Japan Press Weekly

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2024 August 7 - 13 [POLITICS]

JCP Chair Tamura criticizes PM Kishida for going to discuss constitutional revision immediately after Hiroshima A-Bomb Day

Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Tamura Tomoko, at a press conference held on August 6 in Hiroshima City, criticized Prime Minister Kishida Fumio for not even mentioning the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) at all in his speech delivered at a city-hosted peace memorial ceremony.

Tamura referred to the fact that the Hiroshima city mayor in the ceremony requested that “Japan, as a practical effort toward a nuclear-weapon-free world, participate as an observer at the Third Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons to be held in March next year.” She said it was “very dishonest” that PM Kishida did not utter even a single word on the treaty.

Asked by a reporter about Kishida’s scheduled attendance at a meeting of the LDP’s “taskforce for the realization of constitutional reform” the next day, Tamura harshly criticized him for attempting to discuss constitutional revision to enable Japan to fully remilitarize immediately after the peace memorial ceremony.

Tamura noted that the Hiroshima Peace Declaration on the 79th anniversary of atomic bombing says, “If, after the war, Japan had abandoned our Peace Constitution and focused on rebuilding our military, the city of peace Hiroshima today would not have existed.” She said, “On the occasion of the ‘A-Bomb Day’ in Hiroshima, everyone was thinking about what to do for peace,” and lamented, “Despite this, PM Kishida is going to discuss constitutional amendments immediately afterwards.”

She continued, “At a time when diplomacy that makes the best use of our pacifist Constitution is required, a prime minister who is obsessively devoted to amending the Constitution probably does not think about peace for Japan or the rest of the world.”