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.

Texas Daddy The American Loved By Japanese Nationalists

Tony Marano is an American living Dallas Texas producing right wing videos. What's unusual about Tony is that his views have been embraced  by Japanese Nationalists.   Even though Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would deny any association with these groups they share similar views on history especially  that of the Second World War.  One of the most contentious issues in East Asia concerns comfort women.  Mostly Koreans, but included women from many the territories Japan invaded during World War II.   Last December the Japanese government gave and the South Korean government accepted an official apology and monetary compensation dealing with the comfort women issue.  On February 3 of this year the Japanese government issued a finding to the United Nations stating there was no evidence of forced corrosion of these women to work at the comfort stations by the Japanese Imperial Army.   Except that there is clear evidence of just that happening.

Videos he posted from Texas made their way to Japan, where they developed a following.

He became more intrigued about Japan, conducting more research and posting more videos. His notoriety snowballed as more people began paying attention.

A publishing deal followed and within a few years, his Japanese supporters set up an office called the Texas Daddy Japan Secretariat. He has published seven books in Japanese and is set for more exposure with another three books this year, the office said.

Marano is a former telephone company employee who has spent about half of his life in Texas and put together a YouTube video channel called "PropagandaBuster." He speaks little Japanese.

Marano says his mission is to bolster a military alliance among the United States, South Korea and ally Japan, and to speak truth to power.

He has released more than 80 videos in the past year that run with Japanese subtitles provided by the Secretariat, which has seven translators and three editors to prepare the works for the Japanese audience.

Former Japanese PM tells Shinzo Abe to confront wartime atrocities in Asia : That's Not Going To Happen

Architects of Japan’s wartime apologies have warned the prime minister risks ‘disgracing Japan’s people’ by glossing over war record

The two key architects of Japan’s official wartime apologies have urged the country’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to confront atrocities committed on mainland Asia or risk disgracing the honour of the Japanese people.
Tomiichi Murayama, who as prime minister issued an official apology to mark the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, said Abe should “honestly spell out” Japan’s wartime record when he releases a statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Pacific war in August.
“International society is watching what he is really thinking,” Murayama said. “It is important to clear up any doubts that he has raised overseas.”
Murayama’s 1995 statement included recognition that Japan had “through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations”, as well as a “heartfelt apology” to victims of Japanese militarism.

Shinzo Abe is seeking to revise Japan's World War II history throughout right denial of the war crimes committed by the Japanese Imperial army to believing that Japan was humiliated by the United States when they imposed the pacifist constitution following Japan's surrender to allied forces.   Further history books used in Japanese junior high schools ignore or gloss over the atrocities committed   its forces in the name of the emperor.  

Abe's beliefs are skewed further by his grandfather Kishi Nobusuke a member of Tojo's war cabinet and former Prime Minister of Japan. Who somehow managed to escape the fate of his fellows who were tried and convicted of war crimes.   

Even if Abe were to issue an apology. Don't believe it because he doesn't mean it or believe it.   

Shinzo Abe And The LDP Work To Stifle The Press And They're Suceeding

The Japanese government under the leadership of Shinzo Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party have since returning to power in December of 2012 worked hard to marginalized, intimidate and quash any voice which is critical of the ruling party.   Members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) are about half a step from being out right authoritarian.

When Abe appointed the new director of NHK Japan's national public broadcaster (paraphrasing here) he stated that the broadcaster wouldn't stray from the government line.  NHK is supposed to be neutral, giving all sides a place to voice their agreement or disagreement with government policy.  By coming straight out and articulating a policy that parrots the governments NHK can no longer be seen as objective observer of the news or government policy.  


NHK hasn't been the only target of the government the Asahi Shinbun has been on the receiving end of an endless string of abuse from the government and more than 8,000 right wing activists  who have sued the newspaper over a series of articles they published in the 1980's and 90's about Comfort Women.

The 18 articles were formally retracted last year. 

According to the suit filed with the Tokyo District Court, the plaintiffs, including researchers, journalists and lawmakers, demanded that ¥10,000 in compensation be paid to each person, arguing the major daily “damaged Japanese people’s personal rights and honor.” 

It also demands the paper run an ad to apologize for “spreading erroneous facts to international society.”
The left-leaning daily withdrew the 18 stories last August because they focused on a man named Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to have participated in rounding up females for use as sex slaves by the Japanese military.

Recently their efforts have focused on individual reporters and commentators appearing on various news programs.

 It was an unexpected act of protest that shook Japan’s carefully managed media world: Shigeaki Koga, a regular television commentator and fierce critic of the political establishment, abruptly departed from the scripted conversation during a live TV news program to announce that this would be his last day on the show because, as he put it, network executives had succumbed to political pressure for his removal.
“I have suffered intense bashing by the prime minister’s office,” Mr. Koga told his visibly flabbergasted host late last month, saying he had been removed as commentator because of critical statements he had made about Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Later in the program, Mr. Koga held up a sign that read “I am not Abe,” a play on the slogan of solidarity for journalists slain in January at a French satirical newspaper.

Yes, Shinzo Abe and the rest of the LDP are a bunch of scumbags who live in world of their own construct.  A world where Japan was humiliated by its defeat in World War II, a place where no war crimes or crimes against humanity were committed by the Japanese Imperial Army, a place where history must be rewritten so it reflects their beliefs  and a world where blind obedience is the only way.

Let's face it they could bring back authoritarian rule they would.

Shinzo Abe and Japan’s History

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDAPRIL 20, 2015

The visit by Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, to the United States next week is important on several levels. He will be the first Japanese leader to address a joint meeting of Congress. He and President Obama are expected to announce progress on a key issue, increased defense cooperation, and possibly on a second, TRADE. They will also discuss a third challenge, China’s growing influence in Asia.

The context is also important: This year is the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, and to some extent the visit is intended as a celebration of the country’s remarkable postwar resurrection and its robust alliance with an old enemy, which has become a foundation of regional stability.

But the success of the visit also depends on whether and how honestly Mr. Abe confronts Japan’s wartime history, including its decision to wage war, its brutal occupation of China and Korea, its atrocities and its enslavement of thousands of women forced to work as sex slaves or “comfort women” in wartime brothels.

By now, that history should have been settled. That it is not settled is largely the fault of Mr. Abe and his right-wing political allies who keep questioning history and even trying to rewrite it, stoking regional tensions. Mr. Abe may have more to say on all this on Aug. 15, the actual date of the surrender. But his remarks to Congress will send an important signal.

Another 2,100 War Crimes Deniers Sue Asahi Shinbun

Feeling left out after more than 8,000 war crime denying fools sued the Asahi Shinbun for its publication of articles dealing with the Japanese Imperial Armies use of comfort women during World War II a further group of 2,100 nonintellectuals have decided to join the fun by filing a lawsuit  in Tokyo District Court.  The purpose is a forced denial of history by the Japanese so they won't feel ashamed about their countries past.  

More than 2,000 people are suing the liberal Asahi newspaper to demand that it place advertisements in U.S. and European newspapers, apologising for its coverage of wartime sex slavery, saying it has stained Japan’s reputation, local media said Thursday.
The move is the latest salvo in the battle over Japan’s history, which pits an increasingly aggressive revisionist right wing against an ever-more cowed mainstream that accepts the country’s guilt over its World War II atrocities.
They argued that the Asahi’s historical reports on the so-called “comfort women” system were instrumental in forging global opinion that the Japanese state and its military were involved in organising a formalised system of sex slavery.
They also claim that the paper’s reports contributed to the drive to build statues of former “comfort women” in California and other U.S. locations, which they say led to their mental distress.

So called comfort women?  Forgetting just for moment that some of these women are still alive and that there is clear historical evidence to back their claims what can these morons hope to gain?  That they'll be nominated for the Darwin Awards or that they'll be hired by Fox News which like them exists in a world of lies, denial and propaganda.  

Shinzo Abe Is Hell Bent On Rewriting Japan's History For World War II

With the 70 anniversary of the of World War II approaching the Japanese government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues to lack the foresight and recognize the atrocities committed by the Japanese Imperial army.  In a vain effort to revise or rewrite history Abe's Liberal Democratic Party led government has sought changes in Japanese history textbooks  used in junior and senior high schools which reflect their beliefs.   These changes only help to keep the Japanese public in ignorance concerning the war crimes committed by Japanese forces in Asia prior to and through the Second World War.   The Abe government isn't content with the applying pressure on Japanese academics they have now crossed over to the land of the ridiculous in trying to pressure an American professor and a publishing house to change the historical record by asking to them to remove "untruthful" statements about the Imperial Armies  forced use of comfort women.    

 A group of American historians is issuing a call to their Japanese counterparts to remain steadfast in the face of pressure from Shinzo Abe's government to play down the army's use of "comfort women" during World War II.

The comfort women, many of whom were South Korean, have become a major source of contention between the Japanese and South Korean governments. 

"We stand with the many historians in Japan and elsewhere who have worked to bring to light the facts about this and other atrocities of World War II," says a letter signed by 19 academics from the American University as well as Princeton, Columbia and others, referring to the "comfort women" who were coerced into working in Japanese military brothels during the 1930s and 1940s.

McCraw-Hill is the publisher the Japanese government tried to pressure into removing several paragraphs about the use of comfort women by the Imperial Army.

Both governments have stepped up the volume in their efforts to sway international opinion, most recently with a Japanese attempt to get McGraw-Hill, the US publishing house, to remove two paragraphs about comfort women from a college textbook. The book, Traditions and Encounters: A Global Perspective on the Past, says the Japanese army "forcibly recruited, conscripted, and dragooned as many as 200,000 women aged 14 to 20 to serve in military brothels, called 'comfort houses'. "It also says that the Japanese imperial army "massacred large numbers of comfort women to cover up the operation".

Then there is Herbert Ziegler associate professor of history at the University of Hawaii who had a rather interesting encounter with two officials from the Japanese consulate in Hawaii and co-author of the history book in question.

Professor Ziegler said he received an email from an official in the Japanese consulate in Hawaii late last year, requesting a meeting to discuss the passages in the book. He declined. Then, Professor Ziegler said, two officials showed up in his university office during office hours, when the door was open, and "just came in and sat down and starting telling me how wrong I was. It's a very strange game that they're playing here," he said.

Japanese ‘hate speech’ debate abandoned as insults fly

Live stream debate between Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto and anti-Korean rightwinger Makoto Sakurai ends in heated insults

Toru Hashimoto the mayor of Osaka isn't the person the reporter makes him out to be.  Not only is a historical revisionist as is stated. He's also a war crimes denier  and a racist.    

Hashimoto and Shintaro Ishihara the former mayor of Tokyo and well known racist formed the Japan Restoration party with him.  Toru Hashimoto is no humanitarian. 

A live stream debate on hate speech between a charismatic politician and a prominent rightwing extremist was never going to be a polite exchange of views.
But few expected the much-anticipated showdown between Osaka mayor Toru Hashimoto and Makoto Sakurai, the leader of an anti-Korean group, to last just a few minutes after it quickly descended into a slanging match, with the two men at one point appearing on the verge of physical violence





Sakurai’s insistence on using a disrespectful version of the Japanese word for “you” set the tone for the eight-minute contretemps that followed.
In an unsuccessful attempt to address the issue, Hashimoto, who caused controversy last year by suggesting that wartime sex slaves were necessary to maintain discipline among Japanese soldiers, told Sakurai to “stop lumping together races and nationalities and judging them”, before telling his nemesis to “cut it out”.










 

Two Universities In Japan Recieve Bomb Threats Over Asahi Shinbun Articles

The Asahi Shinbun on 5 August admitted that several articles published in its pages about the veracity of Seiji Yoshida's information concerning Japan's use of Comfort Women during World War II.  Many on the Right in Japan are historical revisionist's and war crimes deniers.     

Since that time conservatives in Japan have applied considerable pressure on the newspaper to cease publication including conservative publications.

In a Sept 21 news conference, Asahi president Tadakazu Kimura admitted the wrongdoing and announced that executive editor Nobuyuki Sugiura would be resigning to take responsibility.
Asahi’s apology appears only to have added fuel to the fire of the ongoing campaign, spearheaded by the Sankei and Yomiuri newspapers and the weekly magazines Shukan Bunshun and Shukan Shincho, to harangue Asahi by, among other things, urging its advertisers to drop their ads and readers to cancel subscriptions.
And indications are that the campaign may be having some impact on the Asahi’s bottom line.
But this approach, warns Nikkan Gendai (Sept 23), represents an “enormous miscalculation” on the part of Asahi’s rivals, and explains the reason why.
“The Yomiuri has launched a one-week trial campaign aimed at exploiting the Asahi’s current woes to its advantage, by use of a four-page leaflet titled ‘How did the Yomiuri Shimbun verify reportage of the comfort women?’ a source at the Yomiuri told Nikkan Gendai. “It also produced a 20-page booklet for distribution in the 23 Wards of Tokyo, where there are many Asahi subscribers.”

According to the fools who sent these missives the universities in question must fire these professors or get blown up.  Let all of that pent-up hate out you'll feel much better. Until the police come.

Two universities, in Osaka and Hokkaido prefectures, have received letters urging them to fire former Asahi Shimbun reporters working for them, threatening to plant explosives on their campuses if they don’t, police said Tuesday.
Tezukayama Gakuin University in Osakasayama, Osaka prefecture, said it received a letter on Sept. 13 saying it must dismiss a professor who had been working for the university since April 2012 because he wrote, while working at the Asahi, erroneous articles that were based on claims by Seiji Yoshida, a man who said he was involved in the kidnapping of Korean women who were then forced into sexual servitude for the wartime Japanese military. The victims came to be known euphemistically as “comfort women.”

Xi Jinping Goes To Seoul: Complains About Japan's Past

ChinesePresident Xi Jinping in speech at Seoul National univesity  complained once again about Japan's conduct during World War II.  To give you some perspective the Chinese government requested that Xi be allowed to visit the Holocaust museum in Berlin during a recent state visit to Germany.  A request which the Germany government denied as they found China's consent comparisons of  how they handled the after math of World War II and the war crimes committed by the Nazis to Japans reconsilation with its war time record unseemly.  Believing that the museum was a place of remmeberence and education not a platform for making political speeches.

“In the first half of the 20th century, Japanese militarists carried out barbarous wars of aggression against China and Korea, swallowing up Korea and occupying half of the Chinese mainland,” Xi said in an address at Seoul National University.
“When the war against Japan was at its highest pitch, the Chinese and Korean people shared their suffering and helped each other with sweat and blood,” he added.
Xi’s speech came on the second and last day of his state trip to South Korea which had been flagged as a snub to ally North Korea because of his decision to visit Seoul before Pyongyang.

No one with a firm grasp of history denies the attrocities carried out by the Japanese Imperial army during its occupation of Korea and China before and during World War II.  That said no one denies that is within Japans political eleite a small cadrae of assholes who long for the glory days of Japan.  Whatever the hell that is suppoesed to be only they know. As with any delusional group they fail to see what harm that so called "glorious past" has casued and continues to cause the nationa of Asia.

Akie Abe Doesn't Agree With Her Husbands F-Uped Views

Akie Abe the wife of Shinzo Abe the current Prime Minister of Japan doesn't agree with her husbands world view on a whole host of issues. Does this mean he'll deny her existence, pretend she's not there, revise her beliefs to fit his or just banish her to the Senkaku islands living out  her life in exile.

Did Japan elect the wrong Abe? The country’s more liberal-minded voters could be forgiven for thinking so.Japan’s first lady, Akie Abe, has emerged as an unlikely progressive voice even as her husband, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, pushes increased military spending, a post-Fukushima nuclear restart, and unpopular tax rises.
She opposes a return to nuclear power, preferring instead to explore the potential of renewable sources of energy. While Mr. Abe’s political allies enraged South Korea by denying Japan had forced tens of thousands of young, mainly Korean, women to work as sex slaves before and during World War II, Mrs. Abe has spoken of her love of South Korean TV dramas and cuisine.
She even dipped her toes into the murky waters of the economy, questioning the need for last month’s rise in the sales tax – an unpopular move that her husband says is Japan’s last chance to tackle its enormous public debt and rising social security costs.
Last weekend, Mrs. Abe burnished her liberal credentials with an unexpected appearance at Tokyo’s Rainbow Pride parade in support of LGBT rights. Later, she wrote on her Facebook page that she had taken an interest in gay and transgender issues since joining a commission set up by UNAIDS and the Lancet medical journal last year.

What Japanese history lessons leave out

From Homo erectus to the present day - 300,000 years of history in just one year of lessons. That is how, at the age of 14, I first learned of Japan's relations with the outside world.
For three hours a week - 105 hours over the year - we edged towards the 20th Century.
It's hardly surprising that some classes, in some schools, never get there, and are told by teachers to finish the book in their spare time.

Just think how much one can learn about the complex world we live in through 105 hours  of instruction over a single year.  Obviously each era can be condensed in a few paragraphs and you'll be an expert.  

When we did finally get there, it turned out only 19 of the book's 357 pages dealt with events between 1931 and 1945.There was one page on what is known as the Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers blew up a railway in Manchuria in China in 1931.
There was one page on other events leading up to the Sino-Japanese war in 1937 - including one line, in a footnote, about the massacre that took place when Japanese forces invaded Nanjing - the Nanjing Massacre, or Rape of Nanjing.

The Nanjing Massacre is a seminal moment in 20 century and Japanese history and there you have the whole thing white washed over because it might reveal the atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese army.

 Nobukatsu Fujioka an historian like many conservatives completely deny that the Japanese Imperial army committed any crimes against humanity

"It was a battlefield so people were killed but there was no systematic massacre or rape," he says, when I meet him in Tokyo.
"The Chinese government hired actors and actresses, pretending to be the victims when they invited some Japanese journalists to write about them.
"All of the photographs that China uses as evidence of the massacre are fabricated because the same picture of decapitated heads, for example, has emerged as a photograph from the civil war between Kuomintang and Communist parties."

Equally, Japanese people often find it hard to grasp why politicians' visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine - which honours war criminals among other Japanese soldiers - cause quite so much anger.

Having been to Yasukuni Shrine its quite evident that the displays portray Japan and its war time activities in a positive light.  Even outside the Shrine you'll find trucks belonging to right wing parked on the street broadcasting messages extolling that period in history.  

Who is Shinzo Abe?

1. Who is Abe Shinzo?
Abe Shinzo's father was Abe Shintaro, who held various key government positions including Foreign Minister and was at one point a candidate for an LDP presidential election. Abe Shinzo used his father's coattails to get elected to the Diet for the first time in 1993. He is a peculiar existence within the LDP, having climbed the party by consistently advocating extreme right-wing policies. Here are some of his career highlights. 

As soon as Abe was elected in 1993, he became a member of the LDP's "History and Deliberation Committee." This committee held about twenty meetings with right-wing scholars, and as a result, published a book called Overview of the Greater East Asia War, on August 15, 1995, the 50th anniversary of Japan's defeat in the Asia-Pacific War. The book argues: 1) "The Greater East Asia War" (the Asia-Pacific War) was not an aggressive war, but a war for self-existence and self-defense, and for liberation of Asia from Western powers; 2) Events such as the Nanjing Massacre and the "comfort women," are fabrications. Japan did not commit war crimes and was not a perpetrator; 3) Since "biased" school textbooks contain false information about Japan's wartime activities, a "textbook struggle" (an attack on education) is necessary. Abe still holds these positions. 

2. Attack on the Kono Statement
On August 4, 1993, during the Miyazawa administration, then chief cabinet secretary Kono Yohei released a statement on the result of a study into the "comfort women" issue. Commonly called the Kono Statement, it said the following: 

As a result of the study which indicates that comfort stations were operated in extensive areas for long periods, it is apparent that there existed a great number of comfort women. Comfort stations were operated in response to the request of the military authorities of the day. The then Japanese military was, directly or indirectly, involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the transfer of comfort women. The recruitment of the comfort women was conducted mainly by private recruiters who acted in response to the request of the military. The Government study has revealed that in many cases they were recruited against their own will, through coaxing, coercion, etc., and that, at times, administrative/military personnel directly took part in the recruitment. They lived in misery at comfort stations under a coercive atmosphere

The fiercest criticism against the Kono Statement came from within LDP, namely Abe. 

He and his "Group of Young Diet Members for Consideration of Japan's Future and History Education," called Kono to a meeting and argued that Kono had recognized the "coerciveness" of the act without convincing evidence, as the Korean side demanded so, but Kono stuck to his guns. At the House of Representatives Budget Committee on May 27, 1997, Abe further said there was no need to specifically reference the issue in textbooks unless the women were coerced, and no document had been discovered to verify this. 

3. Double-tongued prime minister
Abe was first elected prime minister on September 26, 2006. As a state head, there was only so much history revisionism that he could get away with. History denial might be tolerated within the LDP or even within Japan, but it was evident that it would invite international animosity and backlash. One area where his position caused much international embarrassment was the military sex slavery issue. 

On January 31, 2007, when Democrat congressman Mike Honda introduced a resolution calling for the Japanese government to "formally acknowledge, apologize, and accept historical responsibility in a clear and unequivocal manner for its Imperial Armed Forces' coercion of young women into sexual slavery," Prime Minister Abe fought back. He said he had "no plan to apologize" even if the resolution was adopted, and argued that there was "no evidence that supports 'narrowly-defined coercion,' or the allegation that Japanese soldiers kidnapped women and coerced them." This was despite the fact that the Kono Statement had expressed "sincere apologies and remorse to all those, irrespective of place of origin, who suffered immeasurable pain and incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women." Abe's statement, which suggested the women had voluntarily provided sex to Japanese soldiers, was criticized by US newspapers including The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and The Boston Globe. 

On December 26, 2012, Abe announced his 19 new cabinet members. Nine, including Abe, are members of the "Group of Diet Members for Consideration of Japan's Future and History Education," which has consistently worked to remove the description of the military sex slavery and the Nanjing Massacre from textbooks. Thirteen, also including Abe, are members of the "Discussion Group of the Nippon Kaigi Diet Members," affiliated with the "Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference)," the biggest right-wing organization in Japan. These numbers show the far-right character of the new Abe administration.