Japan Press Weekly

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2014 February 12 - 18 [POLITICS]

JRP rushing toward the ultra-right

The right-wing opposition Japan Restoration Party (JRP) is heading straight down the road to the far right.

Matsuno Yorihisa, chief of the JRP lawmakers’ group, said to the Abe government at the beginning of the current ordinary Diet session, “Let’s together discuss the issues such as amending the Constitution and authorizing the right to collective self-defense.”

Yamada Hiroshi, a JRP member of the House of Representatives, criticized the U.S. government in his question period on February 3 for expressing its “disappointment” at PM Abe’s visit to the war-glorifying Yasukuni Shrine in December, saying, “Washington’s wording was improper for an ally.” He also denounced the protests from other nations as “interference in Japan’s domestic affairs”.

Nakayama Nariaki, another JRP member of the Lower House, on February 12 took up South Korea’s condemnation of Japan’s sex slavery (known as “comfort women”) system during World War II. Citing the slogan of “Quit Asia and Join Europe” by Fukuzawa Yukichi, an Enlightenment thinker in the Meiji period, he even pressed the administration to break off diplomatic relations with South Korea.

Nakayama also blamed the 1993 Kono Statement which admitted to the Imperial Japanese Army’s involvement in maintaining the comfort women system during the war. He insisted that in order to “refute the false accusation” the Diet should summon then Chief Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei and grill him over how the statement was compiled.