The Rise of Japan’s Thought Police

By Steven Clemons, New America Foundation
The Washington Post | August 27, 2006

Anywhere else, it might have played out as just another low-stakes battle between policy wonks. But in Japan, a country struggling to find a brand of nationalism that it can embrace, a recent war of words between a flamboyant newspaper editorialist and an editor at a premier foreign-policy think tank was something far more alarming: the latest assault in a campaign of right-wing intimidation of public figures that is squelching free speech and threatening to roll back civil society.

On Aug. 12, Yoshihisa Komori -- a Washington-based editorialist for the ultra conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper -- attacked an article by Masaru Tamamoto, the editor of Commentary, an online journal run by the Japan Institute of International Affairs. The article expressed concern about the emergence of Japan’s strident, new "hawkish nationalism," exemplified by anti-China fear-mongering and official visits to a shrine honoring Japan’s war dead. Komori branded the piece "anti-Japanese," and assailed the mainstream author as an "extreme leftist intellectual."

But he didn’t stop there. Komori demanded that the institute’s president, Yukio Satoh, apologize for using taxpayer money to support a writer who dared to question Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, in defiance of Chinese protests that it honors war criminals from World War II.

Remarkably, Satoh complied. Within 24 hours, he had shut down Commentary and withdrawn all of the past content on the site -- including his own statement that it should be a place for candid discourse on Japan’s foreign-policy and national identity challenges. Satoh also sent a letter last week to the Sankei editorial board asking for forgiveness and promising a complete overhaul of Commentary’s editorial management.

The capitulation was breathtaking. But in the political atmosphere that has overtaken Japan, it’s not surprising. Emboldened by the recent rise in nationalism, an increasingly militant group of extreme right-wing activists who yearn for a return to 1930s-style militarism, emperor-worship and "thought control" have begun to move into more mainstream circles -- and to attack those who don’t see things their way.

Just last week, one of those extremists burned down the parental home of onetime prime ministerial candidate Koichi Kato, who had criticized Koizumi’s decision to visit Yasukuni this year. Several years ago, the home of Fuji Xerox chief executive and Chairman Yotaro "Tony" Kobayashi was targeted by handmade firebombs after he, too, voiced the opinion that Koizumi should stop visiting Yasukuni. The bombs were dismantled, but Kobayashi continued to receive death threats. The pressure had its effect. The large business federation that he helps lead has withdrawn its criticism of Koizumi’s hawkishness toward China and his visits to Yasukuni, and Kobayashi now travels with bodyguards.

In 2003, then-Japanese Deputy Foreign Minister Hitoshi Tanaka discovered a time bomb in his home. He was targeted for allegedly being soft on North Korea. Afterward, conservative Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara contended in a speech that Tanaka "had it coming."

Another instance of free-thinking-meets-intimidation involved Sumiko Iwao, an internationally respected professor emeritus at Keio University. Right-wing activists threatened her last February after she published an article suggesting that much of Japan is ready to endorse female succession in the imperial line; she issued a retraction and is now reportedly lying low.

Such extremism raises disturbing echoes of the past. In May 1932, Japanese Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated by a group of right-wing activists who opposed his recognition of Chinese sovereignty over Manchuria and his staunch defense of parliamentary democracy. In the post-World War II era, right-wing fanatics have largely lurked in the shadows, but have occasionally threatened those who veer too close to or speak too openly about sensitive topics concerning Japan’s national identity, war responsibility or imperial system.

What’s alarming and significant about today’s intimidation by the right is that it’s working -- and that it has found some mutualism in the media. Sankei’s Komori has no direct connection to those guilty of the most recent acts, but he’s not unaware that his words frequently animate them -- and that their actions in turn lend fear-fueled power to his pronouncements, helping them silence debate. What’s worse, neither Japan’s current prime minister nor Shinzo Abe, the man likely to succeed him in next month’s elections, has said anything to denounce those trying to stifle the free speech of Japan’s leading moderates.

There are many more cases of intimidation. I have spoken to dozens of Japan’s top academics, journalists and government civil servants in the past few days; many of them pleaded with me not to disclose this or that incident because they feared violence and harassment from the right. One top political commentator in Japan wrote to me: "I know the right-wingers are monitoring what I write and waiting to give me further trouble. I simply don’t want to waste my time or energy for these people."

Japan needs nationalism. But it needs a healthy nationalism -- not the hawkish, strident variety that is lately forcing many of the country’s best lights to dim their views.

Central gov't-Okinawa Futemma consultations eyed to begin Aug. 29

Aug 25 02:56 AM US/Eastern

TOKYO, Aug. 25 (AP) - (Kyodo)—The Japanese government is arranging to launch consultations next Tuesday between the central government and Okinawa's prefectural and municipal governments over the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps' Futemma Air Station within the southwestern prefecture, Defense Agency Director General Fukushiro Nukaga said Friday.

Nukaga said he met with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on Friday morning to report to him about the arrangements for holding the first meeting of the consultative body on the matter and the premier gave his approval.

The central government will be represented on the consultative body by the Defense Agency chief and the minister in charge of Okinawa as well as the internal affairs and communications minister, foreign minister and finance minister, Nukaga said.

The health, labor and welfare minister, the agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister, the economy, trade and industry minister and the land, infrastructure and transport minister are also likely to take part, he said.

Okinawa plans to have the governor and the mayor of Nago as well as representatives of 12 related municipalities be part of the consultative body.

Nukaga and Okinawa Gov. Keiichi Inamine agreed last week to launch the forum to discuss the latest plan, agreed on by Japan and the United States, to build a new airfield by 2014 at the U.S. Marines' Camp Schwab in Nago and a new landfill along its coastline.

In a Cabinet decision on May 30, the central government endorsed a plan on the realignment of the U.S. military presence in Japan. The plan includes one to relocate the Futemma base from the densely populated city of Ginowan to the less populated Nago.

Inamine, who is opposed to the new airfield plan, has indicated the prefecture will not join the consultative body unless the central government provides assurances that it will continue economic development programs for northern Okinawa.

The Wounds of War

Aug 16, 2006
by David McNeill in Tokyo
Independent, The (London)

Television viewers around the world who earlier this summer watched open-mouthed as Japan's Prime Minister donned sunglasses and memorably impersonated his hero, Elvis Presley, saw a very different public persona yesterday: a steely, grim-faced Junichiro Koizumi entering the funereal shadows of Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.

The visit, just weeks before Japan's most controversial premier steps down from power, once again demonstrated Mr Koizumi's Janus- faced nature: a conservative whose mantra is "reform without limits"' a man who talks endlessly about the future but who sometimes seems held in thrall to the past.

The visit also demonstrated his skills as a master of the media theatre, but yesterday's piece of political kabuki could cost Japan dearly. The pilgrimage to the most contentious piece of real estate in Asia ends Mr Koizumi's five-year premiership on a bitterly divisive note and worsens ties with China and South Korea, which both reacted furiously.

Across Asia, Yasukuni symbolises Japan's undigested history and its lack of contrition for an imperialist war that killed mil-lions of Chinese, Korean and other civilians. Ironically meaning "peaceful nation", the 10km2 plot of hallowed ground was directly run by the military during the Second World War. Millions were trained to fight to the death and told that the highest honour for a soldier was enshrinement there as a kami, or god. "See you at Yasukuni" became a famous wartime slogan.

The US postwar occupation divested the shrine from the state and put it under the management of aprivate religious organisation. But with the names of 2.5 million dead listed in its Book of Souls, Yasukuni remained a potent symbol for nationalists even before the secret decision in 1959 by the Shinto priests to begin enshrining Class B and C war criminals, convicted by an Allied military tribunal. In 1978, the priests listed the 14 men who had led the war, including Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, among the shrine's list of official deities. At a stroke, they removed one of the central planks of Japan's post-1945 settlement with Asia: the separation of the wartime leadership from the rest of the "brainwashed" population. Politicians who went to the shrine would now be implicitly honouring the wartime leadership - and by extension, the war - along with ordinary soldiers.

When the enshrinement was leaked to the press in 1979, it caused uproar in China and Korea and even upset Emperor Hirohito, who thereafter refused to visit Yasukuni. Several leaders made pilgrimages after 1979, some in secret, but Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone's decision to go on 15 August 1985, the 40th anniversary of Japan's surrender, sparked such a furious reaction abroad that no Japanese leader dared visit on that date again - until yesterday.

Later, at a ceremony to mark the end of the war, Mr Koizumi apologised to Japan's war victims, saying: "Our country caused huge damage and suffering to a number of countries."

The apology, first issued more than a decade ago by the socialist prime minister Tomiichi Murayama amid intense opposition, has since become Tokyo's boilerplate response to claims it has not properly atoned for the war.

Nationalists have waited since 2001 for the prime minister to fulfill a pledge to visit Yasukuni on 15 August, which Japan calls "end of the war day". Critics say the semantic sleight of hand allows Japan to avoid using the more contentious terms "surrender" or "defeat" and implies that the war was a natural disaster that befell the country, like an earthquake or a typhoon.

"Japanese pacifism is based on victimisation so we can't use any words that suggest we were actively involved," said Koichi Nakano, professor of comparative politics at Tokyo's Sophia University. "Japan never talks about people killing and doing awful things. This visit takes this process a step forward because it contributes to the blurring of war responsibility even further."

The controversy over how Japan chooses to remember - or forget - the Pacific War - is stoked by the refurbished 4bn yen (pounds 18m) museum just yards from the shrine's inner sanctum where Mr Koizumi signed his name in a visitor's book. The museum audaciously rewrites the history of the conflict, arguing that the invasions of China and Korea were "defensive". Visitors to the museum learn that Korea, which was occupied for half a century by Imperial Japan, was a "dagger pointing at Japan's heart"' that China prolonged the war un- necessarily by not coming to terms with their conquerors' and that 200,000 slaves forced to service wartime troops - the so-called "comfort women" - were "prostitutes". Thousands of men who climbed into kamikaze planes and torpedoes to immolate themselves against the hulls of American warships are venerated in photographs and pseudo-religious testimonies. The museum entrance is dominated by a black locomotive used to pull trains along the Burma railway, which took the lives of thousands of Allied prisoners of war. No mention is made of these deaths.

For Tetsuro Kato, professor of politics at Tokyo's Hitotsubashi University, Yasukuni is "doubly offensive" because it was designed to mobilise Japanese to kill and to die and because it shows Japan has never come to terms with defeat. "The shrine and the attached museum still maintain it was a defensive war," he said. But ultra- conservatives, including Mr Tojo's granddaughter Yuko, claim it is no worse than other war memorials around the world, including Arlington Cemetery in the US.

Recent polls show a majority of Japanese are against annual prime ministerial visits to the shrine, although many cite Japan's tattered relations with its Asian neighbours rather than Yasukuni's skewered take on history. The anti-Yasukuni faction has been swelled during recent years by some unlikely recruits, including the families of the Class A war criminals, eight of whom say they don't care whether their souls are enshrined there or not.

The visits are also opposed by much of Japan's business community, which fears their impact on Tokyo's business ties, and by Takenori Kanzaki, the leader of Mr Koizumi's coalition partner, the New Komeito party, who called the trip "regrettable".

But the perils of publicly criticising the shrine were highlighted when the home of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party bigwig Koichi Kato, was fire-bombed after he suggested the visits should be "reconsidered".

The pilgrimages play well, however, with Mr Koizumi's conservative base and will add to his political legacy - one month before he steps down - as a maverick prepared to challenge taboos. Some of Mr Koizumi's colleagues are desperately searching for a solution to the shrine issue before it seriously damages Japan's economic relationship with China The Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki is one of several ministers who believes the shrine should separate the war criminals from the rest of the dead.

All eyes are now on Mr Koizumi's successor, most likely Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, who secretly visited the shrine in April. Mr Abe refused to say whether he would go as prime minister, repeating earlier statements that "misunderstandings" with China and South Korea "need to be removed".

Enshrined Japanese war criminals

HIDEKI TOJO

Prime Minister for most of the Second World War, widely regarded as the chief architect of Japan's wars against China, Korea and the Allied forces.

KOKIHIROTA

Responsible for planning Japan's invasion of China as Prime Minister prior to Tojo. Convicted of war crimes.

IWANE MATSUI

Led the attacks on Nanjing in 1937, where up to 20,000 women may have been raped by Japanese troops.

DOIHARA KENJI

Approved the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. A veteran spy, nicknamed "Lawrence of Manchuria" for his knowledge of the province he planned for years to invade.

AKIRA MUTO

Under his command, Japanese forces in the Philippines executed and tortured thousands of civilians.

The prayers at a shrine that tear nations apart

August 12, 2006
By Richard Lloyd Parry

Visits by Japan's leader to Yasukuni are once again causing outrage among Asian neighbours

THE Yasukuni Shrine is one of the most tranquil spots in central Tokyo but, for all its calm, it is also the place in Japan where violence and anger rise most closely to the surface.

It is here that departing kamikaze pilots vowed to meet one another after death as Shinto deities, and here that the argument about the rights and wrongs of Japan’s devastating war has raged. Never in six decades has the argument been more bitter than it is now.

On Tuesday Junichiro Koizumi, the outgoing Japanese Prime Minister, is expected to visit Yasukuni to pray to the war dead on the 61st anniversary of Japan’s surrender, an act that will have far-reaching consequences.

It will delight the Right. It will complicate the race to succeed Mr Koizumi, who will step down as Prime Minister next month. And it will plunge the country’s already fraught relations with its Asian neighbours, China and South Korea, to their lowest level in 30 years. Above all it will open further division among Japanese themselves. A poll in this week’s Yomiuri Weekly newspaper found that half of the population opposes visits by the Prime Minister to the shrine, while 40 per cent supports them.

Takeshi Kawakami, a salaryman who was praying at the shrine last week, said: “Worshipping the spirits of the war victims is a domestic issue and nothing to do with foreign countries. Japan may be isolated in Asia but if this is our decision we have to accept that.”

But plenty of other visitors to the shrine pay their respects to the war dead while rejecting the Prime Minister’s visits and the right-wing ideology with which it has become associated.

“We’ve got to do what Germany did long ago, and create a place where all victims of the war can be mourned, not just our own,” Hiroshi Isaka, 73, said. “Unless we take that attitude, Japanese will never be accepted by Koreans and Chinese.”

Since the 19th century Yasukuni has been a place of commemoration for the war dead and the home to which their spirits go when they die. To nationalists, it is a patriotic necessity, a place of national mourning as essential as the Cenotaph, or Arlington National Cemetery in America.To its opponents, Yasukuni is a shrine to lies and jingoism, an incubator for the kind of aggressive nationalism that sends shivers through Japan’s former colonial subjects in Korea and China. Above all this is because of the shrine’s invisible occupants — as well as 2.46 million war dead, they include 14 Class A war criminals, among them Hideki Tojo, the wartime Prime Minister who was hanged in 1948.

Their secret enshrinement in 1978 caused such anger in China that Japanese prime ministers stopped making visits in 1985. When Mr Koizumi took over in 2001 he promised to offer annual prayers and has stubbornly kept his word, provoking rage among Chinese and South Korean leaders and citizens. There have been violent demonstrations, summit meetings have been suspended and Japan has found itself frozen out by the two most powerful countries in the region.

Fearing a boycott of Japanese goods the Japan Association of Corporate Executives, one of the most powerful business organisations in the country, has begged Mr Koizumi to change his mind, as have members of his own party and the country’s bestselling Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. But the focus now is on the man who will almost certainly succeed him — Shinzo Abe, his chief Cabinet secretary and protégé.

On paper, Mr Abe is more conservative than his mentor, a grandson of the former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, who was himself arrested, but never charged, as a Class A war criminal. Mr Abe has refused to confirm reports that he visited the shrine last April, and declined to talk about his future intentions, leaving the possibility that he will sacrifice personal principle for the sake of diplomatic harmony.

Last month this was made easier by the leaking of comments made 18 years ago by the former Emperor Hirohito.

A memo written by his Grand Steward recorded the late Emperor’s disgust at the enshrinement of the war criminals — a source of embarrassment to the ultranationalists, whose respect for the hanged wartime leadership is exceeded only by their reverence for the Emperor. And this could be the future Prime Minister’s excuse to right-wing supporters for avoiding the shrine — the words of a dead emperor echoing from beyond the grave.

In memory of the dead
• Officially, the shrine says that “disenshrinement” is impossible — it is “like trying to remove a cup of water when it has been poured into a swimming pool”

Stronger Ties

August 2006
By AMY KLAMPER, Seapower Correspondent

Two longtime allies strengthen their relationship amid changing realities in northern Asia

In May, Tokyo and Washington agreed to a major realignment of U.S. forces in Japan, a road map that will move thousands of U.S. troops in the region, shift and modernize military assets, and give Japan a larger role in its own defense and regional security. Galvanized by China’s growing strength and the looming threat from North Korea, the U.S.-Japanese strategic alliance is deepening as the allies recalibrate their militaries for the post-9/11 world.

Last October, the United States and Japan agreed on a set of proposals to increase military cooperation. In April, Japan agreed to pay roughly 60 percent of the $10.3 billion cost of relocating 8,000 U.S. Marines stationed in Japan to Guam.

In addition, the two nations plan to improve their joint ballistic-missile defense capabilities. In June, Japanese and U.S. officials said they will deploy Patriot interceptor missiles at American bases in Japan amid signs that North Korea was preparing to launch a long-range missile.

The deepening relationship between Japan and the United States is a centerpiece of the Bush administration’s efforts to strengthen the U.S. military presence in the Pacific region. A few submarines are being shifted to the Pacific, and the Defense Department is assessing the need to shift surface forces there. An array of U.S. military units are being moved to the U.S. territory of Guam — closer to potential trouble spots — and U.S. Pacific Command plans a series of exercises in the region this year.

The changing relationship also dovetails with Japan’s own efforts to revamp its 1947 pacifist constitution and assume a higher security profile in the region. Concerned about North Korea, Japan is moving forward on a missile defense agreement with the Pentagon that stems from a research program begun in 1998.

The two countries are establishing a joint operations center in Japan. And in a move unprecedented since World War II, Japan deployed ground troops to the war zone in Iraq and support ships and aircraft to Afghanistan.

“Under the new security environment, in order to respond effectively to new threats and various contingencies, we need to build the multifunctional, flexible and effective defense capability, and operate such defense capability efficiently,” a Japanese defense official said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Bruce A. Wright, commander of U.S. Forces Japan, agrees.

“It’s really important that we have an alliance that gives us stability in the region to engage effectively with China and continue to watch North Korea very closely,” Wright said. “China is modernizing, our senior leaders want to engage them, and we can engage very effectively based on the strong U.S.-Japan security alliance.”

During the May meeting, Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Defense Agency Director-General Fukushiro Nukaga finalized the details in Washington with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

During a press conference afterward, Rumsfeld said much work is needed in order to implement the U.S. realignment of its forces in Japan, which, among other things, will shift 8,000 Marines and their families from Okinawa to Guam by 2014.

“Today’s meeting marks an important milestone, but we do have a good deal of work yet ahead of us before our desired destination in this security partnership,” Rumsfeld said. “For our part, we will certainly continue to move our alliance forward on this journey.”

But analysts say it is unclear whether Tokyo will move forward with the same conviction. Many obstacles loom large in the mind of the Japanese public, including the roughly 3 trillion yen needed to finance the realignment.

“It’s not a done deal,” said Brad Glosserman, executive director for the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. “Implementation is always the killer,” he said, noting that a 1996 agreement to relocate Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Japan to an offshore location had languished for a decade because of local opposition.

Only a short distance from Taiwan, Okinawa is home to roughly 15,000 U.S. Marines and the Air Force’s largest combat wing. Some 5,000 troops are deployed to Misawa Air Base, where F-16 fighters are less than two hours from North Korea. In addition, the U.S. Seventh Fleet, the largest in the Navy, has 18 ships permanently forward deployed in Japan.

Japan’s Self Defense Force (SDF) boasts nearly 240,000 military personnel, and the country’s annual defense budget is close to $50 billion, ranking Japan among the top six military spenders worldwide. But while its naval and air capabilities match western European standards, it lacks the kind of operational experience that comes from regular engagement in defense alliances and peacekeeping efforts.

“The Japanese, as a democratic country and an ally, continue to build a more capable sovereign military, and we should not, on the U.S. side, attempt to be a leader in that, but a partner,” Wright said. “We have taken U.S. Forces Japan to a much more operational level to ensure we have timely, rapid coordination.”

For example, the U.S. plan to move its 1st Corps headquarters from Fort Lewis, Wash., to Camp Zama in Japan by 2013 will help serve as an example for Japanese forces there. The reorganization would leave 1st Corps to bolster U.S.-Japanese military ties, with Japan possibly forming a similar unit that would train for, and conduct operations with, U.S. soldiers.

In addition, the Japanese recently augmented their command structure to include a senior joint uniformed leader with a greater operational role similar to that of the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

According to a Japanese defense official, the new Joint Staff Office (JSO), headed by a new chief of staff, was established March 27 to enhance Japan’s joint operational structure.

“In this process, the operational function was transferred to JSO from Ground, Maritime and Air Staff Office,” the Japanese defense official said. “Under the new system, chief of staff, JSO, develops the unified operational concept and gives advice on the operation of SDF to the defense minister from a military standpoint in an integrated fashion, which contributes to the more prompt and effective implementation of SDF’s mission.”

Wright said the change means that while Japan’s defense force will not grow much larger, it will become more capable.

“And this recent change in the [SDF] structure means they will continue to be a more modernized and capable military,” he said.

But Wright emphasized that the United States has no operational control over Japanese forces.

“It’s coordination vs. command and control,” he said. “We would not control their forces, they will control their own forces and coordinate closely with us.”

This is particularly true for U.S.-Japanese cooperation on ballistic-missile defense, Wright said, a key issue in the May 1 road map. Under the plan, Japan’s Air Defense Command will move in fiscal 2010 to Yokota Air Base, where the U.S. Fifth Air Force is based. There, a new bilateral joint operations and coordination center will coordinate air-defense and missile-defense activities.

“We both bring strengths to this,” Wright said. “The Japanese are forward deployed, they live here and they have an understanding of this part of the world, so it has to be a partnership.”

Joint technical research on missile defense was prompted by North Korea’s 1998 firing of the Taepodong 1 missile. Japan’s buy-in to the U.S. missile defense program is helping Tokyo establish a new role for itself in the region while maximizing both countries’ assets, Glosserman said.

“Working with the United States allows the Japanese to lessen the concerns of its overall posture and gives an umbrella for them to engage the region,” he said.

What will be important about missile defense is the integration of U.S. and Japanese forces, Glosserman said.

“If a missile is launched at Japan, we can use missile defense to shoot it down,” he said. “But if a missile is aimed at the United States, the Japanese couldn’t shoot a missile at it.”

Wright acknowledged that Japan is currently in the early stages of addressing missile-defense command and control.

“There’s going to have to be recognition that some of those missiles can reach the United States,” Wright said. “Both countries are working very hard on [command and control] and the challenges associated with the short times of flight.”

Another challenge for the alliance involves technology sharing between the United States and Japan. Glosserman noted that the United States will not defer protection of its assets to the Japanese unless they open their so-called “black boxes” to the United States.

But Wright said there are multiple efforts to share technological advances on both sides.

“Both countries have specific strengths on sharing technology,” he said. “But both countries will always develop and emerge new technologies that will be sensitive commercially and from a military and security point that we will have to think hard about sharing.”

Japan is spending millions of U.S. dollars to develop a special nose cone for the American Standard Missile Three (SM-3) missile.

In March, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency said the Japanese nose cone successfully separated from an SM-3 missile during a test in the Pacific off Kauai. It was the first such flight test to use Japanese parts.

Much of the change in Japan’s current defense stance rests on its revised National Defense Program Outline, implemented in December 2004. Still controversial among Japanese, it authorizes the nation’s military to combat terrorists inside and outside the country and loosens its longtime prohibitions on the export of weapons and defense technology.

The guiding force behind many of the changes is Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who began calling for more forceful national security policies and a closer relationship with the United States soon after his election in April 2001. Known for his repeated visits to the Yasukuni shrine, an icon of Japan’s militaristic past, he views the U.S. relationship as fundamental to his nation’s relations with other countries, including China and North Korea.

However, Koizumi’s term as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party ends in September, and many see Shinzo Abe, 51, Koizumi’s cabinet secretary as a probable successor.

Japan Today reports that Abe has called for amending the constitution to enable the government to mobilize the SDF in certain scenarios, including hostage situations in Iraq and elsewhere. But given the controversy that still swirls around the broader defense guidelines approved 19 months ago, it remains uncertain if Japan’s people are prepared to accept a further expansion of the operational framework for their military forces.