Japan Press Weekly

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2011 March 2 - 8 [US FORCES]

Stop paying for U.S. forces’ stay in Japan: JCP Kasai

At a Lower House Budget Committee meeting on February 28, Japanese Communist Party member Kasai Akira called on the government to stop payment for the stationing of the U.S. forces in Japan, which has quadrupled in amount in the last 30 years.

Japan’s expenditures to support the stationing of U.S. military personnel, including the so-called “sympathy budget”, increased from 173.5 billion yen in 1978 to 685.6 billion yen in 2009.

Kasai stated that the total amount of expenditures from 1978 to 2011 amounts to 17.3 trillion yen.

In response to Kasai, who pointed out that Japan now bears 70% of the costs for the United States to maintain its troops in Japan, Foreign Minister Maehara Seiji declared, “The payment is appropriate.”

The JCP representative criticized the foreign minister as well as Prime Minister Kan Naoto for making a 180-degree turn on this issue once they took power. When they were a part of the opposition force, Maehara claimed in the Diet that the U.S. forces-related expenditures should not be regarded as sacrosanct and Kan used to criticize the “sympathy budget” as helping to perpetuate the existence of U.S. bases in Okinawa.

The prime minister answered Kasai by saying, “The security situation around Japan is more severe than before” and justified the payment.