The vast majority in the Upper House obtained on Sunday at the polls by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), the formation of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, confirmed this Monday by the official results, opens the door to a historic change in Japan : the beginning of the end of pacifism imposed by the victors of World War II on a defeated nation. The country that the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended up bringing to its knees was forced to enact a Constitution in 1946 that even today prohibits any act of war. Ending what a part of the Japanese perceives as an anachronism was one of Abe’s objectives until his assassination last Friday. This Monday, the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, assumed that controversial legacy and promised to finish Abe’s “unfinished tasks”: among them, changing the Basic Law of the country to increase his military capabilities.
“The problems that he could not solve, I will make mine,” Kishida promised at a press conference in Tokyo after confirming that the PLD won 63 seats in the elections, more than half of the 125 that were renewed on Sunday. Its coalition partner, the Buddhist Komeito, won 13 seats, giving both parties a total of 76, which added to the 70 they have in the other half of the Upper House —every three years the 50% of the seats—expand the majority of the ruling coalition to 146 out of 248. These are the best electoral results for the PLD since 2013.
Abe’s violent death, when he was campaigning in support of a PLD candidate, elicited a vote of sympathy in the elections and a victory that guarantees Kishida three years of government without the need to call national elections.
“Our goal was to secure the majority and we have surpassed it”, congratulated Kishida, who interpreted the results as a sign that the Japanese see that they are “entering a turning point” with “the greatest crisis after the war” world, alluding to the conflict in Ukraine. This majority in the upper house of the PLD and its allies, added to their control of the most powerful lower house, allows the start of the process of the long-awaited constitutional reform by the late Abe. The former prime minister’s party, together with his government partner, the Restoration Party and the Democratic Party for the People – two minor formations of a nationalist nature and related to the constitutional amendment – add up to 177 seats. They are more than two thirds (166) necessary to approve the amendment to the Magna Carta, which must then be submitted to a referendum of the population.
The revision of the Basic Law “has been one of the points of the PLD program since its foundation” in 1955, recalled Kishida, who announced that they will share “with the nation a road map” on a change whose origin is unrelated to the invasion Russia from Ukraine, but which does appear to have been catalyzed by that war and by Chinese expansionism and Beijing’s increased military presence in the region.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
subscribe
Many Japanese, like Abe himself, believe that the Constitution (partially drafted by the US occupation forces at the end of World War II) leaves them helpless. According to the ninth article, the Japanese army cannot even be defined as “Armed Forces”, but rather as Self-Defense Forces. Neither carry out offensives, declare a war, participate in international conflicts or have ballistic missiles. Its reason for being is the protection of the archipelago.
More than half of those polled in a June poll by the Jiji Press news agency, quoted by Reuters, advocated increasing defense spending. About two-thirds, that Tokyo should acquire missiles with enough range to attack foreign enemy bases.
For the Japanese generation that lived through the defeat of World War II, the Constitution is the guarantee of peace that facilitated the return of an industrialized Japan to the Asian countries that suffered Japanese colonization in the first half of the 20th century. But since the Japanese economic miracle, in the seventies of the last century, the most right-wing factions of the PLD, a coalition of conservative forces that controls power almost without pause since its founding in 1955, consider that Japan needs a Armed belligerent and consistent with the economic power of the country.
Abe had taken over from previous prime ministers, such as Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi, advocates of normalizing the army and strengthening the national military industry to face a security environment that they considered increasingly hostile. Analysts see Kishida’s emphasis on constitutional change as an attempt to appease the more conservative factions, some of whom had been his bitter rivals when he aspired to power.
The tendency of a part of Japanese society to leave constitutional pacifism behind has also been applauded by the United States. His Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, arrived in Tokyo on Monday to express Washington’s condolences for the attack that killed the former head of government, whose “great merits” were praised by the head of US diplomacy.
Popular support for the constitutional amendment does not prevent it from remaining controversial in Japan. Fumio Kishida, perceived as a warmonger by the still-wide section of Japanese peace activists, is considered a moderate by the hardliners of his party. In fact, in the first nine months of his government, he turned to Abe to seek the consensus of the most conservative politicians in his party. The prime minister announced that Abe will posthumously receive the Order of the Chrysanthemum, the country’s highest decoration. Analyst Hiroshi Odanaka, from the local newspaper mainichi, warns that Kishida has been left in a difficult position. “Abe’s absence has changed the landscape of the LDP and its impact cannot yet be foreseen,” Odanaka notes in an analysis titled Kishida will have leadership problems despite his victory.
Kishida’s constituency is Hiroshima, traditionally opposed to nuclear weapons as it was the victim of the first atomic bombing. The prime minister advocates banning them and has applied policies to support the middle classes that have stirred up his conservative co-religionists, who, along the lines of Abe, defend neoliberal policies. His promise to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP may, according to several analysts, bring Kishida closer to this sector of the LDP and consolidate him as the successor to the prime minister assassinated while participating in an impromptu campaign rally in Nara, some 500 kilometers southwest of Tokyo.
The violent death of Abe – the man who shot him is in custody – does not by itself explain the success at the polls of his party, hegemonic in Japanese politics for decades, but it may have promoted the constitutional reform project that it was so expensive. The memory of the former prime minister is still very present in the country, as evidenced by the tributes to his figure, not only at the place of his assassination, in front of a train station in Nara, but also at the headquarters of his party or in front of his own residence. in Tokyo. “He was a great leader, we lost a great leader,” lamented his successor. This Monday, his family and loved ones mourn him at a private funeral in Tokyo. A day later, he will be buried in his hometown of Shimonoseki, in the Yamaguchi region in the southwest of the country.
Revenge for Abe’s alleged support of a religious group
Tetsuya Yamagami, the person arrested for shooting Shinzo Abe in the back, has assured investigators that he committed the murder in revenge for his alleged support of the Unification Church of Japan, also known as the Moon Sect, and which his mother made a “huge donation”, reports the Kyodo news agency citing police sources.
Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the Japanese branch of the Church – which numbers 10 million members, 600,000 of them in Japan – confirmed at a press conference on Tuesday that Yamagami’s mother regularly attended congregation meetings, but has declined to make reference to the alleged donation, reports the Reuters agency. Tanaka has clarified that neither Abe nor Yamagami were members.
The mother joined the group, questioned in the past for its donation system, in 1998 and ran out of money in 2002. Between 2009 and 2017 she had no relationship, but returned to attend the events she organized two or three years ago .
The police have indicated that the suspect was resentful with a specific organization, but have not revealed which one.
Japan’s Unification Church, founded in Korea in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, a staunchly anti-communist self-declared Messiah who died in 2012, has ties to conservative world leaders. According to his website, Abe participated in an event organized by a Church-affiliated organization last September in which he gave a speech praising the work he is doing for peace on the Korean peninsula.
Follow all the international information in Facebook Y Twitteror in our weekly newsletter.
#electoral #victory #Shinzo #Abes #party #opens #door #reform #pacifist #Constitution #Japan