Japan Press Weekly

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2014 March 12 - 18 [POLITICS]

Japan’s war helped end segregation: constitutional revisionist group

A constitutional revisionist group closely connected with Prime Minister Abe Shinzo claims that Japan’s past war of aggression contributed to eliminating discrimination against people of color.

Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), a group of right-wing people, including scholars, Shintoists, and business leaders, has encouraged the prime minister to visit the war-glorifying Yasukuni Shrine and change the war-renouncing Japanese Constitution.

The organization carried in the December 2013 issue of its monthly magazine an article titled “Japan’s best day- the Greater East Asia Conference and the Joint Declaration”. It was inserted a photograph of then Prime Minister Tojo Hideki and leaders of the Asian states under Japan’s control. The international conference took place in November 1943 in Tokyo.

Japan’s rightists have often cited the “summit meeting” as the grounds for their argument that Japan waged a “just war” to liberate Asian nations from Western rule. In actuality, as Japan’s defeat seemed certain, the Imperial government convened the meeting in order to make its puppet governments’ leaders pledge to collaborate in the aggressive war.

In that essay, Japan Conference Representative Kase Hideaki, who was a special advisor to Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro in the 1980s, said, “As a result of the fact that Japan fought the Greater East Asia War (Japan’s name for the Pacific War) for the liberation of Asian countries and colored races, many African colonies as well as Asian colonies were able to win their independence.” He even went on to state, “In fact, (African-American) U.S. President Barack Obama, professional golfer Tiger Woods, and the tennis player Williams systers all owe their success to Japan.”

Saitama University Professor Emeritus Hasegawa Michiko, who was appointed as an NHK governor by PM Abe, also serves as a representative of the rightist organization. In the October 2013 issue of the journal, Hasegawa praised Japan’s wartime “suicide attack” spirit, stressing that the Japanese people should devote themselves to their country and the Emperor.

Of all 18 cabinet members, 12 ministers, including PM Abe, are affiliated with a league of Dietmembers supporting the Japan Conference.