Japan Press Weekly

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2013 November 27 - December 3 [POLITICS]

Secrets bill promoters have war criminals and wartime police officials in family trees

Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and his allies aggressively promoting a state secrets protection bill have wartime politicians as family members who had been actively involved in the government’s suppression of the public.

Abe’s grandfather Kishi Nobusuke was the industry minister under Tojo Hideki’s cabinet at the time when Japan launched the Pacific War in 1941. Kishi after the war was detained for three and a half years as a Class-A war crimes suspect.

In 1957, he became the prime minister. During his term, Kishi met public criticism and had to give up his attempt to restore a wartime system of preventive detention, which had been installed under the Peace Preservation Law.

Former Chief Cabinet Secretary Machimura Nobutaka, who heads the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s in-house team on the state secrets bill, has as his grandfather Machimura Kingo, a Home Ministry official who headed the Special Political Police (Tokko).

Under the Peace Preservation Law, Tokko before and during the war detained, tortured, and killed many innocent citizens, including writer Kobayashi Takiji.

The Upper House special committee on national security, where deliberations on the state secrets bill are currently taking place, is chaired by LDP lawmaker Nakagawa Masaharu. His father-in-law is Hara Bunbei, who was a Tokko section chief in Kagoshima Prefecture during the war and became the superintendent general of the Metropolitan Police and then the Upper House speaker in the post-war era.