200 protest in Tokyo against APA Group over Nanjing Massacre book in hotels

When the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) regained power in December of 2012 it meant, not only the return of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe but his odd beliefs on history.   Abe like many of the LDP's members are historical revisionists and war crimes deniers.   This is especially true of Japan's military aggressions in the 1930's and the various war crimes committed during that time and through World War II.   For these men and women incidents like the Nanjing massacre,  comfort women and the execution of prisoners of war by the Imperial Army just didn't happen.  It's all part of a larger conspricy to undermine Japan.   That these beliefs persist into the 21 century is alarming.  Recently a Japanese hotel chain began placing  books written by the company's president in the rooms which deny the Nanjing massacre ever took place.

About 200 protesters marched through the streets of Tokyo’s Shinjuku district on Sunday carrying banners to protest a hotel chain under fire for books its president wrote denying the Nanjing Massacre in wartime China ever happened.
Tokyo-based hotel and real estate developer APA Group is at the centre of a furore over books by its founder and president, Toshio Motoya, which contain his revisionist views on history and are placed in every room of the company’s 400-plus APA Hotels.
Motoya, using the pen name Seiji Fuji, wrote of the Nanjing Massacre that “these acts were all said to be committed by the Japanese army, but this is not true.” He also denied stories of Korean women forced to work as prostitutes in wartime military brothels, the so-called “comfort women”.

Japan's Defense Minister Tomomi Inada Is What I Said She Was: A War Crimes Denier

A couple days ago I wrote that Japan's new Defense Minister was a war crimes denier and she has proven to be just that.  When asked at a press conference about the Nanjing massacre she wouldn't answer the question.  Any other government minister or politician from Europe would have acknowledged what had taken place and stated it shouldn't happen again. But not Tomomi Inada who offered up this line of b.s.

   When repeatedly asked whether Japan's World War II actions were acts of aggression or self-defense, Inada said, "I'm not in a position to express my personal opinion here," according to The Japan Times. She added that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe or Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga are the only ones who should express the government's official views.Her comment that Japan's actions during the war "depends on one's point of view" has sparked anger from neighboring South Korea and China.
Inada has become known for her regular visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war dead, including World War II leaders who were convicted of war crimes by Allied war tribunals.

Shinzo Abe Picks Defense Minister Whose A Historical Denier Surprised? Don't Be

So, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has chosen as Defense Minister a person who like him and a majority of the Liberal Democratic Party's members are war crimes deniers,  historical revisionists and deniers of actual war time Japan's military history.  Every August Tomomi Inada travels to Yasukuni shrine  to pray for Japan's war dead. The fact that 14 class war criminals are also interred there seems to escape them.  Reactions from South Korea and China are quite predictable as might expect having suffered tremendously under Japanese military occupation.  

Party members like Tomomi Inada deny that the Nanjing massacre ever took place or that the imperial army had sex slaves and conducted unnecessary medical experiments on people of various nationalities and  prisoners of war.    The optics of these rather stupid positions seem to escape the LDP and its membership.

Tomomi Inada, a former reform minister who most recently held one of the top posts in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, replaced Gen Nakatani as defense minister. She's the second female to fill the post.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe changed more than half of the 19-member Cabinet in a bid to support his economic and security policies, as well as his push for a revision of Japan's postwar constitution.
While keeping the economy as the top priority for the Cabinet, Abe said he would do his "utmost to achieve the revision during his term," which ends in September 2018.
A lawyer-turned-lawmaker, Inada is one of Abe's favorites. She is a regular at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals, a gesture seen by neighbors as an endorsement of Japan's militaristic past.

Abe says it is his duty to revise constitution

Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party gain a majority of seats in the recent upper house elections giving them, when including New Komeito and smaller nationalist parties a 2/3 majority. Abe's first turn as Prime Minister ended when he was forced to resign over his insistence of revising Japan's constitution to the detriment of other pressing issues facing the country.  Shinzo Abe and his allies think in the long term and now they may have achieved their long sought after goal. Restoring Japan to its pre World War II status as a major economic and military power.

Shinzo Abe is a member of a prominent Japanese political family his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi served as minister of munitions during World War II was arrested and briefly imprisoned, released and went on to become Prime Minister.  His views on the Second World War come through his grandfather a man he greatly admired.  Like many of his fellow travelers he believes history has distorted Japan's imperialist history starting with the occupation and annexation of Korea, the invasion of Manchuria and the rape of Nanjing to Japan's role in the war.  Never mind that many in his party and cabinet believe the rape of Nanjing never took place or that the imperial army never committed war crimes.  In 1974 a group of politicians and like minded supporters formed a group whose goal is to restore the dignity of  emperor and Japan following the humiliation of its defeat in World War II and the imposition of its pacifist constitution by the United States.  That group with  30,000 members is now called Nippon Kaigi.

      

Less than two days after winning that election Shinzo Abe has declared that the most import issue facing Japan isn't its declining birth rate, aging population or a struggling economy. No, the most important issue is the revision of the constitution. Thus restoring Japan's supposed loss of dignity and allow Japanese military forces to once again in engage in military adventurism.

An emboldened Shinzo Abe called Monday for debate on Japan’s pacifist constitution, which he said it was his “duty” to revise after scoring a strong win in weekend elections.

Voters backed the hawkish prime minister, despite a lacklustre economic performance, handing his Liberal Democratic Party and its allies control of more than half of the upper house of parliament.

Analysts say with the support of small nationalist parties, Abe may now have the numbers to push through a change to the constitutional bar on Japanese troops waging war.

“We have always set a goal of revising the constitution…that is my duty as president,” Abe said.

“But the party does not have more than two-thirds of seats in both chambers by itself, so I don’t expect the draft would pass as is,” he said, referring to the parliament’s lower house as well, and suggesting compromise was needed. “So I hope debate will steadily deepen.”

Why Asia is still fighting over World War II

In 2008 when Shinzo Abe was first elected Prime Minister he let it be known that Japan's dignity would finally be  restored  after years of humiliation following its defeat in World War II.  Mr. Abe bristled at the constitution imposed upon Japan by the Americans, which in conservative political circles caused pain and resentment.  As it removed Japan from "Great Nation" status and reduced it to being a vassal of American political and military dominance. 

Abe completely misread the public's sentiment for his brand of conservatism and historical view. Then like today he wanted to eliminate the constraints placed upon Japan's military by Article 9 of the post war constitution.  Japanese voters then as they are today are unwilling to play along with Abe's distorted view of Japan's place in the world community.  The difference between know and then?  In 2008 he showed his cards to soon and was forced to resign just one into his premiership.  In his go around as Prime Minister he held his cards to close to the vest for more than a year before reviling, once again that he and the Liberal Democrats would once again seek to change the status of Japan's military allowing them to participate in overseas conflicts which American forces were engaged.  Even with the public firmly against these revisions the ruling coalition passed the security   bills through the lower house of parliament on a party line vote using its overwhelming majority to do so.    


Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party aren't just focused on the constitutional revisions they also seek to revise Japan's history in the time between the the two world wars and Japan's actions during the second.   Most of Japan's current political elite have family ties which go back to that era either through political connections or business associations.  Given the worlds negative view of Japan's actions during that time these people are simply trying to rewrite history and are succeeding as they have control over the what students are taught through a vetting process for the publication of text books by the Ministry of Education which has final say on which books will be published. Because of this process they have left the Japanese public willfully ignorant of Japan's actions prior to and during the Second World War.

At the forefront of those demanding that Japan do more to atone for its wartime legacy are China and South Korea. 

The Chinese still bristle at the Japanese occupation of their country’s eastern reaches. They are especially bitter over the “Rape of Nanking” in 1937-38, when Japanese troops captured the city now known as Nanjing, which was then the Chinese capital. Some 200,000 people were killed and tens of thousands of women raped by marauding soldiers, according to the judgment of an international war crimes court.

South Koreans still harbor painful memories from 35 years of Japanese colonial occupation. They have focused their resentment on the fate of “comfort women,” Korean women and girls forced to work as prostitutes in Japan’s wartime military brothels.

Past Japanese leaders have apologized dozens of times for their country’s behavior in terms varying from remorse and regret to sorrow and repentance. The clearest statement came 20 years ago, in 1995, when then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama acknowledged Tokyo’s history of “colonial rule and aggression” and offered his “heartfelt apology” for “these irrefutable facts of history.”

Just to make sure the world understood where Abe stood on these issues he decided  that poking Asian countries in the eye with a metaphorical sharp stick was best.

 Most provocatively, in December 2013, Mr. Abe marked the first anniversary of his election by visiting the Yasukuni shrine, where Japan’s war dead – including more than 1,000 convicted war criminals – are commemorated. He had earlier infuriated the Chinese government by arguing in a parliamentary debate that “the definition of aggression has yet to be established in academia or in the international community,” suggesting that Japan had not really invaded China.

  

What Happens If Shinzo Abe Gets His WIsh?

Shinzo Abe's lives in world of make believe at least one might describe it that way.  Japan's Prime Minister and his Liberal Democratic Party have this dream of "restoring" Japan.  For them that means the power that was Japan from the turn of the 19th century till the end of World War II a legitimate player in world politics and military power.   It means denying the war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial army: The Rape of Nanjing, Comfort Women, chemical experiments on civilians and the execution of POW's.  Denial includes revising this history through text books used in Japanese junior and senior high schools.

Upon his return to the Prime Ministers office in December of 2012 he set about making changes not only in policy but in the constitution, specifically article 9 which prohibits the deployment of Japanese soldiers as armed combatants in conflict zones.   Have those ambitions comeback to haunt him with the killing of 2 Japanese hostages by ISIL?

If Mr. Abe would just extricate himself from his delusional   dream world and face the reality of our times perhaps there won't be anymore hostages taken.     

Sunday's announcement of the killing of Kenji Goto, the second of two Japanese hostages captured by Islamic State (IS) militants, represents a major political challenge for the Japanese administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 

It also raises important questions about the future security of Japanese citizens at home and abroad, the degree of Japanese public support for the country's increasingly proactive foreign policy, and the prospects in 2015 for government legislation to allow Japan's Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to play a more active overseas role.

While there was widespread shock at the two deaths, Japanese public reaction to the hostage crisis in general has been mixed.

Many Japanese responded to the humanitarian dimension of the crisis, using social media to express their solidarity with the victims and their families.

  Given the nature of Japanese politics the probability is high he'll get his wish as public sentiment concerning these changes in policy and the constitution will be ignored.