Kishida’s Cabinet: Deniers of Comfort Women, family politics, and mainly male
Chika Mori and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida comes from a family elite background that dominates the upper echelons of the political system under the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Hence, the new Cabinet – like usual – is mainly male, many are family dynastic ruling elites, and many members deny Comfort Women to seeking to exonerate the War Crimes of the past.
One can only imagine if the ruling political elites in Germany sought open revisionism and prayed to classified War Criminals. However, Japan gets a free pass. After all, America utilizes Japan to attack or contain other nations in Asia (America utilized US military bases in Japan during the Korean War and Vietnam War – while the containment of China and pressurizing the Russian Federation in Northeast Asia is important for political elites in Washington). Therefore, the political elites in Japan escape stern rebukes within the G7 group or from the European Union.
Cabinet members, including Katsunobu Kato, Hirokazu Matsuno, Yasutoshi Nishimura, Shunichi Suzuki, and others, belong to Nippon Kaigi. This right-wing organization and lobby group supports official visits to Yasukuni Shrine (political elites praying to classified War Criminals), supports nationalism and State Shinto, the Nanjing Massacre is fabricated or exaggerated, opposes the 1999 Gender Equality Law, denies the enforcement of Comfort Women during the war, and believes that 1946-48 War Crime Tribunals should be deemed illegitimate.
New York Times (concerning the late Shinzo Abe) said, “A U.S. Congressional Report on Japan-U.S. relations from early this year mentioned Nippon Kaigi as one of several organizations to which Mr. Abe has ties that believe that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.” This is standard fare in the noxious world of Japanese ultra-nationalism. So, too, are the goals of Nippon Kaigi.”
Many Cabinet members come from traditional political family elites who hold onto power. Even worse, several elites within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party are linked to families who utilized slavery during the war.
For example, Yoshimasa Hayashi is related to Akira Tawarada (great-grandson), who utilized Allied Prisoners of War via slave labor in several coal mines in the prefecture of Yamaguchi. Tara Aso (a powerful individual within the ruling party – and former prime minister) is another who comes from a family that utilized slave labor. This concerns mainly Koreans – but also approximately 300 Australians and British Prisoners of War (2 Dutch nationals also) were used in the Aso Mining Company. It is known that two Australians died during such brutal conditions and many Koreans perished.
Hence, the new Kishida Cabinet is a mixture of all the above. However, America is encouraging recent nationalist administrations to adopt a stronger stance against China and the Russian Federation. Therefore, the new Kishida Cabinet will be overtly male, full of individuals who deny that Comfort Women were forced, and important people within the ruling party that are linked to families that utilized slave labor during the war.
Not surprisingly, Japan is blighted by three mainly negative economic decades and over two decades of static wages. Despite this, Kishida wants to double the military budget – in the full knowledge of the huge mountain of debt that blights Japan. Therefore, expect little from the new Cabinet political elites of the ruling party – some are tainted with having associations with the Moonies (Unification Church) to supporting extreme nationalism via Nippon Kaigi – or both.
The late prime minister, Shinzo Abe, also came from a ruling elite family that sounds all too familiar. Hence, The Spectator says, “Coincidentally, Abe’s maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was the mastermind behind the economic enslavement of millions of Chinese for the industrial militarisation of Manchuria. Later, Kishi signed the declaration of war against the United States in 1941. After the war Kishi, an A-list war criminal, escaped prosecution and became a founder of the LDP, serving as prime minister from 1957 to 1960.”
The Kishida administration plays the anti-China and anti-Russian Federation cards. Hence, when viewing the beliefs of many leading Cabinet members concerning Nippon Kaigi, it is easy to understand why this is happening. Therefore, with America encouraging Japan to adopt anti-China and anti-Russian Federation policies, the division of Northeast Asia is growing.
Irrespective of Kishida’s final Cabinet – it will be overtly male and tainted by ruling family political elites and the nationalist angle concerning Nippon Kaigi.
G7 nations would condemn Germany if this state of affairs existed. Yet, Japan continues to get a free pass. Therefore, the Kishida administration resembles others – nothing unique in modern Japan – what a depressing reality!
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/shinzo-abe-and-the-long-history-of-japanese-political-violence
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