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.

New Cabinet State Ministers and Affiliations

Vice Ministers

On October 2, 2018, Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe reshuffled his Cabinet. Of the 25 State Ministers in his Fifth Cabinet, six (24%) were reappointed from the previous Cabinet and 19 (76%) are new. Tsukasa AKIMOTO previously a State Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, was re-appointed as the State Minister of the Environment. 

Most the State Ministers are conservative nationalists. 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.

Nineteen (76%) State Ministers are members of the Shinto League, while sixteen (64%) are affiliated with Nippon Kaigi. 

Four State Ministers are members of neither League. Emiko TAKAGAI, State Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare is the only LDP member affiliated with neither.

The other three are from the Komeito Party: Masayoshi HAMADA, State Minister for Reconstruction; Tomoko UKISHIMA, State Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology; Yoshinori OGUCHI, State Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare. Komeito Party 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. 

October 18th was the Autumn Festival at Yasukuni Shrine. Although all the Cabinet Ministers refrained from visiting, we determined from public postings that eight State Ministers (32%) visited. Yasukuni is a Shinto Shrine (a form of animism) located in central Tokyo established in 1869 to anchor the new, modernizing Japanese state to a religion and an ideology. It “militarized” the religion. This Shrine is associated with the discredited “state Shinto” created to justify the Emperor-centric, military state. Many war criminals are enshrined there. Thus, visiting the Shrine is a controversial for politicians and bureaucrats. 

Although Abe appointed only two female State Ministers in his previous Cabinet, this time he increased the number to five female State Ministers (20%): Yukari SATO, State Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications; Toshiko ABE, State Minister for Foreign Affairs; Emiko TAKAGAI, State Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare; Yoshihiko ISOZAKI, State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry.

★ New cabinet member
❇︎ Position as State Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism in Abe’s 4th Cabinet

Position	First Name	Last Name	Shinto League	Nippon Kaigi	Yasukuni Visit (10/18)
State Minister for Reconstruction	Keiichiro	TACHIBANA★	✔
State Minister for Reconstruction	Masayoshi	HAMADA
State Minister of Cabinet Office	Akira	SATO★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of Cabinet Office	Ryosei	TANAKA	✔	✔
State Minister of Cabinet Office	Kazuyuki	NAKANE	✔		✔
State Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications	Junji	SUZUKI★		✔
State Minister of Internal Affairs and Communications; State Minister of Cabinet Office	Yukari	SATO★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of Justice	Hiroshi	HIRAGUCHI★	✔	✔
State Minister for Foreign Affairs	Toshiko	ABE★	✔
State Minister for Foreign Affairs	Masahisa	SATO		✔
State Minister of Finance	Kenichiro	UENO	✔	✔
State Minister of Finance	Keisuke	SUZUKI★	✔
State Minister of education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology	Keiko	NAGAOKA★	✔	✔
State Minister of education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology; State Minister of Cabinet Office	Tomoko	UKISHIMA★
State Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare	Yoshinori	OGUCHI★
State Minister of Health, Labour and Welfare	Emiko	TAKAGAI★
State Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries	Yasuhiro	OZATO★	✔	✔
State Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries	Shuichi	TAKATORI★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry	Yoshihiro	SEKI★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry; State Minister of Cabinet Office	Yoshihiko	ISOZAKI★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism	Takashi	OTSUKA★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism; State Minister of Cabinet Office; State Minister for Reconstruction	Ichiro	TSUKADA★	✔	✔	✔
State Minister of the Environment	Minoru	KIUCHI★	✔	✔
State Minister of the Environment; State Minister of Cabinet Office	Tsukasa	AKIMOTO❇︎	✔	✔
State Minister of Defense; State Minister of Cabinet Office	Kenji	HARADA★	✔

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 ★	✔	✔

Constitutional revision in Japan by 2020?

Emperor Hirohito signing
1947 Constitution

Don’t count on it

EastAsiaForum, 13 September 2018

by Michael Cucek, Adjunct Professor of Political Science and History at Temple University Japan and an Adjunct Professor of Social Science at Waseda University.

Revision or amendment of the 1947 US-drafted Constitution of Japan has been the aim of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s existence since the day it was founded. Yet in 60 years of nearly unbroken rule, the party has failed to table a single draft proposal for a constitutional amendment.

Scepticism is justified regarding the vow Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made to Nippon Kaigi — a group that advocates constitutional revision — that before the opening ceremony of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games, he would lead the National Diet and the people to vote for the first amendment of the post-war constitution.

Abe has advantages in this endeavour that his previous Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidents did not. His LDP–Komeito ruling coalition holds over two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives and has held on to this supermajority the coalition through two successive elections. Together with allied micro-parties, independents and revision-sympathetic conservatives of the Ishin no Kai party, the ruling coalition also secured a two-thirds supermajority in the House of Councillors (the upper house) in 2016.

These two supermajorities guarantee the first two requirements for the passage of a constitutional amendment: a more than two-thirds vote of approval in both houses of the Diet.

None of Abe’s projected opponents in the scheduled September 2018 LDP presidential election are noted opponents of revision. Indeed, former defence minister and LDP secretary-general Shigeru Ishiba, Abe’s most viable opponent in an intra-party power struggle, desires much more radical revisions than Abe and his allies have been considering.

Crucially for a party driven by factionalism, the LDP’s internal constitutional revision apparatus is in the grasp of Abe loyalists. An overlooked achievement was Abe’s wresting the chairmanship of the LDP Headquarters for the Promotion of Revision of the Constitution away from Hajime Funada. Funada had used control of the revision committee as means of hobbling the initiatives of his fellow party members. Buoyed by the great victory in the October 2017 election, Abe shoved Funada aside, replacing him with a more senior and supportive leader: Hiroyuki Hosoda, the head of Abe’s own faction within the LDP.

But things are not so sanguine outside the Party. A unique feature of Abe’s years in power has been a lack of voter enthusiasm for his policies. While public opinion poll numbers in support of the Abe cabinet have fluctuated in between 40 and 60 per cent — remarkably high for any Japanese administration, particularly one in its sixth year — the numbers supporting his administration’s policies have almost never risen above 50 per cent. These approval ratings usually hover in the mid-30s, with most voters either doubtful about or actively opposed to constitutional change. Expending time and effort justifying changes has proved counterproductive for Abe: support for policy proposals has consistently declined the more that Abe and his lieutenants have tried to explain them.

The combination of these two phenomena — initial low support for Abe policies and declining support for those policies over time — seems deadly for constitutional revision. Article 96 of the constitution requires a national referendum to be held on any proposed amendment or revision, and a strict majority of votes must be in favour of the proposal for it to pass. Any significant amendment will start out with less than 50 per cent support, if the history of the Abe cabinet is any guide, meaning that it will have an essentially zero chance of surviving the referendum process. And polling has shown that at least 60 per cent of voters do not want the constitution altered under Abe.

Of the four main constitutional revision proposals that Abe and his allies have considered, one (the emergency powers revision) is seen as too controversial and has been shelved. Two others (free education through high school and the assignment of at least two senators to each House of Councillors electoral district) are matters of legislation, not constitutional revision. Indeed, the senator assignment issue was resolved by legislation in the recently concluded Diet regular session.

This leaves the proposal to add a sentence to Article 9 — the Peace Article — constitutionalising the Japan Self-Defense Forces. This is the amendment proposal that many voters fear.

First, this proposal is completely unnecessary. The Self-Defense Forces are broadly admired, and their constitutionality is accepted by nearly every part of Japan’s political spectrum. Second, putting the amendment to the voters could backfire spectacularly. A ‘No’ vote in the first ever constitutional revision referendum would force Abe’s immediate resignation. It would also bury, possibly for perpetuity, further attempts at revision.

Finally, a rejection would be the equivalent of finding that the Self-Defense Forces are unconstitutional. Abe has testified that his government would ignore a referendum rejection and continue to consider the Self-Defense Forces constitutional, whatever the voters say. But given that a rejection would force his resignation, he and his team would not be in charge to make that decision.

Nevertheless, Abe promised at a conference in August that he would add the extra sentence to Article 9. What is more, he said he wanted the amendment proposal through the Diet by the end of 2018.

Abe’s speech triggered a lot of speculation about his intentions. The conventional wisdom is that Abe is averse to career-ending challenges. His ignominious premature exit from his first term as prime minister in 2007 made him a more cautious and patient radical. He does not succumb to time pressures and never takes any stance on which his side does not have an overwhelming chance of prevailing.

The question revolves therefore around what Abe means when he says he ‘wants’ to have a constitutional amendment before the year is out. We all ‘want’ many things, most of which we cannot have. Abe’s most fervent supporters want a constitutional amendment, now. Abe seems to have merely been playing to the crowd.

Besides, Abe knows of a precedent on pushing against public opinion — one he does not want to follow. In 1960, Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi staked his premiership on a deeply unpopular renewal of the Japan–US Security Treaty. Kishi lost power because of his commitment to deliver the renewal. Abe is not likely to follow in his grandfather’s self-sacrificial path — not for a promise that the LDP has failed to honour for 63 years.

Japan’s constitutional rebirth or reincarnation?

By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. APP Member, Japan Times, May 13, 2017

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has boldly promised to revise the Constitution by 2020, to coincide with the Tokyo Summer Olympics, saying “That will be a year when a newly reborn Japan begins to move strongly forward.” However, the public doesn’t share his enthusiasm.

In terms of revising the Constitution, opposition is highest (50 percent) in the Asahi poll, followed by Nikkei’s 46 percent, Kyodo’s 37 and NHK’s 34. Support for revision ranges from 60 percent in the Kyodo poll (combining “necessary” or “somewhat necessary”) to 45 percent according to Nikkei, 43 percent from NHK (down 15 percent from 2002) and 41 percent in the Asahi. The Asahi Shimbun also reports that half oppose any revision at all under Abe.

For the war-renouncing Article 9, Asahi reports 63 percent as being opposed to revision; NHK gives 57 percent and Kyodo 47 percent. Those in favor of revising Article 9 range from 49 percent in the Kyodo poll to 29 percent in the Asahi and NHK’s 25 percent, down from 30 percent in 2002. NHK also reported that 82 percent found Article 9 very or somewhat useful for maintaining peace and security. Regarding the Self-Defense Forces, NHK found that 62 percent regard their existence as constitutional while 11 percent don’t, and 87 percent think that Japan is currently threatened, especially by North Korea and China.

Public attitudes may be discrepant, but Abe has an unprecedented opportunity to secure the two-thirds approval he needs in both houses of the Diet to set the stage for a public referendum, in which he would need only a simple majority to realize his long-standing dream.

The referendum law stipulates that a simple majority of votes cast can pass a revision, but it does not specify a minimum turnout of voters to validate a plebiscite. For example, revisions could be approved with the support of about 25 percent of eligible voters — about what the Liberal Democratic Party garners in national polls, in which turnout recently has hovered at just over half of eligible voters.

Abe hopes that this legacy project can be achieved by 2020, and with the “help” of Beijing and Pyongyang he might just pull it off. Coalition partner Komeito seems on board, but may prove difficult if Abe pushes for more on security than he is currently revealing.

Abe explained that he won’t get rid of Article 9, the provision of the Constitution that has talismanic significance for many Japanese despite successive LDP-led governments reinterpreting it over the decades to ease constitutional constraints on the SDF. These efforts culminated in the April 2015 U.S.-Japan Defense Guidelines and later that summer in Abe’s collective self-defense legislation. That sequencing says a lot about Abe’s priorities, in that he sealed the deal with Washington first in a manner that subordinated the Diet’s role.

Abe hopes to add a proviso to Article 9 that would acknowledge the constitutionality of the SDF. In his opinion, it is deplorable that some constitutional scholars have cast doubts about whether the SDF are constitutional; they cite paragraph 2, which explicitly prohibits maintaining any armed forces or war potential. Whether they recognize the SDF or not, nearly all of Japan’s constitutional scholars believe Abe’s collective self-defense (CSD) legislation is unconstitutional. During Diet deliberations about the CSD legislation, even the LDP’s handpicked constitutional scholars raised such doubts — awkward testimony that nevertheless failed to deter Abe from his mission.

But since Abe is seeking clarification about the SDF in Article 9, shouldn’t he also include specific reference to the right to CSD and the three vague principles that ostensibly constrain Japan’s military actions? These principles grant the PM considerable discretionary authority to deploy the military if he alone determines that: 1) Japan or a country closely related with Japan is under military attack, which poses a threat to Japan’s existence and puts Japanese nationals’ lives, freedom and their right to pursuit of happiness in clear danger; 2) there are no other means to overcome the above-mentioned danger so as to ensure the existence of Japan and the protection of Japanese nationals, and; 3) the military engagement is limited to the “minimum necessary use of force.”

In focusing debate on declaring the SDF constitutional, Abe is avoiding the much more contentious issue of CSD and the new powers he gained to deploy troops overseas at Washington’s behest.

I have heard non-Japanese advocates of revision suggest that retaining Article 9 keeps Japan subordinate to the U.S., and thus it is crucial to revise it so that Japan can become an autonomous sovereign nation. I have no beef with Japan revising the Constitution according to the principles laid out in Article 96 for doing so. I think it is preferable to pursue formal revision rather than surreptitiously bypass such procedures as Abe has done. But will revising Article 9 really give Japan more autonomy? It seems more like Abe is kowtowing to the U.S. in order to bolster an alliance in which Japan gets its marching orders from Washington.

The other trial balloon released by Abe was his proposal to make free higher education a constitutional right, pandering to the opposition and public opinion to offset concerns about amending Article 9. But surely Abe must have more up his sleeve than this gimmick if Japan is to be reborn in 2020.

It is significant that Abe’s May 3 announcement was delivered at a Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi) event. This ultra-conservative lobby group is extremely influential in the Diet and its members have dominated Abe’s cabinets. They want to restore the Emperor’s political power and revise Article 24 of the Constitution, which protects gender equality and other individual rights. These conservatives argue disingenuously that gender equality is undermining traditional values and is thus responsible for Japan’s current social ills. Defining family values and obligations based on their antediluvian preferences would impose conformity at odds with Japan’s growing diversity and prevailing norms and values, while trampling on many citizens’ human rights.

Looking back at the LDP’s 2012 draft constitution, I wonder if Abe will preside over Japan’s rebirth or a reincarnation of pre-1945 Japan? For example, this draft version imposes extensive obligations and duties on citizens; privileges public order over individual rights; seeks to remove the preamble based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; mandates respect for the national anthem and flag; allows the prime minister to declare a state of emergency and bypass the Diet; requires family members to help each other; and designates the Emperor as head of state.

This is what Abe means when he pledges to overturn the postwar order. The stakes are high as Japanese consider his backward-looking vision for the future.

The Abe Administration and The Japan Conference

click for photo source

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.

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.

Japan Conference from its own perspective

Japan Conference policy official speaks to the group’s objectives, influence upon Abe government

Akira Momochi

Nikkei, October 9, 2016, p. 12 

Provisional translation for academic use by APP

The Nikkei Shimbun interviewed recently Nihon University Professor Akira Momochi, a member of the Japan Conference’s policymaking committee, on the objective of the organization and its influence on the Abe Government.

Q: What is the objective of the Japan Conference [Nippon Kaigi]?

Momochi: Some people point out that we are trying to revert to the prewar [regime], but that is wrong. It is also [biased] to label “prewar” as “evil.” We campaign for stopping the rejection of the inherent virtues of the Japanese and for restoring their traditions.

Q: What are the characteristics [of the Japan Conference]?

Momochi: There used to be various conservative groups, but they had difficulty tapping into the younger generation. The Japan Conference has local chapters in 47 prefectures. We are rolling out “grassroot conservative campaigns,” such as collecting signatures and petitioning local assemblies, and have produced significant results. Recently, more young people are becoming members.

NB: A group of young American progressives with extensive political experience wrote a manifesto outlining how to oppose the Trump Administration. They modeled their advice on the success of the American Tea Party. Momochi's focus on local politics mirrors this manifesto, called Indivisible: A Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda: Former congressional staffers reveal best practices for making Congress listen. So much for "unique Japan."

Q: Is your campaign for constitutional revision spreading across the country?

Momochi: Supporters [for our constitutional revision campaign] have been steadily growing in numbers. The existing Constitution was drafted by the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces during the Occupation, and this fact was concealed back then. We need to revise the Constitution so that it caters to our needs today.

Q: A recent publication points out that the Japan Conference pulls the strings of the Abe government. Is this true?

Momochi: I want to ask those who make this argument the following question: Is there anyone inside the Abe government who thinks they are being manipulated by the Japan Conference? No. We don’t entertain such an impudent idea either. Those who are behind this plot must be developing the idea of overthrowing the Japan Conference, because they fear the growing momentum for constitutional revision. We have a membership of slightly less than 40,000. Other groups are far bigger than us.

Q: But a parliamentarians’ league that supports your organization is joined by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and many other influential politicians.

Momochi: Our parliamentarians’ group indeed has many influential people and incumbent cabinet ministers, but this holds true for other parliamentarians’ leagues. We would appreciate the Abe government’s implementing policies we want, but it is not necessarily aligned with us [on every corner]. That is why we struggle. Constitutional revision is one example. We want the government to hasten efforts, but that is not the case in reality.

Q: The statement issued on the 70th anniversary of the end of war contains the language “remorse” and sparked criticism of Abe from conservative critics.

Momochi: We understand that the criticism comes mainly from pundits who support ideological purity. We roll out “national campaigns,” so we understand Abe’s stance that needs to pay consideration to the reality. We continue to have high hopes on Abe

What are Shinzo Abe’s real three arrows?

looking old and worn and so 19th C

They are constitutional revision, security autonomy and Emperor worship. 

BY JEFF KINGSTON, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan.

SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES, JUL 2, 2016

In his campaign for the upcoming Upper House elections, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pussyfooting around his plans to revise the Constitution. He is keeping his cards close to his chest because polls have shown that voters oppose constitutional change. Instead, Abe is calling on voters to keep the faith with Abenomics, despite widespread consensus that it has been a dismal flop and has failed to revive the Japanese economy or improve household welfare.

The cat is well and truly out of the bag regarding this failure — on June 27, NHK announced that only 6 percent of voters polled think Abenomics is working well while only 26 percent favor constitutional revisions, and only 11 percent think it a priority. Even two-thirds of newbie voters aged 18-19 know Abenomics is a no-hoper according to a Kyodo poll taken in June. It gets worse: 70 percent of women voters in this cohort don’t expect much from Abenomics, taking the shine off his “womenomics” grandstanding. The good news for Abe is that these young voters are only marginally more interested in the elections than other voters, with just 56 percent expressing an intention to vote. So much for an enthusiastic response from the newly enfranchised!

Apparently Abe’s campaign strategy is based on trying to keep the voter-participation rate low, and on that score he has a good track record, driving it down to just over 50 percent in the last election in 2014. The reason he doesn’t want to upset the applecart of apathy is that low turnout gives the Liberal Democratic Party an advantage: His core constituencies turn out to vote and will do so again in large numbers now that they smell blood, in the form of the prospects of a two-thirds majority in both houses and the possibility of constitutional revision. The fact that almost half of all eligible voters don’t vote means that Abe’s LDP has been winning elections with less than 25 percent of the potential vote.

So this explains why Abe is focusing on his discredited Abenomics program, the “three arrows” of radical monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms. Who cares that representatives of leading industrial nations trashed it when they visited for the G-7 summit in May? They pointed out that the program really involves only one arrow: massive monetary easing. These leaders and virtually every sentient observer know that Abenomics is sputtering and is focused on monetary policy alone. A June Kyodo poll of all Upper House candidates running in the July 10 elections, including LDP candidates, reveals that 64.7 percent believe that Abenomics has not delivered, having failed to improve the economy. Business leaders are even more downbeat. If the LDP’s own candidates andmost voters are skeptical about Abenomics, why run a campaign on it?

The reason is that Abe needs to deflect attention away from the LDP’s plans to revise the Constitution. But those plans are hidden in plain sight and deserve more attention because the more the public knows about them, the more they might realize that thumbing their collective noses at the elections will hand Abe a historic opportunity to achieve his long-standing goal of overturning the postwar order. Voter disinterest is precisely what Abe is praying for so that he can rid the Constitution of pesky Western values such as civil liberties. He seeks to empower the state vis-a-vis citizens and eliminate the war-renouncing Article 9 that he and his supporters see as emasculating Japan, keeping the nation subordinate to the U.S.

Those who want to revise Article 9 are not all ultra-nationalist security hawks eager to make Japan the Great Britain of Asia. Many other pro-revision advocates point out the yawning gap between the apparent prohibitions on maintaining armed forces and the existence of Japan’s well-equipped armed forces — the country now has a larger navy than the U.K. Some argue that this breach discredits the Constitution and that Abe’s reinterpretation, which would allow for Japan to engage in collective self-defense, further subverts it. So, some argue, if Article 9 is essentially already being ignored and the threat of conflict in Asia has become more real, why do a majority of Japanese oppose revision?

Japanese pacifism draws on the trauma of World War II and the deep scars it left on the nation — memories that have been passed down through families, displayed at museums, taught at schools, shown in documentaries and commemorated at annual rites such as those in Okinawa, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Citizens worry that the “Abe Doctrine” will endanger the country, and that beefing up the alliance with the U.S. may lead Japan into a war at Washington’s behest, rather than safeguarding the country’s national security.

Japan is basically a one-party system, and there is little reason to believe that the Diet would act as resolutely as the British Parliament did a few years back in scuttling Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to provide military support to the U.S. in Syria. Under Abe, the premiership has only grown in power, and his national security council and new secrecy and security legislation have strengthened his hand in a system where checks and balances are already weak. Japanese citizens are wary of entrusting Abe or any leader with too much discretionary power, but it is a fait accompli that they can do little about in elections, given the imbalance of power between the LDP and other parties.

Hence, Article 9 is seen by many to have residual symbolic power, manifesting pacifist sentiments as a collective norm. Across Japan, this idealism is also represented by the multitudes of demonstrators who gathered outside the Diet last summer to denounce Abe’s security legislation. Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs) organized popular protests against the secrecy and security legislation and has been involved in coordinating opposition parties for the Upper House elections. They decry the intensifying crisis in constitutional government and the LDP’s bait-and-switch campaign strategy aimed at bamboozling voters.

If the LDP wins big, Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), the nation’s largest and most influential right-wing organization, will lobby Abe’s Cabinet to deliver on their shared vision. The consonance of interest between Abe and Japan Conference is clear in that a majority of his Cabinet ministers are members. It has clout in the Diet where 39 percent of all legislators — 281 in total — are members. This will enable it to press ahead with their real goals: constitutional revision, security autonomy and Emperor worship. These are the three arrows that Abe really cares about.

Is Japan's Rightwing vulnerable to foreign pressure? Unlikely

Can foreign media pressure force changes in Japan?

BY PHILIP BRASOR
SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES, JUN 25, 2016

Former Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara’s first-person “biography” of late Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, “Tensai” (“Genius”), remains atop best-seller lists. It is interesting to note that when Tanaka was alive Ishihara berated him as a crude opportunist. The years have obviously tempered his view, or perhaps Ishihara’s own political career helped him appreciate how an uneducated hick without connections could become the most powerful man in Japan.

The incident that caused Tanaka’s downfall, the 1970s Lockheed bribery scandal, received greater coverage overseas than it did in Japan, and one of Ishihara’s favorite themes as a public figure has been how Japan should resist foreign pressure and assert its position as a world power. Takashi Tachibana was the journalist most instrumental in exposing Tanaka’s money politics, but it was foreign press attention that made the former prime minister’s actions impossible to ignore — even in Japan.

A similar situation surrounds the rise of the right-wing lobbying group Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), which has received close scrutiny by the likes of the U.K. newsweekly The Economist, Australia’s ABC News and other prominent foreign media over the past year. The Japanese press has shown less interest.

In April, freelance journalist Osamu Aoki talked about “grass roots conservative movements” on TBS radio, and mentioned the overseas fascination with Nippon Kaigi, which counts among its 38,000 members Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, half his Cabinet and a good portion of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Local reporters tend to think of Japan Conference as a cult, and thus some have characterized the foreign opinion that Abe and his government are “under the thumb of Japan Conference,” as Aoki put it, as being akin to conspiracy theory. Nevertheless, citing how the foreign press helped advance the prosecution of Tanaka, Aoki says Japan Conference could be another big story the Japanese press is missing “even though it’s right there under its nose,” and so he plans to publish a book on the organization next month.

If Aoki is hoping for a scoop, he’s too late. In April, a writer named Tamotsu Sugano published “Nippon Kaigi no Kenkyu” (“Nippon Kaigi Research”) which sold 126,000 copies in less than two months. The book purports to be the most detailed study of the group ever written, but its popularity is chiefly due to Japan Conference’s reaction. The organization’s founder, Yuzo Kabashima, wrote to Sugano’s publisher, Fusosha, asking it not to print the book. Fusosha ignored the request. Weekly magazine Shukan Post then called present and past members of Japan Conference asking why they hated the book so much. Most refused to comment. One professor who belongs to another nationalist organization told the magazine that Sugano’s report is “beyond the pale,” a “pile of lies” based on anonymous sources. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he is quoted as saying. “Whatever I say will benefit the book.” That seems to be exactly what happened.

Interviewed on the web news channel DemocraTV, Sugano admitted that he is ideologically right-of-center and did not write his book “to be critical” of Japan Conference. He just noticed that the mainstream press was not covering the group. The book is based mainly on a series of articles he wrote for the Japanese Harvard Business Review, which attracted no attention from Japan Conference when they were originally posted online. “Japan Conference members are old men and women who don’t use the internet,” he said. When the book was slated for print publication, Japan Conference finally took notice, but it thought Fusosha was a right-leaning imprint and could thus be easily persuaded. Sugano says Fusosha publishes anything “that can make money for them.” Their biggest-selling book in the same format is a study slamming the nuclear power industry, hardly a conservative position.

Sugano chronicles the group’s origins in the early ’70s. Several founding members belonged to the student wing of the religious group Seicho no Ie at the time, and its main purpose was to counterbalance the leftist student movement. After graduation, this group established its own right-wing organization, Nihon Seinen Kyogikai, which eventually merged with another like-minded group in 1977. This organization morphed into Nippon Kaigi in 1997.

Japan Conference’s formidable organizational skills have influenced government policy, especially with regard to the legality of the national anthem and flag, the definition of the “Japanese family,” the direction of education and the Constitution, which they want to change. But Japan Conference is not “conservative” in Sugano’s eyes. Its interests are purely reactionary in that they were formulated in response to left-wing interests.

So he interrogates its motives. Six lofty goals are listed on Japan Conference’s website. The first is to uphold Japan’s “beautiful traditions,” which he interprets as reestablishing a strict social hierarchy under the Emperor. Japan Conference says it wants to create an education system that “fosters a Japanese sensibility,” which Sugano says means getting rid of the teachers union, Nikkyoso, the Japanese right’s bete noire. Japan Conference aspires to contribute to world peace, which means elevating the Self-Defense Forces to the position of a national military and, according to Sugano, “bullying peace-loving liberals.”

The author believes none of these ideas merit deep thought. Except for the Self-Defense Forces’ change, most citizens would probably find them regressive. In fact, that’s the reason Seicho no Ie, which now boasts 520,000 followers, has come out against the LDP in next month’s election. Because of Sugano’s book, the religious group felt compelled to explain that it rejected politics in the ’80s, and told Shukan Post that it doesn’t support the present administration or Japan Conference, which is “stuck in the past.”

Sugano doesn’t think Japan Conference is as powerful as foreign media make them out to be, and he may be underestimating them. This lobbying group’s effectiveness lies in its ability to remain cloaked in anodyne sentiments. Sugano’s book reveals it still longs for a Japan that didn’t lose World War II — a country that doesn’t exist.

Nippon Kaigi and the Radical Conservative Project to Take Back Japan to the 1930s

Australian Broadcasting Corp. Lateline, 

December 2, 2015

By David McNeill who writes for The Independent and other publications, including The Irish Times and The Economist. An Asia-Pacific Journal editor, he is a coauthor of Strong in the Rain: Surviving Japan's Earthquake, Tsunami and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster (Palgrave Macmillan) and an APP member.
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The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 13, Issue. 48, No. 4, December 14, 2015

In September 2015, several hundred mainly foreign academics and journalists received unsolicited copies of two poorly written books from Japan, accompanied by a signed letter from politician Inoguchi Kuniko. "In East Asia, the regional history of the 20th century has been incorrectly distorted (sic) by some individuals due to their current domestic political ambitions,” said the letter. “I believe it is important for you, as a highly esteemed member of the academic and policy circles (sic), to look into the books which I am enclosing with this letter."

The first of the books, “History Wars,” published by the Sankei Shimbun, a conservative newspaper, said records of Japanese misconduct during World War II were exaggerated or false. China and South Korea have used these claims to wage a long battle in America to distort views of the war, with the goal of “weakening the US-Japan alliance,” it said. “Japan’s postwar governments have not only failed to wage an effective rebuttal against the propaganda maneuvers of Japan’s adversaries, but have also fallen witlessly into their…traps.”

In “Getting Over it! Why Korea Needs to Stop Bashing Japan,” Sonfa Oh, a naturalized Japanese academic originally from South Korea, argues that successive generations of Korean leaders have resorted to historical fabrication, and “capricious, opportunistic egoism” to damage Japan and its reputation around the world. Japanese rule of Korea from 1910–1945 was essentially benign, writes Oh. The Japan in both publications is cast as well meaning, stoic and endlessly forbearing in its dealings with its mendacious, two-faced neighbors.

The mass mail-shot is part of an occasionally clumsy but well-funded attempt to transform international perceptions of Japan. A campaign of “strategic communications,” with a budget of over half-a-billion dollars, has been launched to counter negative PR and cultivate a generation of pro-Japanese foreign commentators. Japanese embassies and consulates have been instructed to be more proactive in challenging perceived slights, such as foreign textbooks that stir the history pot. Brookings, Carnegie, CSIS and other think tanks have been given millions of dollars to promote Japan; millions more has gone to support chairs at Columbia, Georgetown and MIT universities.

At the same time, an informal list of friends and foes appears to have emerged. Outside Japan, those considered allies include a small group of mainly US-based academics, journalists and rightwing bloggers. The foreign enemies list is topped by The New York Times, which neoconservatives have long seen as leftwing and anti-Japanese. The hundreds of foreign scholars who signed the 2015 Open Letter in Support of Historians in Japan, an attempt to counter the revisionist drift under the Abe administration, are also under suspicion. It is the letter that appears to have prompted the mailing.

The risk of overreach in this project is never far away. In one case, Japanese foreign ministry officials accused Germany’s largest business newspaper, Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung, of carrying pro-Chinese propaganda. Its Tokyo-based correspondent Carsten Germis wrote a widely circulated article lamenting what he called a crude government attempt to censor views it disliked. Dispatches of diplomats to the offices of history professors and publishers, and attempts to nudge foreign journalists away from academics critical of the government, have also triggered PR blowback.

The book campaign struck some, therefore, as naïve, at best. Did Inoguchi think that a few hundred pages of thin, selectively argued academic gruel might tilt a complex debate that has waged for years in favor of Abe style conservatism? The point, she insists, is to circulate ideas that “have not been represented” in the mainstream. “I felt I was in a position to work with others in enhancing views about what we have done since the war, as a new nation state,” she said. “It is not to justify anything,” she added, citing her own credentials as a fighter for women’s rights, in Korea and elsewhere.

Inoguchi’s decision to lend her imprimatur to the books was considered surprising. A political scientist and internationalist known for work on disarmament and gender issues, she had not been previously been linked with Japanese neo-conservatism. One clue to her apparent shift is found in her association with Nippon Kaigi, or the Japan Conference. Interviewed by telephone, Inoguchi said that she is a member of the Chiba Prefectural branch of the lobby group, but insists they part company on one issue: “If they try to justify the past, that is the point on which I disagree. I don’t try to rewrite history; it cannot be undone.”

Justifying the uncomfortable past — and recasting it for 21st Century Japan is, however, precisely the mission of Nippon Kaigi. The group’s charter lists six key goals: “respect the Imperial Family as the center of Japanese life;” nurture patriotism; promote a new Constitution “based on our nation’s true characteristics;” protect the sovereignty and honor of the nation’s independence; nurture young people to grow up with pride and love for their nation; and establish a strong army and promote the nation's status abroad.

Box: Nippon Kaigi acts based on the following principles:

1) Respect the Imperial Family, the center of a unified Japan, and nurture compatriotism.

2) Promote a new Constitution based on our nation's true characteristics.

3) Protect the sovereignty and honor of our independent state and realize responsible politics that serve peace and order.

4) Revive tradition in education and nurture young people to grow up with pride and love for their nation.

5) Cultivate a spirit to protect the nation and to provide it with enough defensive power to secure its safety and contribute to world peace.

6) Widen the understanding of the world, aim to co-exist (with others) and contribute to promoting the nation's status in the global community and (to building) friendship (with other nations).

Source: Nippon Kaigi

In practice, says Tawara Yoshifumi, who heads the nonprofit group Children and Textbooks Japan Network 21, which monitors neo-conservative movements, this is a shopping list of revisionist causes: applaud Japan’s wartime campaign to “liberate” Asia from Western colonialism; rebuild the armed forces, instill patriotism among students brainwashed by “leftwing” teachers and revere the Emperor as he was worshipped before the calamity of World War II.

“They have trouble accepting the reality that Japan lost the war,” explains Kobayashi Setsu, a leading constitutional scholar and former Nippon Kaigi member. Kobayashi says the group is run by people who want to revive Japan’s prewar Meiji Constitution, which served as the basic law before it was replaced during the US-led Allied Occupation between 1945 and 1952. Indeed, some, he says, are descendants of the people who started the war and are nostalgic for Japan’s great power status.

Nippon Kaigi’s platform is rooted in profound resentment about the postwar settlement. Its supporters say the liberal Constitution, with its “masochistic” education system, has emasculated Japan. They despise the so-called victory justice meted out at the Tokyo war crimes trials and the pacifist clause that neutered the country’s armed forces. Hyakuta Naoki, Nippon Kaigi sympathizer, bestselling author and former governor of NHK, Japan’s public service broadcaster, expressed some of these core sentiments during a now infamous speech in 2014.

Campaigning for Tamogami Toshio, the ex-Air Self-Defense Force chief of staff who was running for Tokyo governor, Hyakuta called the March 1945 firebombing of Tokyo and and the incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which collectively killed perhaps 300,000 people, “cruel massacres.” The Tokyo war crimes trial, he said, was “conducted to cover up those atrocities.” It wasn’t only the Japanese who committed war crimes, and there was no reason to teach such things to children, he said. “I want to first teach children what a wonderful nation Japan is.”

The drive to rewrite not just the history of World War II, but exhume the foundations laid down by the Occupation during the years after, naturally invites serious tensions with Japan’s US sponsor. In April 2015, for example, Prime Minister Abe Shinzo delivered a speech to both the US Senate and House of Representatives — the first by a Japanese leader — lauding deepening trade ties and the military alliance with America. The talk, fine-tuned for his American audience by speechwriter Taniguchi Tomohiko, cast Abe as a defender of strongdemocratic principles, a leader with “deep repentance” for the “lost dreams of young Americans” who died fighting Japan in World War II.

Conspicuously missing, noted veteran Japan watcher Gavan McCormack, were the core Abe values that Congress could hardly be expected to share: “take back Japan,” “cast off the postwar regime” and revise the U.S.-imposed Constitution; teach “correct” history to make the country’s youth proud and “revere the spirits of Japan’s war dead,” including those convicted as war criminals. Washington seems unaware of these contradictions, or is inclined to overlook them in return for Abe’s promise of greater military cooperation and support for TPP.

Much of the far-right agenda in Japan slips past American politicians, says Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a professor of modern Japanese history at Australian National University. “They don’t really see how this will play out in East Asia because they need the U.S. bases (in Japan),” she says. “The Abe administration doesn’t think Japan did anything wrong in the war — they just think it was unfortunate that they lost.”

Neoconservative values increasingly seep into the core of Japanese political life. The latest salvo comes in the form of a panel, reporting directly to Abe that will probe the verdicts of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (1946–1948). The verdicts, which condemned Japan’s six wartime leaders to death, were “based on a poorly constructed” perception of history, said Inada Tomomi, chairman of the Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council.

Abe has already partially satisfied a key demand of his supporters — that Japan end the shameful apology diplomacy of the postwar years. The nation’s gold standard mea culpa, issued by socialist prime minister Murayama Tomiichi in 1995, has been overlaid by a carefully worded but ambiguous statement in which Abe stopped short of offering his own words of remorse but said Japan “must not let…generations to come…be predestined to apologize.”

The prospect that radical conservatives might dismantle Japan’s entire postwar political architecture no longer looks far-fetched. The LDP has proposed changes to virtually all 103 articles of the 1947 constitution that would tip the balance away from individual rights and toward duties to the state. They have “reinterpreted” the Constitution to expand the nation’s military role abroad. Nationalists in the Cabinet have repeatedly suggested that much of the accepted narrative of World War II, complete with its grim catalogue of war atrocities, be wished away The education ministry has mandated this year that school textbooks must reflect the government position on history and territorial issues.

The blueprint for the next stage in the revolution was laid out to an estimated 11,000 supporters in Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan hall on November 10th, 2015. The organizers of Utsukushii Nihon no Kenpo wo Tsukuru Kokumin no Kai (People's association for creating a Constitution for beautiful Japan), claim to have collected signatures from nearly 4.5 million people, including 422 Diet members, calling for a national referendum in the summer of 2016. The declared aim is to restore traditional family values, and strengthen Japan’s defenses. Speaker after speaker warned about the rise of China and the decline of the United States. “Japan faces its worst crisis” since the war but the constitution has “hobbled” the country, said Hyakuta.

Among those listening was Eto Seiichi, a special adviser to Abe, ex-education minister Shimomura Hakubun, Takeo Hiranuma, the head of the parliamentary league of Nippon Kaigi, and lawmakers Arimura Haruko and Mihara Junko. The chair was conservative journalist Sakurai Yoshiko, a key figure in the drive to get 10 million signatures. Her status is recognition, says Tomomi Yamaguchi, an anthropologist at Montana State University, that changing the attitudes of women, many of whom admire Japan’s long-standing pacifism, will be crucial. Abe himself sent a prerecorded message in which he said the “time had come” to seek a Constitution suitable for the 21st century.”

About a third of the Diet and well over half of Abe’s 19-member Cabinet support Nippon Kaigi. All are members of its parliamentary league. Abe is its “special adviser.” The group has more than 230 local chapters, around 38,000 fee-paying members and a network that reaches deep into the government. Its members or affiliates include former heads of large corporations; university presidents, Self-Defense Force chiefs of staff,several party chiefs and at least one former chief justice, who chaired the group for several years.

Despite this impressive firepower, determining the group’s exact influence is difficult. The country’s media mostly shies away from covering them, says Sugano Tamotsu, a journalist and researcher. Sugano believes its most important achievement has been to unite right wing movements under a like-minded program. “Throughout 40 years of history,” Sugano says, “it has been sending almost the same message and focusing on the same priority: educating the young generation.”

Nippon Kaigi's signature drives have helped pass laws and implement legal changes in local councils and in the Diet, Yamaguchi says. They have helped banish much “left wing” teaching from schools and have brought back the tradition of singing the national anthem and standing for the Hinomaru flag, both associated with Japan’s wartime empire. A key supporter is former Tokyo governor Ishihara Shintaro, who mandated punishment for teachers who refuse to stand, face the flag and sing the anthem during school ceremonies.

The group was formed in 1997, in reaction to what was arguably a high point in postwar liberal education, by politicians, intellectuals and religious figures. Its small Meguro office in Tokyo still shares a building with Seicho no Ie (House of Growth), a right-wing religious cult and a key tributary of one of the two organizations that merged to form Nippon Kaigi, the Society to Protect Japan (Nihon wo Mamorukai) (the other was the People’s Conference to Protect Japan, or Nihon wo Mamoru Kokumin Kaigi). The publisher of Sonfa Oh's book is Tachibana Shuppan, which has links to the cult and the religious and political right.

A decade ago, the group collected 3.6 million signatures demanding revisions to the education law that would make it compulsory to teach children patriotism. The group wants Abe to continue to visit Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, though such pilgrimages are seen in much of Asia as an endorsement of the leaders enshrined there and their war aims. Abe triggered a major diplomatic row with South Korea and China when he last went in 2013. The group’s growing political heft is partly credited with increasingly unabashed displays of allegiance to the shrine — a record 168 Diet members visited during the spring festival of 2013.

Supporters have campaigned against anything that shows Japan’s wartime behavior in a bad light, bombarding exhibitions on war crimes, for example, with petitions and phone calls. A closely allied group is the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership. In the late 19th century, the country’s oldest religion, Shinto, was reinvented as a tool of state, serving as an ideology that helped mobilize Japanese to fight wars in the emperor’s name. In 2007, lobbying by the association and Nippon Kaigi helped to persuade the government to makeApril 29a national holiday in honor of wartime monarch Hirohito.

Even opponents are impressed at how radical conservatives have quietly transformed the landscape of Japanese politics. Nippon Kaigi accepts that “international and domestic events” – notably the rise of China and shifting public opinion - “have changed the national consciousness” and had a major impact onthe political beliefs of national and local politicians. “Such a change is one important factorin the light of implementing our basic principles,” it says. Another aim is to “co-exist and build friendship with other nations.” One of the contradictions of their success is that they might achieve exactly the opposite.