Thursday, October 5, 2006

Abe Acknowledges Responsibility Of Kishi, Other Wartime Leaders

TOKYO (Kyodo)—Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday acknowledged the war responsibility of his grandfather, the late former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, and Japan’s other wartime leaders ahead of his fence-mending talks with the leaders of China and South Korea.

Abe, known for his conservative views on history, also committed himself to accept two official statements in the 1990s in which Tokyo apologized for Japanese colonial rule and aggression and the use of Asian women as sex slaves for Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

Abe, who took office on Sept. 26 as Japan’s youngest postwar premier, clarified his official stand on the country’s past militarism during a House of Representatives Budget Committee session Thursday.

‘’As a result of starting war, many Japanese lost their lives and families, and we left many scars on the people of Asia,’’ the 52-year-old Abe said.

‘’Particularly, those people in the position of leader at the time, including my grandfather, had great responsibility. Since politicians have to take responsibility for any outcomes, that decision certainly must have been wrong,’’ he said.

Abe made the comment in response to a question by opposition Democratic Party of Japan heavyweight Naoto Kan about his view on Kishi’s signing of the rescript for starting the war in the Pacific in 1941 as a member of the Cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo.

Kishi, Abe’s maternal grandfather who was then the commerce and industry minister, was detained as a Class-A war criminal suspect after the end of World War II but was released soon after Tojo and six others were hung in 1948. He served as Japan’s prime minister from 1957 to 1960.

As for a landmark 1995 statement, in which then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama apologized and expressed remorse for Japan’s colonial rule and atrocities before and during World War II, Abe said, ‘’It is valid for my Cabinet.’’

When asked his personal view, Abe said it is ‘’natural’’ for him to accept the statement as prime minister, including its descriptions of the country’s colonial rule and aggression as ‘’has been presented…in a statement adopted by the Cabinet.’’

On a 1993 statement by then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono, in which the government officially acknowledged that the Imperial Japanese Army forcibly held Asian women in sexual servitude for its soldiers, Abe said, ‘’Including myself, the current government has taken it over.’’

When asked his view in Monday’s lower house plenary session, Abe refrained from admitting the responsibility of the wartime leaders charged as Class-A war criminals at the 1946-1948 International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Tribunal.

Abe in 1995 abstained from approving a parliamentary resolution carrying a similar message to the Murayama statement. In 1997, he formed a group with fellow lawmakers with revisionist views on history, including the issue of sex slaves, and criticized Kono’s statement.

But since taking office, Abe has vowed to strive to mend the strained ties with China and South Korea angered at former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine, which some regard as symbolic of Japan’s militarist past.

He is slated to hold summit talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao on Sunday and with South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun on Monday.

Anyone who claims to know about post-war Japanese politics and history will be interested in what Abe recently had to say about his grandfather.

http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/nn20061006a7.html

Has Japan given up on a UNSC seat? No, as Abe made clear in Diet testimony yesterday. That’s just one of many nitpicky issues that China and Japan are battling over, and the battle’s not over yet.

Many people won’t agree, but I think Yasukuni is done. China beat that horse for their own political advantage and I don’t think they have much left to ride. Japan played straight into their hands and China used it to thwart their bid for a permanent seat on the UNSC, but that took all the gas out of the issue.

In the process, Japan let China burn off their best opposition issue, in opposition to something Japan knew would fail from the get go – due to the Russian veto.

Good point about the Japanese/overseas media. No doubt, politicians in Japan seem to speak as though a domestic audience will be the only one, and that what they say will be little deconstructed or criticized.

I can’t say for sure whether or not they’re right about this, but I don’t see foreign media picking up on more than a few soundbites, let alone having the time/resources/needs to translate everything he says.

He’s trying to positively define the term “nationalism” (he uses the katakana English term) is terms that patently differ from the more negative English usage. I doubt they are going to pick up on it this time around, but hasn’t anyone told him that that might play badly in the overseas media?

He hasn’t said anything about the “enshrinement” of war criminals in the bit that I’m watching. The “so I feel that it may be inappropriate to make detailed, sweeping comments as a government” comment was about the Tokyo trials. I actually agree with him to an extent. The Diet is really not an appropriate forum for judicial review of any kind, and in any case there was no suggestion that he rejected the ruling. Leave the legitimacy of the judgment to the legal historians (many of whom actually see the trials as something of a kangaroo court).

On Yasukuni, he played Koizumi’s gambit: Yasukuni is a monument to the unfortunate war dead, It’s a personal choice whether he visits or not, yada yada yada.

I don’t think it should be surprising that Abe refuses to give clear opinions – no one can put his feet to the fire and he knows that full well.

By saying the Japanese government is in no place to comment on the enshrinement of Class A war criminals, he’s trying to take the government out of the picture. The Shrine, after all, is not run by the government. Removing the Class A war criminals, thus, would not be a government decision. His message tells me, “Put the pressure on them, not us.”