Sinzo Abe: Making Japan Great Again

Abe, a right wing reactionary, goes rogue to "make Japan great again." The US mistake was letting his class A war criminal grandfather Kisi Nobusuke out of prison to form the LDP party and rehabilitate the Shoin school nutcases that founded the Meiji imperial regime. The US, now desperate about the rise of China, turns a blind eye to Abe's campaign to repeal Article 9 of the Constitution restricting military activities in order to reclaim Japanese hegemony in east Asia. If one wants to understand Abe one must understand his family and political heritage:

Nobusuke Kishi (岸 信介 Kishi Nobusuke, 13 November 1896 – 7 August 1987) was a Japanese politician and the 37th Prime Minister of Japan from 25 February 1957 to 12 June 1958, and from then to 19 July 1960. He is the maternal grandfather of Shinzō Abe, twice prime minister in 2006–2007 and 2012–present.

Known for his brutal rule of the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo in Northeast China, Kishi was called Shōwa no yōkai (昭和の妖怪; "Devil of Shōwa").[2] After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a Class A war crime suspect. However, the U.S. government released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction.*

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobusuke_Kishi


At the dawn of the 20th Century Theodore Roosevelt was led down the primrose path of fantasies about a "democratic Japan" by Baron Kentaro Kaneko which led to the Japanese conquest of Asia and ultimately the catastrophes of WWII. Similarly, Trump is being led down a similar path by Sinzo Abe.

Japan's two small aircraft carriers which it calls destroyers participated in the Talisman Sabre exercises this year demonstrating the capability of it's new amphibious forces to project power. The "destroyers" of the Izumo class over 800 feet long are 27,000 tons loaded displacement making their classification a misrepresentation for political reasons. The two carriers will be modified in the near future to carry F-35b stealth fighters provided by the US.

(Source- KBS 1 History Journal, ep. 199) This vision of a greater imperial Japan as depicted in the graphic was attributed to Yoshida Shoin in the mid 19th Century.

(Source- KBS 1 History Journal, ep. 199) Yoshida Shoin's memorial tablet is stored at the Yasukuni shrine. The shrine commemorates other heroes and patriots of earlier wars and conflicts associated with the Meiji Restoration and the Meiji government. The shrine also commmemorates WW II war criminals, such as Tojo Hideki. Koreans and other victims regard the shrine unfavorably as veneration of the Japanese imperial tradition.


This is from The Diplomat in January 2014:

Japan’s relations with South Korea and China have soured since the Abe administration entered government in late 2012. The Japanese prime minister’s recent visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine was met with protests from its neighbors and even a statement from the U.S. embassy that said that it was “disappointed.” *

*https://thediplomat.com/2014/01/china-opens-memorial-honoring-korean-independence-activist/

Generic news reporting routinely dates the Japanese colonization of Korea to annexation in 1910, but Japanese subjugation of Korea more accurately might be said to have begun with the Sino-Japanese War in July 1894, and was basically a conflict over who would dominate Korea. The Japanese assassination of Queen Myeongseong in October 1895, and the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-1905, were just further steps in consolidation of undisputed control of Korea by Japan. Japan's seizure and spurious claim to Dokdo dates from this early period of Japanese military expansion.

Abe's ludicrous statement on the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Asia from Japanese imperialism:

Citing the deaths of more than 3 million Japanese during World War II, and the deprivation that prevailed, Abe asserted: “The peace we enjoy today exists only upon such precious sacrifices. And therein lies the origin of postwar Japan.”

This is the revisionist conceit: that all that carnage in what Abe’s advisory panel termed a “reckless” war was worthwhile because it is the basis for the peace and prosperity now enjoyed by contemporary Japanese.*

Jeff Kingston elaborates on the specious revisionist reasoning of Abe:

Abe is suggesting that the peace enjoyed today came from Japanese aggression in the 1930s and ’40s, and thereby tries to bestow some legitimacy on those actions.

This underhanded justification of war is not necessary to honor the war dead. They died because Japan’s leaders at the time, including Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, launched Japan into this avoidable tragedy. Those leaders held Japanese lives cheap, and they were sacrificed and subjected to awful horrors for an ignominious cause. Dressing this sanguinary rampage up as the bedrock of contemporary Japan is a deplorable deceit. Their deaths were in vain because Japan’s regional rampage that claimed perhaps as many as 20 million Asian lives, and trampled on the dignity and welfare of countless more, was not in service of a noble mission.*

* Abe's revisionism and Japan's divided war memories
BY JEFF KINGSTON
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/08/22/commentary/abes-revisionism-japans-divided-war-memories/#.XUjMxFVKi00