Japan ends five-year Iraq mission

Page last updated at 12:53 GMT, Thursday, 18 December 2008

The first batch of Japanese air personnel left earlier in the week Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso has praised his country's five-year non-combat mission in Iraq, as the last planes flew out of the region. He said he was "happy and proud that the personnel completed their jobs safely and without incident". The deployment was Japan's first to a combat zone since World War II. It sparked considerable public opposition in the officially pacifist country. South Korea is due to end its four-year mission in Iraq on Friday. The last of the 18,000 South Korean troops that have served in Iraq and Kuwait since 2004 were withdrawing from their current base in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil. Flying home Mr Aso not only hailed the country's air force personnel but also their families for their support, calling them "two wheels of a cart", Kyodo news agency reports. The last three C-130 freighter planes flew out of Kuwait for Japan late on Wednesday. The majority of the 210 air force staff will have returned home from Kuwait by next week. Japan has been contributing to the Iraqi mission since February 2004, when former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi sent in ground troops to help with reconstruction projects. He withdrew the soldiers before leaving office in 2006. Members of Japan's air self-defence force have remained in Kuwait, flying goods and personnel into Iraq. The presence of Japanese forces in Iraq has been controversial. Some members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party argue that Japan should be more involved in global security efforts to help the country's standing on the world stage. But critics fear it threatens the country's pacifist constitution, which was written after the country's defeat in 1945.

FOREIGN TROOPS IN IRAQ

US - Around 146,000

Britain - 4,100

Australia - 980

Romania - 397

El Salvador - 280

Estonia - 34

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7789580.stm


ASDF's five-year Iraq mission comes to an end

Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 4:26 am

A ceremony was held in Kuwait yesterday to mark the end of the ASDF's five-year Iraq mission:

Among some 160 attendees on Wednesday at the ceremony at the base, which was used as the main transport terminal for the ASDF, was Parliamentary Secretary of Defense Ryota Takeda, about 120 members of the 16th contingent and representatives from the United Nations, the United States and Kuwait.

"Japan has won high recognition and trust in the international community for its contributions to help reconstruct Iraq," Takeda said as he thanked the ASDF members for their efforts.

He also encouraged about 130 members who are slated to remain on the base until March next year for the final cleanup operations. "It's an important role to complete the mission. I want you all to do your best."

http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=7907
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSI4xVxmoZw&eurl=http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=7907

Forty-eight lawmakers visit Yasukuni

Agence France-Presse

• Japanese lawmakers visit war shrine
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  TOKYO (AFP) – Dozens of Japanese politicians visited Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni shrine to war dead on Friday, but new Prime Minister and past supporter Taro Aso stayed away, lawmakers' offices said. continued ...

GlobalTalk 21

• The Association of Diet Members Who Go to Yasukuni Together. Not... Much
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  This morning, members of the non-partisan Association of Diet Members Who Go to Yasukuni Together paid their respects at the Yasukuni Shrine on the occasion of the Autumn Seasonal Grand Ceremonies. 47 members attended, down from 67 in 2007 and 84 in 2006. Money quote, from Yoshinobu Shimamura, the Association Chairman: continued ...

Japan Probe

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The Japan Times

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Kyodo

• 48 lawmakers visit Yasukuni Shrine for annual autumn festival
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  TOKYO, Oct. 17 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Three senior vice ministers, two parliamentary secretaries and one special adviser to Prime Minister Taro Aso were among the 48 lawmakers who paid a group visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in central Tokyo on Friday to attend the shrine's autumn festival. continued ...


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  TOKYO, Oct. 7 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Prime Minister Taro Aso said Tuesday he will not make public whether or not he will visit the war-related Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. continued ...

Kanikosen (Factory Ship) and the Japanese Communist Party (JCP)

Telegraph.co.uk

• Japan's young turn to Communist Party as they decide capitalism has let them down
  Last Updated: 9:19AM BST 18 Oct 2008
  With its gleaming designer stores, the world's second largest economy and an insatiable appetite for luxury labels, Japan has long been regarded as the land of the rising capitalist.
  By Danielle Demetriou in Tokyo
  But a wave of discontent among its younger workers is fuelling a change in the nation's political landscape: communism is suddenly back in fashion. continued ...


• The strange growth of Communist Japan
  Last Updated: 9:19AM BST 18 Oct 2008
  Red has not always been a fashionable hue in Japan's political spectrum.
  By Danielle Demetriou
  It was in 1922 that the Japanese Communist Party was founded as an underground political association. continued ...

The Japan Times

• Temps: Product of a broken labor system
  Friday, Oct. 17, 2008
  Insecure life of low pay, poor job conditions, threat of layoffs
  By NATSUKO FUKUE. Staff writer
  Natsumi Maeda, a 26-year-old day laborer, says she worked at more than 50 companies in the last year and a half.
  "I've come to realize companies treat day laborers as a disposable workforce," she said with a sigh. continued ...


• 1920s proletarian novel strikes chord with young underemployed
  Friday, July 18, 2008
  By KISAKU SENO, Kyodo News
  A book released nearly 80 years ago and considered a representative piece of proletarian literature is apparently striking a chord with young part-time workers amid growing income disparities and poverty in Japan. continued ...

Japan Probe

• 79-year-old Marxist novel becomes bestseller
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Guardian

• Japan: Marxist book turns bestseller 79 years on
  Thursday August 21 2008
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  A 79-year-old tale of rebellion among a fishing boat crew has become an unlikely summer hit among young Japanese people facing economic decline and rising poverty. Sales of Kani Kosen (The Crab Ship) have soared, keeping it at or near the top of bestseller lists since May, an unheard of achievement for such an earnest work. continued ...

Japan Navigator

• Why Japan’s temp workers now read “The Factory Ship” (Kanikosen)
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  The last few weeks, in bookshops here in Japan, my eye was struck by stacks of red-covered paperbacks, piled up high in the bestseller section. On closer inspection, the title of those books turned out to be Kanikosen (“The Factory Ship”), what I remembered from Donald Keene’s monumental history of Japanese modern literature Dawn to the West as a “proletarian” novel from 80 years ago… Why the sudden popularity of this book? I wondered. continued ...

SeekJapan

• Kanikosen: a proletarian literature classic comes back to life
  Tuesday, May 20, 2008
  By Matthew Ward | Tuesday, May 20, 2008
  Go into a Japanese bookstore these days, and chances are you'll see a little book with a black ship silhouetted against a red sky on its cover, prominently displayed next to other recent bestsellers. The book in question is called “Kanikosen,” written by the left-wing author Takiji Kobayashi, and, oddly enough, it was first published way back in 1929. The book's title translates fairly literally as “Crab Factory Ship,” but I've also seen it translated as “The Cannery Boat.” It tells the story of a group of laborers struggling against brutal working conditions abroad a Japanese crab processing ship near Kamchatka, Russia. It is kind of like a Japanese version of “The Jungle” or “The Grapes of Wrath”; a story of proletariat workers being exploited and finally waking up and banding together against their oppressors. It has gotten a lot of press recently, for making a surprising comeback among young Japanese. continued ...