TOKYO: Japan looks set to get its first prime minister born after World War II in Shinzo Abe, who is breaking precedent with his unapologetic views on the country’s imperialist past.
Abe, who will turn 52 on Sept 21, has pledged to rip up reminders of World War II defeat — particularly the US-imposed constitution which barred Japan from maintaining a military.
The rise of Abe, whose grandfather was jailed but not tried as a war criminal after World War II, comes amid high tension between Japan and neighbouring countries linked largely to war memories.
Abe has refused to clearly detail his views on history but has signalled he questions the legitimacy of US-led trials of war criminals and feels Japan should stop apologizing for its past atrocities.
“I was not only born after the war but also after the San Francisco Peace Treaty was signed,” Abe said recently, referring to the 1951 treaty that ended the US occupation of Japan.
“In that sense, I believe I can create a new Japan with a new vision,” he said.
Abe, the right-hand man of popular outgoing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, is almost certain to win the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s presidential election on Wednesday, which will secure Japan’s premiership.
He is expected to be given an initial honeymoon with China and South Korea, which have sent signals they want to repair relations with Asia’s largest economy.
News reports say Abe has already begun informal contacts to meet Chinese and South Korean leaders in November at the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vietnam.
The two countries have refused to meet Koizumi due to his annual visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which honours 2.5 million war dead and, controversially, 14 top war criminals from World War II.
But unlike Abe, Koizumi has repeatedly apologized for the past and said he accepted the Allied trials which condemned Japanese war leaders.
Abe has visited the Yasukuni shrine in the past but refused to say if he would go as premier or to confirm accounts he went secretly in April.
“Mr. Abe is unique in the way that he has questioned the norms of post-war democracy in Japan,” said Hidekazu Kawai, professor emeritus of Gakushuin University.
Abe, who has been vague on much of his agenda, has vowed to put a priority on revising the constitution to allow Japan to have a military in name — a position shared by Koizumi and much of the public.
But Abe has gone further and rejected generally accepted views on the 1972 Joint Communique that normalized relations with China, implying he disagreed with Allied trials of war criminals.
“We no longer live in the era where we are bound by a preconceived notion that we must live by decisions made in the old era,” Abe said in a public debate.
Abe’s views — and his refusal to discuss them indepth — have infuriated Japanese liberals, who say the country must continue to show remorse for the suffering it caused.
“At the root of Abe’s idea must be his outlook on history and denial that World War II was a war of aggression,” the Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial.
“There is no way a prime minister who cannot speak his view on history about the biggest war of the 20th century can be accepted by the world,” said the liberal daily, which has sparred with Abe in the past.
Because Abe came from a political dynasty, his views were more conservative than those of many ordinary Japanese, said Hidenori Ijiri, a professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
Abe is the son of former foreign minister Shintaro Abe and the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi, a wartime cabinet member who narrowly escaped the gallows and went on to become a post-war prime minister.
By contrast, Koizumi’s controversial visits to the Yasukuni war shrine have been widely seen as a political decision
to please his party base and a ign of his stubbornness — not a signal of a revisionist ideology.
“Some people in the public say it is somewhat scary to think what he will do,” Ijiri said of Abe’s hawkish ideology but vague agenda.
“Mr. Abe is much more conservative than Mr. Koizumi, but the problem is no one knows what his policies will be like,” he said.—AFP
