Abe jumped the economic track first mimicking Trump's merchantilist tactics against China. What Trump and the militarists have been whispering into Japan's ears is "yes go ahead, amend your constitution to allow offensive armaments, we need that to offset China's growing threat." Abe's actions are geared toward the elections this weekend, inciting old style Japanese chauvinism so he can get 2/3 control of legislature, amend the constitution, rearm and conduct offensive military operations whenever Japan sees fit.
The central issue is whether the private claims of the individual victims of Japanese war crimes were foreclosed by the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations. The current Supreme Court of South Korea says they were not. South Korea is a democracy with separation of powers. The executive cannot change the Supreme Court ruling. Neither can Japan. When one does business in a country one submits to their domestic law. Ironic that an advisor to the Abe cabinet, Tomohiko Taniguchi, made this very contention today on Ajazeera in defense of its newly imposed export controls on South Korea.*
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po4CbciGSuY
The Japanese argue that the 1965 treaty settled all claims by Korean people against Japan and carries the higher authority of international law. Their corporations made this argument in the Supreme Court and lost. Just setting aside the legal arguments which I don't think non-Koreans are qualified to judge, the treaty was negotiated and signed on behalf of Korea by a military dictator, whose background was as a formal Japanese Imperial Army officer, a collaborator of the Japanese, who received awards from the Japanese government, and had killed Koreans who fought against the Japanese occupation. That would be Park Chung Hee. Virtually, all monies received in settlement went to his pro-Japanese cronies. So there is no surprise in a political sense, that the current government of South Korea, democratically elected, doesn't regard the agreement as legitimate. It was not an arms length agreement. The pro-Japanese Park, gave virtually nothing to the victims. So if an illegitimate pro-Japanese dictatorship forecloses victims human rights and civil rights to compensation for Japanese war crimes for a peppercorn, as a US legal expression goes, is that enforceable? Not in today's South Korea.
All of Park's friends told Eckert that to understand him, one needed to understand his Ilbonsik sagwan kyoyuk (Japanese officer training) as they all maintained Park's values were those of an Imperial Japanese Army officer.[17]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Park_Chung-hee
Park's daughter former president, Park Geun Hye, continued the chin-il pa (pro-Japanese faction) tradition by selling out all the claims of all Korean women kidnapped during the Pacific War for sex services, tortured and murdered, the so called "comfort women, " for another peppercorn (9 million dollars). Moon Jae In repudiated that agreement as he said he would when elected President of South Korea.
The fact that Pacific War war criminals of Japan are commemorated in the Yasukuni Shrine, doesn't help much with the alleged apologies previously made. Does Germany now maintain a shrine to Hitler, Goering, Himmler, and Goebbels? Do German political leaders visit to "pay their respects?" Do German school texts omit their war crimes in the 20th Century? Do German naval vessels yet fly the Nazi flag?
Due to the enshrinement of individuals found to be war criminals by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and an approach to the war museum considered by some to be nationalist, China, South Korea and North Korea have called the Yasukuni Shrine a microcosm of a revisionist and unapologetic approach to Japanese crimes of World War II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Yasukuni_Shrine#Shinzo_Abe
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