Japan can rebuild without foreign workers by taking advantage of such technologies as artificial intelligence and robotics, even if Japan has a smaller population in the future.

These policies prove a xenophobic aspect of Sanseito. “Japan has no anti-espionage law and no strict punishment for foreigners’ crimes or false advantages (in taxation or welfare),” Kamiya said at the JNPC debate. That statement ignited a controversy on policies for foreigners. As a matter of fact, Japan has Special Secret Protection Act and Economic Security Promotion Act. Crimes by foreigners in 2024 declined by half from 2005. Newspapers published editorials that opposed exclusion of foreigners.

The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has supported foreign workers as a solution to labor shortages in Japan. To address complaints about advantages for foreign workers, the LDP proposes to end illegal immigration into Japan. Opposition parties have been critical of the deteriorating situation of foreign workers. The Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, for example, stresses the need to build “a multi-cultural coexisting society.” The Democratic Party for the People (DPP), however, agrees with Sanseito on a prohibition on foreign ownership of real property.

Sanseito could be a threat to the LDP. In a poll by Kyodo News in late June, Sanseito took the second position behind the LDP with an 8.1 percent approval rating in proportional districts in the Upper House election. There is a speculation that Sanseito will win ten or more seats.

Sanseito has staked out ultra-conservative positions on other issues unrelated to immigration. The party interprets the Emperor as “sacred and inviolable” in their draft of new constitution of Japan, using the term in pre-war Constitution of the Empire of Japan. Sanseito would also redefine the Self-defense Force as a military force.

It is likely that Sanseito has won over some LDP conservative supporters. Kamiya judges that some disappointed LDP supporters shifted to the DPP, and then they came to Sanseito, frustrated with the liberal DPP.

Given this surge of support for right-wing causes, the LDP is under serious pressure in the prefectural districts. In some traditionally conservative districts, the LDP is in a close race with opposition parties.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba had anticipated gains in popular support for the LDP with the conclusion of tariff negotiations with the U.S. before the campaign season opened on July 3. That did not happen. Aggravating the situation was a July 7 letter from Trump threatening a 25 percent tariff rate starting on August 1. “It’s a battle of our national interest. We won’t be taken advantage of,” Ishiba said in a campaign rally on July 9, using unusually aggressive language for a prime minister.

It seems to be the time for the LDP to face the negative aspects of their past policies. Importing foreign labor and prioritizing car manufacturers over other industries have too heavily focused on a “growth-oriented” economy. The LDP put aside some problems caused by these policies such as the impact of labor imports on people’s life or the damage on agriculture from trade deals with the U.S. or other countries. As a result, they made a room for a populist party to step in.

Monday Asia Events, September 27, 2021

TRANSATLANTIC COOPERATION: SHAPING THE FUTURE TOGETHER IN UNCERTAIN TIMES. 9/27, 8:30-9:30am (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: SAIS, Johns Hopkins University. Speakers: Valdis Dombrovskis, Executive Vice-President for an Economy that Works for People, European Commission, Trade Commissioner, EU; Moderator: Dan Hamilton, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Institute, SAIS. 

LEADING OIL AND GAS INTO A NET-ZERO WORLD. 9/27, 8:30am (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: H.E. Mohammad Barikindo, Secretary General, OPEC; Helima Croft, Managing Director, Global Head of Commodity Strategy, RBC Capital Markets; Majid Jafar, CEO, Crescent Petroleum; Moderator: Alex Dewar, Senior Director, Center for Energy Impact, Boston Consulting Group. 

INTERPRETING THE 2021 GERMAN FEDERAL ELECTION RESULTS. 9/27, 9:00-10:30am (EDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: Isabelle Borucki, Interim Professor - University of Siegen; Yascha Mounk, Associate Professor of the Practice - SAIS, Johns Hopkins, Senior Fellow - Council on Foreign Relations; Daniela Schwarzer, Executive Director for Europe and Eurasia - Open Society Foundations; Constanze Stelzenmüller, Senior Fellow - Foreign Policy, Center on the United States and Europe Fritz Stern Chair on Germany and trans-Atlantic Relations; Rieke Havertz, US Correspondent - ZEIT ONLINE. 

WILL THE REVAMPED US TRADE POLICY BE READY FOR GLOBAL CHALLENGES? 9/27, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Global Development Policy Center, Boston University. Speakers: Richard Kozul-Wright, Director, Globalization and Development Strategies, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; Xolelwa Mlumbi-Peter, Ambassador, South Africa Mission to the WTO; Damon Silvers, Director of Policy and Special Counsel, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO); Todd Tucker, Director, Governance Studies, Roosevelt Institute; Moderator: Kevin P. Gallagher, Director, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University. 

ENERGY MARKETS IN THE MIDDLE EAST. 9/27, 10:00-11:00am (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Middle East Institute (MEI). Michael Cohen, Chief U.S. Economist, Head of Oil Analysis, BP; Carole Nackhle, Founder and CEO, Crystol Energy; Moderator: Karen E. Young, Senior Fellow and Director, Program on Economics and Energy, MEI. 

STATE OF THE SPACE FORCE! 9/27. 10:00am-12:30pm (EDT), DIGITAL EVENT. Sponsor: DefenseOne. Speakers include: General John W. Raymond, Chief of Space Operations, U.S. Space Force; Paul Ferraro, Vice President, Air Power, Raytheon Missiles & Defense; Jeffrey Schrader, Vice President, Raytheon Intelligence and Space; Steve Butow, Director of the Space Portfolio, Defense Innovation Unit; Jim Westdorp, Chief Technologist, Ciena Government Solutions Inc.; Dr. Derek Tourner, Director, Space Development Agency. 

TAIWAN IN THE INDO-PACIFIC REGION 2021 ANNUAL CONFERENCE. 9/27, 11:30am-1:00pm and 6:00-6:40pm (PDT), LIVESTREAM. Speakers: Richard Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations; Lee Hsi-min, Adm. (Ret.), Senior Fellow, Project 2049 Institute; Dr. Jaushieh Joseph Wu, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan). 

PAKISTAN’S DESTABILIZATION PLAYBOOK: KHALISTAN AND THE U.S. 9/27, Noon-1:00pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia, Hudson Institute. Speakers: Dr. C. Christine Fair, Professor, Security Studies Program, Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service; Michael Rubin, Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute; Sam Westrop, Director, Islamist Watch, Middle East Forum. Moderator: Dr. Aparna Pande, Director, Initiative on the Future of India and South Asia, Hudson Institute. 

JAPAN’S DEFENSE EQUIPMENT AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE U.S.-JAPAN ALLIANCE. 9/27, 5:00-6:00pm (EDT), WEBCAST. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Atsuo Suzuki, Commissioner, Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Agency, Ministry of Defense of Japan; Moderator: Dr. Michael J. Green, Senior Vice President for Asia, Japan Chair, CSIS.

POLITICAL EXTREMISM IN JAPAN. 9/27, 9:00-10:00pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsors: Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS). Speaker: Nathaniel M. Smith, Associate Professor, College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Moderator: Michael Okamoto, Director, Getting to Know Japan Series, YCAPS. 

CHINA'S PERCEPTION OF THE SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN. 9/27, 11:00am-Noon (JDT), WEBINAR. Sponsor: Sasakawa Peace Foundation. Speakers: Ichiro Inoue, Professor, Graduate School of Policy Studies, Kwansei Gakuin University; Akio Takahara, Professor of Contemporary Chinese Politics, Graduate School of Law and Politics and Graduate School of Public Policy, University of Tokyo; Bonji Ohara, Senior Fellow, Sasakawa Peace Foundation. 

A Leadership Vacuum

On Japan–South Korea cooperation

East Asia Forum, 11 July 2021

by Daniel Sneider, Lecturer in International Policy and East Asian Studies at Stanford University and APP member

The dysfunctionality of Japan–South Korea relations led many to despair about whether the two Northeast Asian neighbours can l ever get along. Efforts by US officials to create trilateral opportunities on security, climate or cybersecurity have largely foundered.

History provides two lessons, which point in contradictory directions

The first is that the tensions are deeply rooted and fundamental to national identity in both countries. The other is that progress is possible, but requires political leadership and the help of the United States. While historical enmity remains, strategic and even tactical conditions can create opportunities.

Specifically, two moments in Japan–South Korea relations provide relevant lessons: the 1965 treaty to normalise relations and the 2015 agreement on so-called ‘comfort women’*.

Post-war efforts to establish relations began in 1951 amid fierce fighting in Korea and with Japan on the verge of restoring sovereignty. The United States was eager to bind its two allies together, but neither South Korean leader Syngman Rhee nor Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida were enthusiastic about dealing with thorny issues, such as the treatment of the Koreans living in Japan and compensation for Japanese colonial rule.

Successful talks on a treaty to normalise relations and settle post-war claims finally took place in 1965. Despite strong opposition in both countries to the compromises needed to reach a deal, the treaty became the legal foundation for post-war Japan–South Korea ties.

A change in leadership was needed to make that possible, particularly in South Korea, where the military-led regime of Park Chung-hee had taken power in 1962. A Japanese-trained officer in the wartime Imperial Army, Park was determined to follow the Japanese model of export-led industrialisation and needed Japan as a source of aid, investment and technology. The Japanese government of Eisaku Sato understood that this was the best partner they could hope for and saw economic opportunity.

The strategic situation also pushed them together. China tested nuclear weapons in 1964 and 1965, the Vietnam War was in full swing and North Korea was emboldened. The United States saw a Japan–South Korea partnership as crucial to meeting the communist threat. Washington made normalisation a priority in every meeting with South Korean and Japanese leadership, pushed for the treaty and intervened when talks hit snags.

A similar convergence led to the 2015 comfort women agreement, which created a Japanese-funded foundation to provide compensation to survivors and affirmed Japan’s responsibility for wartime acts. The then South Korean president Park Geun-hye, daughter of the late military dictator, held a strong personal concern for the women but wasn’t wedded to the progressive narrative of victimisation. Then Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe advocated a conservative revisionist narrative, but was also pragmatic and not vulnerable to criticism from the Japanese right.

Strategic realities also played a key role then. The Chinese challenge was manifest. North Korea’s nuclear program was progressing rapidly and efforts at negotiation had stalled.

Japan–South Korea relations dived after Abe’s December 2013 visit to the Yasukuni shrine to Japan’s war dead, but once Japanese and South Korean officials began talking to each other again, the United States combined direct pressure from the President and behind-the-scenes mediation to help facilitate a deal.

Renewed cooperation seems unlikely today, but this could change. The South Korean government of Moon Jae-in, reflecting long-held views of South Korean progressives, and prompted by court decisions, has challenged both the legitimacy of the 1965 treaty and moved to effectively dismantle the 2015 agreement. From this perspective, the deals were unequal bargains, compounded by Japan’s ongoing denial of its war crimes.

For the Japanese right, this gives credence to their insistence that South Koreans are unreliable partners, unable to hold an agreement. They dismiss the progressive government in Seoul as de facto partners of China.

The strategic situation, however, lends weight to those who argue that the threat from China and North Korea should bind them together. In Washington, the broad effort to encircle China requires close ties to allies and between them. Both Tokyo and Seoul nominally support trilateral cooperation.

The US role has also shifted back toward bringing Tokyo and Seoul together. When relations took their latest nosedive, the Trump administration was notably disengaged. But the Biden administration is emphasising the role of allies and actively encouraging trilateral meetings.

Perhaps partly in response, the Moon administration has signalled, but not manifested, a desire to step back from its opposition to the 1965 treaty and the 2015 agreement. But Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, confident in his alignment with Washington on China policy, has so far not reciprocated.

The missing element to bilateral cooperation then is political leadership. Moon is deeply committed to the progressive agenda and his party faces a serious challenge in next year’s presidential election. Suga is weakened, facing challenges both from within his ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party and from the liberal opposition. Neither man seems personally inclined to take on the risks of compromise.

The Biden administration may have concluded that any breakthrough will have to wait until next year and a change of leadership, perhaps in both countries.

Yet officials in Tokyo and Seoul are quietly working to lay the groundwork for a potential deal on wartime history issues and it is essential that the United States makes clear, from the highest level, the imperative to repair relations. The coming Summer Olympic Games, which Moon is planning to attend, could provide a moment to set relations on a different path. History shows that progress is possible with leadership and patience.

*This is only an agreement to Westerners. Neither country describes it as such. There is no one, signed document approved by the legislature. There are two different summaries of a discussion. 

Know your Abe Administration - Directory for Sale

Shinzo Abe

Do you know who's who in Abe's 4th Cabinet, 2nd reshuffle?

Directory of the Abe Administration

Shinzo ABE  created a new Cabinet on November 1, 2017 after his party's landslide victory in the general election held October 22, 2017. This was the fourth time since he was elected Japan’s prime minister for the second time on December 26, 2012. Abe is the first prime minister to launch a fourth Cabinet since October 1952, when then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida did so.

On October 2, 2018 he reshuffled this Cabinet for the second time. Since then there have been a few resignations and changes.

On Sunday, July 21, 2019, Japan held its Upper House elections. Abe had hoped that his LDP/Komeito coalition would gain two-thirds of the Upper House seats so that he could proceed with his professed plan of revising Japan's postwar Constitution. Although, he still holds a majority of the seats, he did not achieve his goal.

To examine how Abe may again reshuffle or reconstitute his Cabinet--as expected in September 2019--we present you with a directory and analysis of the 80-plus members of his Administration or greater Cabinet. It is designed to be a reference by both ministry and last name.

There is biographical information, legacy highlights, professional history, electoral district data, party and faction affiliations for each official identified. The descriptions also contain links to online primary sources, where available, including Cabinet members’ personal homepages and blogs, their official Diet pages, and their official social media accounts. We also note the incomes of the top ten wealthiest Cabinet members.

This report also identifies each member’s known affiliations with eight prominent conservative nationalist parliamentary leagues, caucuses, and issue groups. Japan’s parliamentary leagues are non-government-managed, semi-permanent groups of Diet members sharing an interest or holding a particular ideological stance.

The 107-page report includes 10 pages of charts, tables, and graphs to help you visualize the extent and depth of the ideology of Abe’s Cabinet.

This 107-page report is free to Asia Policy Point members and congressional staffers. EMAIL US HERE.

👉For all others we ask ONLY for a $25 DONATION: CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY.

Religion in Japanese Politics

Ask your average Japanese if he or she is religious, they will say no. Observe how they live their day and note the organizations they join, and your answer is different. Religious organizations and beliefs have considerable influence on Japanese politics. This is especially true of conservative nationalist groups that seek the restoration of an Emperor-focused government and society. On March 5, 2019, at Harvard University, Associate Professor of Asian Religions, North Carolina State University Levi McLaughlin discussed this topic. His presentation is only accessible via the audio above. He is the author of Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. He will speak on Friday, April 12th from 12:30-2:00pm at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service.

The Ministers of Abe's Fifth Cabinet

On October 2, 2018, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet. Of the 19 Cabinet Ministers in his Fifth Cabinet, eight (42.1%) were re-appointed from the previous Cabinet and eleven (57.8%) are new. 

This Cabinet is measurably more conservative than his previous ones. The usual metric is memberships or affiliations with various Diet Leagues, especially the Diet Members’ League for the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership [Shinto League] (also can be translated as Shinto Political Alliance Diet Member’s Roundtable; 神道政治連盟国会議員懇談会-Shintou seiji renmei kokkai giin kondankai) and the Diet Members’ Gathering (League) for the Japan Conference, [Nippon Kaigi] (also can be translated as Diet Representative ‘Japan Conference’ Roundtable;日本会議国会議員懇談会- Nippon kaigi kokkai giin kondankai). 

Both organizations advocate revising the constitution to return Shinto as the state religion and the Emperor to political power. They oppose the current Constitution support of individual rights, women's rights, and freedom of speech. They advocate a moral education and respect for Japan's past, while rejecting any Japanese involvement in war crimes.

Only one Minister is a member of neither League: Keiichi ISHII, Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. He is from the Komeito Party that is associated with the Buddhist religious group, Sokka Gakkai. The party has been a coalition partner with the LDP since 1999. There is one member of the U.S. Congress who is a Sokka Gakkai member.

Taro KONO, Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Masatoshi ISHIDA, Minister for International Affair and Communications; Yoshiaki HARADA, Minister of the Environment; and Takuya HIRAI, Minister for Information Technology Policy, although members of the Shinto League, are not members of the Nippon Kaigi.

There is only one female minister: Satsuki KATAYAMA, Minister of State for Regional Revitalization. In Abe's previous Cabinet (4th) there were four female ministers and in his 3rd, two.

★ New cabinet member
❇︎ Past affiliation with Shinto League, but not in recent years

Position	First Name	Last Name	Shinto League	Nippon Kaigi
Prime Minister	Shinzo	ABE	✔	✔
Minister of Finance	Taro	ASO	✔	✔
Minister for Internal Affair and Communications	Masatoshi	ISHIDA ★	✔
Minister of Justice	Takashi	YAMASHITA★	✔	✔
Minister for Foreign Affairs	Taro	KONO	✔
Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology	Masahiko	SHIBAYAMA ★	✔	✔
Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare	Takumi	NEMOTO	✔ ❇︎	✔
Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries	Takamori	YOSHIKAWA ★	✔	✔
Minister of Economy, Trade, and Industry	Hiroshige	SEKO	✔	✔
Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism	Keiichi	ISHII
Minister of the Environment	Yoshiaki	HARADA ★	✔
Minister of Defense	Takeshi	IWAYA ★	✔	✔
Chief Cabinet Secretary	Yoshihide	SUGA	✔	✔
Minister for Reconstruction	Hiromichi	WATANABE ★	✔	✔
Chairperson of the National Public Safety Commission	Junzo	YAMAMOTO ★	✔	✔
Minister for Promoting Dynamic Engagement of All Citizens	Mitsuhiro	MIYAKOSHI ★	✔	✔
Minister in charge of Information Technology Policy	Takuya	HIRAI ★	✔
Minister of State for Economic and Fiscal Policy	Toshimitsu	MOTEGI	✔	✔
Minister of State for Regional Revitalization	Satsuki	KATAYAMA ★	✔	✔
Minister in charge of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic	Yoshitaka	KATAYAMA ★	✔	✔

Why Steve Bannon Admires Japan

click to order

In Japan, populist and extreme right-wing nationalism has found a home within the political establishment.

By Reto Hofmann, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at Waseda University, Tokyo and an expert on the history of transnational fascism, conservatism, and right-wing movements. Author of The Fascist Effect: Japan and Italy, 1915–1952.

The Diplomat, June 22, 2018

When Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former adviser, spoke at the conference of the Japanese Conservative Union [a brain child of Japanese new religion Happy Science and Trump adviser Matt Schlapp], he praised Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, calling him a “Trump before Trump.” Bannon is not the only Western right-winger to admire Japan. Simone di Stefano, leader of Italy’s neofascist Casa Pound, is dreaming of an alliance between Italy, Russia, and Japan. And for Jan Moldenhauer, an ideologue of the xenophobic Alternative for Germany, when it comes to immigration, “Japan is the alternative.”

Coming from the world’s self-appointed populist leaders, these statements deserve reflection. Right-wing populism is often seen as a threat to democracy because it challenges the political establishment from the margins, using high doses of nationalism and skillful manipulation of the media. This has happened in Europe, most recently in Italy and Slovakia. But this pattern should not make us forget that the political establishment is hardly immune to right-wing agendas.

Happy Science talks to Trump's
conscience

In Japan, populist and extreme right-wing nationalism has found an institutional home within the traditional conservatism of Liberal Democratic Party that aims for an authoritarian transformation of the political system — hence the effusions of the likes of Bannon.

Since 2012, Abe has gradually enforced a hard right-wing agenda from within. He has impeccable nationalistic credentials. He is a special adviser of the Nippon Kaigi, a right-wing organization that strives to reconstruct Japan on a nationalist basis. It is active, for example, in advising the government on education policies, promoting ideas about “morals” as well as revisionist history textbooks.

Nippon Kaigi is influential in the LDP. At some point 18 out of 20 of Abe’s cabinets were members, many of whom with clear ultra-right sympathies. One, Tomomi Inada, then party policy chief, had posed for a photowith Yamada Kazunari, the leader of a neo-Nazi group. Another, Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister, remarked that Hitler was wrong in murdering millions of people, but that “his motives were right.” He is also on the record for saying that the Nazis did a good job at gutting the Weimar Constitution — a remarkable statement for a government that wants to alter its own constitution.

Since 2012, Abe’s governments have been pushing policies that are still only on the agenda of many populists. Take the attacks on the media, for example. When Abe was appointed prime minister in 2012, he posted on Facebook that “my war with the mass media has started. I will fight my way through it together with your support.” Further, his government passed the State Secrecy Laws, one effect of which is to restrict the media’s news gathering capacity. Momii Katsuto, the former head of NHK, the public broadcaster, and a close friend of Abe, caused a stir when he said that NHK “should not deviate from the government’s position in its reporting.”

Abe has a clear “Japan First” outlook, a desire to remake a “beautiful Japan” that is socially harmonious and ethnically homogeneous. Despite the country’s acute labor shortage, Abe does not welcome immigrants. He declared that “before accepting immigrants or refugees, we need to have more activities by women, elderly people and we must raise our birth rate.” In 2017, Japan granted refugee status to 20 people out of an applicant pool of 20,000. Xenophobia is not only an American or European problem. It is rampant also in Japan, where right-wing groups target Korean residents with verbal abuse. In response, the LDP leadership has been reluctant to legislate about hate speech. Abe preferred to “leave this matter to the good conscience of the average Japanese.”

Japan lacks the strident version of populism that has engulfed Europe, but we would be missing the point by not seeing the country as a link in the global chain of right-wing politics. Though refraining from the crassest expressions of xenophobia and authoritarianism, Abe’s deceptively polite right-wing politics may be heading in the same direction.

Wither Osaka

A storm appears to be headed toward Osaka. As the article below notes, domestic politics may not long favor the city. The Moritomo Gakuen scandal is centered on Osaka and its ultra-rightwing politics. Osaka is also the epicenter of Japan's denier history toward the Comfort Women. Successive majors have been outspoken deniers of Pacific War history—even threatening to end the sister city relationship with San Francisco over the American city’s refusal to accept the Osaka mayors' false and pernicious construction of Comfort Women history.

The Abe's government has shown extraordinary favoritism to the region and its politicians who have helped the LDP maintain their Diet majority. Recently, Tokyo selected Osaka to be the host city for the G20 leaders summit in 2019. The government is also promoting Osaka to the Bureau of International Expositions to be the site for Expo 2025. By doing this, Tokyo is demanding that the rest of the world ignore the region's infamous war history and its modern deniers. 

A new Japanese government will not be able to long tolerate Osaka as a world outlier.

Moritomo scandal threatens Osaka leaders too

By Eric Johnston, Staff Writer

Japan Times, March 17, 2018

OSAKA – “A man once thoroughly endued with these three qualities of lying, impudence, and ingratitude will, I believe, scarce want any other titles to preferment and grandeur.” — Henry Fielding, from a satirical article on the traits of successful politicians, 1740

Over a year after it first blew up in Osaka, then went to Tokyo and languished, the Moritomo Gakuen scandal came roaring back with a vengeance earlier this month, shaking Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration to the core.

The “Teflon prime minister,” as Abe is dubbed by critics and admirers for his political durability, may finally have run out of luck. His finance minister, Taro Aso, whose ministry admitted it rewrote, deleted, or falsified records related to the scandal is facing intense pressure from the opposition, and members of his own party, to resign — and soon.

Without his friend Aso by his side, Abe will head into the September elections for Liberal Democratic Party president (and thus prime minister) weakened and a lame duck unlikely to be granted a third consecutive term — all because of a scandal that just would not go away.

The key questions still unanswered boil down to who gave the school an unprecedented discount on the land it wanted, why Moritomo received special treatment, who decided to give it that treatment and who was involved in the subsequent “editing” of ministry documents.

At the national level, those questions involve the prime minister and his wife, the finance minister and senior Finance Ministry officials and at least three Diet members. They include Takeo Hiranuma, the ultra-right-wing Liberal Democratic Party representative from Okayama, LDP veteran Yoshitada Konoike, a scandal-plagued politician from neighboring Hyogo Prefecture, and former Upper House LDP lawmaker Issei Kitagawa, who is from Osaka. Former Moritomo head Yasunori Kagoike’s claim that he was betrayed by lying, impudent, ungrateful politicians and bureaucrats sounds a bit more credible now.

But one influential politician of interest to Osaka was not in the documents: Osaka Gov. Ichiro Matsui.

Given that, in Diet testimony, Kagoike alleged the person who betrayed him the most was Matsui, Osaka’s media are now aggressively pursuing the Moritomo Gakuen “Osaka angle.” And they are asking what might have been going on between Matsui, the Kinki bureau of the Finance Ministry, Abe, Aso, Hiranuma and their friends in the conservative lobby group Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), reference to which was also originally deleted from Finance Ministry documents.

Matsui insists he had nothing to do with influencing the Kinki bureau to cut a deal with Kagoike and no evidence has surfaced to suggest otherwise. But, politically, he has two problems.

The first is local. More questions about Moritomo makes it ever more difficult for Matsui and his supporters to realize their integration of Osaka city, which is once again under discussion and still faces intense opposition.

The second problem is Osaka’s relationship — and the Nippon Ishin no Kai party’s relationship — with the Abe wing of the LDP.

If a splintering LDP leads to Abe stepping down, either now or later, then Matsui and Nippon Ishin must deal with another prime minister, one likely to be less friendly.

Various LDP leaders are now garnering attention as possible successors to Abe. They include former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba, former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Internal Affairs Minister Seiko Noda. In Osaka, Ishiba, who is from Tottori Prefecture and has strong connections in the Kansai region, has already reached out to younger LDP members who are battling with Matsui and Nippon Ishin (some of whom are former LDP members).

How all of this plays out depends on what additional revelations there are about the Moritomo scandal. But in Osaka, as well as Tokyo, politicians and bureaucrats are running for cover, desperate to avoid a resurgent scandal most thought had long since been overcome.

When Victims of Wartime Rape Are Scorned

Paintings by Korean Comfort Women

As a long year of Japanese denial of Comfort Women history comes to a close, the New York Times ran a powerful op ed about the rape victims of Bosnia and the long-term shame associated with military rape. This piece is timeless and borderless explanation of how sexual violence affects women and why they remain silent. Japan's deniers ignore this psychic toll and the science of trauma. It is as if the Japanese Right wants to again feel powerful by denying the personhood, the humanity of women, girls and boys defiled by Imperial Japan's soldiers and officials.

As a UN Population Fund report in 2015 note:

Stigma is one of the biggest obstacles to improving the quality of life of survivors of sexual violence. Focusing the attention to the stigma against survivors of conflict-related sexual violence must be a priority for those who provide assistance to survivors.

And it is this stigma that Japan presses on each time it brushes off the Comfort Women as willing prostitutes. This is partly a pernicious campaign to compel the women's own compatriots to abandon them and partly antiquated thinking not shared by any of the "Western European and other States" at Japan is grouped with on the UN Population Fund's Executive Board.

When Victims of Wartime Rape Are Scorned

By Riada Asimovic Akyol, writer on gender, nationalism and religion and a Ph.D. candidate at Galatasaray University in Istanbul

New York Times, December 18, 2017

Last month, Human Rights Watch published a report confirming that Myanmar’s army is engaged in the mass rape of Rohingya Muslim women and girls as a tool of ethnic cleansing. That report was followed, last week, by an article from The Associated Press that established the same set of facts: the use of “sweeping and methodical” rape as a weapon of war.

I read both with tears in my eyes and disgust in my stomach. The reports, in all their horror — the dehumanizing gang rapes in front of family, the forced public nudity, the torture and sexual enslavement — all called to mind similar stories from my country, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

During the 1992-95 war in Bosnia, an estimated 20,000 to 50,000 women experienced brutal sexual violence, both inside and outside numerous “rape camps.” The largest number of these women, by far, were Bosnian Muslims. Rape was used systematically, with the aim of cultural extermination. The forced impregnation of Bosnian Muslim women by Serbian men was among the distinctive and repugnant genocidal strategies used by the Serbian military, policemen and members of paramilitary groups.

Today, there is no more war in Bosnia. But more than two decades after the fighting ended, it is the lingering effects of this wartime sexual violence that remain among our most open wounds. In the case of the Rohingya I worry especially for the future of the women who have suffered these mass rapes: They might be in the news for now, but as in Bosnia, could later end up marginalized, silenced and abandoned to their traumas, even by some members of their own community.

But not all of them. In 1993, when there was still active fighting in Bosnia, Ahmed Mesic, a renowned Bosnian theologist, Islamic jurist and Sufi sheikh, wrote an essay under the pseudonym Ahmed Nuruddin titled “Message to Raped Women.” His aim was to offer theological explanation and spiritual comfort and support.

In his message, Mr. Mesic declared that Bosnian women who had been raped should be considered “martyrs to the faith.” He emphasized that it was the responsibility of the community — and especially men — to show extra care, respect, support and solidarity toward these women. The message served as a powerful warning, grounded in Islam, against patriarchal tendencies in Bosnian society: Mr. Mesic criticized the lack of organized, institutional support for victims of rape, and didn’t shy away from slamming the Islamic community for not offering adequate care.

Health workers and war rape victims at the time welcomed the message from Mr. Mesic and other religious leaders: “The imam’s engagement and public condemnation of the perpetrators created a possibility for a new understanding of the victims,” wrote the scholar Inger Skjelsbaek.

If only the government and community had paid enough heed. Instead, in the years since, the experience of war rape victims in Bosnia has consisted primarily of pity or neglect, but also stigma. As part of research conducted by the United Nations Population Fund in 2015, two-thirds of participants described how they were subjected to condemnation, insults and humiliation as soon as their neighbors or friends or family members learned they’d been subjected to sexual assault. Who knows how many still remain silent about what they endured as a result.

Part of the problem is that after the war, Bosnia and Herzegovina, a country made up of three constituent ethno-national groups — Bosniaks, Serbs and Croats — has never managed to establish a common narrative about the recent past. Each ethnic group has its own competing nation-building project. Not one has room for rape victims.

“These women are not part of the collective memorialization, because they are seen as a reminder of the nation’s shame and defeat,” said Zilka Spahic-Siljak, a Bosnian scholar of gender, politics and religion and research associate at Stanford University. Honoring those who suffered wartime rape requires men to acknowledge that they were powerless to protect their nation, women and territory. As the scholar Janet Jacobs put it, remembering the suffering and honoring those who were raped during war is “antithetical to the project of nation building and ethnic pride,” which in Bosnia is very much still happening.

We’re still a very long way from any sort of justice for the Rohingya, let alone any kind of nation-building effort. The Myanmar government continues to deny its crimes against humanity, and the future of the Rohingya as a people remains unknown. So much for “never again.”

But there are signs that the Rohingya women who have been raped could face a future not unlike those who were victims of sexual assault in my country years ago. The Associated Press told the story of a woman in Myanmar whose husband had responded to the news of an attack on his pregnant wife by demanding to know why she had not run away, and threatened to abandon her. Human Rights Watch reported that many Rohingya women, even those who have fled to Bangladesh, are not seeking post-rape treatment because of stigma. Other victims of mass rape, such as the Nigerian women and girls raped by Boko Haram and Nigerian security forces, or Yazidi women enslaved by the barbaric Islamic State also potentially face similar fates.

What Bosnian women and others who suffered wartime rape need is a space and means to tell their own stories, which could cast them not only as victims but also as survivors, said Ms. Spahic-Siljak. Such a change could create a place for them in the national narrative of rebuilding. Unfortunately, Mr. Mesic’s note to the women in his community has been largely forgotten over the past two decades, even in Bosnia, and his message is as relevant as ever today.

Mr. Mesic emphasized that we must respect and honor women raped in war. As an Islamic scholar, he also reminded his audience, citing Islamic verses, that the perpetrators of the crimes against them would be punished, and the victims would be specially rewarded by God. God, in other words, would be with those who are suffering, sooner or later.

It seems that many Rohingya victims feel the same way today. “They wanted to wipe us out from the world,” a Rohingya victim of torture and gang rape said to The A.P. “They tried very hard, but Allah saved us.”

Many victims in Bosnia also felt that God was with them, and this helped them survive. But most mortals, from the international community to members of their own communities, were not with them — at least not enough. The same tragedy that took place in Bosnia should not recur with the Rohingya. The genocide must be stopped, and the victims of sexual violence should be given the support, the rights and the respect that they deserve.

Tracing the decline of a beautiful Japan

click to order

By Michael Hoffman, author of In the Land of the Kami: A Journey into the Hearts of Japan and Other Worlds

THE JAPAN TIMES, June 17, 2017

Two irreconcilable views of patriotism were given their classic expressions by two Englishmen: Lord Byron, the poet (1788-1824), and Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer and jack-of-all-literary-trades (1709-84). Byron said, “He who loves not his country can love nothing.” And Johnson: “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s patriotism is unabashed and fervent. He is doing all in his very considerable power to transmit it, via education, to the nation at large. His first stint as prime minister produced a revision to the Fundamental Law of Education in 2006 that charges schools with cultivating in children “an attitude that respects tradition and culture, and loves the nation and homeland that have fostered them.” He vowed at the time to “push ahead with education rebuilding that will … nurture people with vision and hope and build a dignified and beautiful country.”

Japan’s beauty was beautifully sung by the country’s most ancient poets, those of the sixth, seventh and eighth centuries whose work was anthologized in the famous Manyoshu collection, dating to the latter half of the eighth century. Among the poets were emperors and subjects, courtiers and lowly soldiers, men and women. Their shared love for their country at times seems almost erotic. The very mountains love one another: “Mount Kagu strove with Mount Miminashi/ for the love of Mount Unebi.” And in any human love, the nation seems ever present, a silent but indispensable third party: “On the vast lake of Omi/ you boatmen that come rowing/ close by the shore,/ ply not too hard your oars …/ lest you should startle into flight/ the birds beloved of my dear husband!” So sang Empress Yamato-hime, consort of Emperor Tenji (reigned 661-71).

As the Manyoshu era faded, so did patriotism. Warriors supplanted aristocrats, military rule marginalized the Imperial house, and Japan itself, beginning in the late 12th century, crumbled into a chaos of warring feudal domains. Poetry persisted, but the self-sacrificing loyalty it celebrated was to one’s domain, one’s lord — not one’s country. There was no country.

Unification in 1600 under the Tokugawa Shogunate produced no upsurge of national pride. The official morality it enforced was Confucian — hardly a native plant. Modern Japanese patriotism is rooted in simmering opposition to Confucianism, tainted by its very foreignness, and to the shoguns, damnable as usurpers. (Buddhism, then in eclipse, scarcely counted.) Japan had an indigenous religion: Shinto, the “way of the gods.” And it had its rightful ruler: the sacred Emperor, descended from the Sun Goddess. Where were they? Shinto was nowhere, all but forgotten. The Emperor languished in dignified but impotent exile in Kyoto, the old capital.

Vanguard teacher of generations of patriots to come was Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801). Did he know what he would spawn, this most gentle and erudite of scholars? Among his intellectual progeny were the kamikaze pilots of World War II, who drew inspiration from his famous poem: “What is the spirit of Yamato’s (Japan’s) ancient land?/ It is like the wild cherry blossoms,/ radiant in the sun.” The kamikaze poet who wrote on the eve of his suicide mission, “If only we might fall/ like cherry blossoms in spring —/ so pure and radiant!” was surely thinking of him.

“Our august country,” wrote Norinaga, “is the august country of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu Omikami. It is the beautiful and magnificent august country superior to all other countries, so people’s hearts and actions, as well as the words they speak, are straightforward and elegant. In the past, the realm was governed peacefully and without incident, so that, unlike in other countries, there was not the least trace of anything bothersome or troubling. But then writing came over from China.”

Thus were the seeds of corruption sown. Japan ceased to be fully Japanese. It became quasi-Chinese. Following the way of the Chinese sages, it lost the way of the Japanese gods. Of them Norinaga wrote: “All things in this world, such as the changing of the seasons, the falling of the rain and the gusting of the wind, as well as the various good and bad things that happen to countries and people, all are entirely the august works of the gods. Among the gods there are good ones and bad ones. … They cannot be understood with ordinary reason. … The fact that many things go against ordinary reason, such as good people meeting misfortune and bad people prospering, is all because of the deeds of these gods. In foreign countries, though, there is no correct transmission of the age of the gods, so they do not understand this.”

In short: A “beautiful and magnificent august country” is one thing; the happiness of people is something else altogether and, in fact, quite beside the point. The gods are the gods — there is no holding them to account. The people’s lot — the people’s joy, if only they know it — is to know the gods as best they can be known, and to serve them as best they can be served. For Norinaga’s disciples of the first two generations after his death, that meant “revere the Emperor and expel the barbarians” — a truculent challenge to the tottering shogunate which, having usurped Imperial rule, now stood helpless against the ever more boldly intruding Western “barbarians.”

Norinaga with his writing brush, his disciples with their swords, would gladly have thrust Japan back to its Manyoshu past, if only they could. They couldn’t, of course. The Meiji Era (1868-1912) that began with an Imperial Restoration modernized, industrialized, capitalized and militarized Japan far more than it “restored” it, if restoration means return to a pristine state. Norinaga’s ideal was the misty “land of the gods.” Meiji’s was “rich country, strong army.”

And Abe’s? He, perhaps no less than his Meiji predecessors, is remaking Japan — into a “dignified and beautiful country,” he says, vague as always as to what he means; hopefully not a neo-“land of the gods.” “Land of the gods” makes for pretty mythology but — as history teaches at such cost — very ugly politics.

Is this the scandal where the LDP pushes Abe under the bus?

Japanese high-level crony capitalism from schools to the maglev trains that benefits personal friends, and not Abe's district or national voters. This is a change in Japan's political dynamics that could be trouble for the prime minister.

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