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Japanese Leader’s Election Win Raises Potential for Conflict with Neighbors

 

 Abe's Election Victory Raises Potential for Conflict with Japan's Neighbors 

 

http://www.voanews.com/content/japanese-leaders-election-win-raises-potential-for-conflict-with-neighbors/2559221.html

Brian Padden

 

December 15, 2014 7:51 AM

SEOUL—

 

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his allies easily won a two-thirds majority in parliament Sunday, even though the country has slipped into recession under his conservative policies. The prime minister’s victory will empower him to continue economic reforms but also pursue a nationalist agenda that will likely increase tensions with Japan’s neighbors.

In an election marked by low turnout and concern over a stagnant economy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its ally, the Komeito Party, together increased their majority in Japan’s House of Representatives.
 
“We had a goal as coalition to take a majority of the seats," Abe explained. "The lower house elections are about choosing the ruling party. So I am relieved that we have managed to continue our ruling coalition with the Komeito party. But at the same time this is also a great responsibility."

Abe said the victory is an electoral mandate to continue with his economic program known as "Abenomics" that raised taxes to curb the nation’s large public debt, pushing the economy into recession.
 
The election win will make it easier to pass unpopular reforms like deregulating labor and farm policies. It also will likely allow Abe to pursue a nationalist agenda likely to antagonize South Korea and China.

In the last year, Abe angered his northeast Asian neighbors by visiting a shrine honoring military service members, including war criminals, who died in World War II. His administration’s efforts to revise school history books, to deny that Japan’s military forced women into sexual slavery during the war, also has provoked protests abroad.
 
Political science professor Park Hwee-rhak, at Kookmin University says seeing Abe back away from these strong emotional issues would ease tensions.  “I think northeast Asia - China, South Korea and Japan - is not ready to view history objectively," he said, "So I hope Abe will emphasize practical policies which can guarantee peace or mutual prosperity in northeast Asia, and not focus on the history.”
 

Japan also has competing claims with both South Korea and China to two different chains of islands in the East China Sea.
 
Its closest neighbors are wary of Abe’s support for changing Japan's pacifist constitution to make the military more assertive against regional threats like North Korea.
 
Sejong University political science professor Hosaka Yuji says Japan is more concerned about China’s growing military strength.  “As China is enhancing its military capability, Japan also needs to enhance its armaments to not lose," he noted. "In order to do this, Japan needs to have its own military but that requires a change to the Constitution.”
 
The U.S. supports the expansion of Japan's military, so it can play a bigger role in the two nation's alliance, although U.S. officials have criticized attempts to whitewash Japan’s wartime history.

 

大東亜戦争日本降伏文書調印式タイム誌報道を読む

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

International: ... Peace Be Now Restored (International) 

 

On the decks of the giant U.S. battleship Missouri the brief, fevered course of Japan as a great power came to a quiet end. 

After Perry's two steamships and two sloops of war opened Japan to the world, the feudal Japanese learned fast from the West. But their lesson was one-sided, their rise deceptively easy. First, they beat the Chinese, and then they drubbed the Russians. They got in on the right side in World War I. They grabbed Manchuria, and in 1937 they again attacked China, hoping to dominate all Asia. Just after Pearl Harbor, Japan careened to its highest point. 

On the Missouri nearsighted little men in anachronistic top hats and clawhammer coats dully accepted defeat. Japan would have to start all over again. 

A correspondent, staring at the scene from the Missouri's No. 2 turret, whispered: "I don't know what they're going to call this; I hope it won't be the 'Missouri Compromise.' " But there was no element of compromise in the surrender document, or in the ceremony. 

TIME Correspondent Theodore H. White cabled: 

"The veranda deck of the slate-grey battleship shone with the color of red-striped Russians, red-ribboned Britons, olive-drab Chinese, and row upon row of khaki-clad American admirals and generals. 

"The Japanese had been piped aboard four minutes before MacArthur made his appearance. The first aboard was the silk-hatted Japanese Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu, limping on his wooden leg, leaning on his cane and clutching at the ship's ropes as he pulled himself up the stairway. The second was the dour, solemn-faced Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Yoshijiro Umezu—his chest covered with ribbons and hung with gold braid, his eyes blank and unseeing. 

"Complete silence greeted them as they ascended the deck. The American generals watched them come to attention in their designated places with varying degrees of emotion. Stilwell bristled like a dog at the sight of an enemy. Spaatz' chiseled face lines were sharp in contempt. Kenney curled his lips in a visible sneer. 

"MacArthur stepped out from a cabin stood stiffly erect and began reading with all the mellifluous, sonorous qualities of his magnificent voice. The only sign of his emotion was the trembling of the hands in which he held his paper. 

"As he closed the introductory remarks he half turned and faced the Japs with a piercing stare and said: 'I announce it my firm purpose ... to insure that the terms of surrender are fully, promptly and faithfully complied with.' 

"Shigemitsu, doffing his silk hat and peeling a yellow glove from his right hand, limped forward to sign the document and was assisted to a chair. With a blank, expressionless face he composed himself and signed. Umezu followed. He slowly drew off his white gloves and, without sitting, bent his stocky body forward and affixed the authority of the Japanese Army to the acknowledgment of total defeat. 

"It was Douglas MacArthur's show from beginning to end. At precisely 9:08 MacArthur stepped forward, removed a handful of fountain pens from his pocket. He started his signature, then handed the first pen to the gaunt soldier standing by his left shoulder. General Jonathan Wainwright saluted stiffly, accepted the pen, and stepped back. The next one went to Lieut. General Arthur E. Percival of Singapore. 

"In almost unbroken silence the ship's crew assembled as witnesses and watched one delegate after another affix their signatures. Grey, overcast skies had hung over the ship all during the ceremony. As the New Zealand delegate stepped forward to sign his name as the last on the list, the skies parted and the sun shone bright through the clouds. 

"MacArthur hesitated a moment after the final signature. Then he stepped forward and said slowly: 'Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always.' 

"He lifted his eyes from the script, faced the Japanese, and declared: 'These proceedings are closed.' 

"The Japs clustered about and listened to the interpreter giving them their last instructions. [There was a moment of confusion while Lieut. General Richard K. Sutherland straightened out signatures on the Japanese copy of the surrender document. Colonel L. Moore Cosgrave, who signed for Canada, had written on the wrong line. So had the French, Dutch and New Zealand signers who followed him.] The orders were placed in their hands and the Americans curtly gave them the signal to leave. They turned and departed as they had come. The shrill bosun's pipe followed their steps over the side—Shigemitsu, tired and expressionless, limping on his cane as he went; Umezu, stony-faced and silent, lifting a white-gloved hand to acknowledge the salute of the guard at the gangway. 

"As the Japs departed, grey skies closed In again on the grey ships, and there was a steady drone in the sky. The drone became a deafening roar, and a mass of U.S. planes swept over the ships—400 B-29s and 1,500 fleet carrier planes—in a final salute. Then it was quiet again. The ceremony—and the war—were over."