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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
On 26 December 26, 2012 Abe Shinzo is to resume the position of Prime Minister of Japan, following the resounding victory of the Liberal- Democratic Party (LDP) under his presidency in the elections two weeks earlier. He came to power with an explicit agenda: seeing the US alliance as central to Japan and therefore attaching priority to carrying out Japan's obligations under it, revising the constitution so as to convert the current Self Defense Forces into a Kokubogun or National Army and adopting a stance of authorizing participation of Japan's forces in “collective security” operations (i.e., fighting wars shoulder-to- shoulder with American forces), establishing a national “Takeshima Day,” (to reinforce the Japanese claim to the island that South Korea knows as Tokdo and refuses to consider yielding), and adopting a hardline stance towards China, insisting there was “no room for negotiation” on the matter of conflicting claims to the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. “What is called for in and around the Senkaku Islands,” he wrote, “is not negotiation but physical force incapable of being misunderstood.”
1 Between the election and the actual assumption of office, he abandoned this, evidently fearing that if he went ahead it might mean his being denied an invitation to the Korean presidential swearing-in ceremonies early in 2013.
2 Abe Shinzo, “Atarashii kuni e,” Bungei shunju, January 2013, pp. 124-133, at p. 130.
3 Quoted in Nikkan Gendai, “Becoming an ugly and dangerous Nation! The deterioration of Japan's Fundamental Law of Education,” translated by Nobuko Adachi, posted 18 December 2006.
4 See Adam Lebowitz and David McNeill, “Hammering Down the Educational Nail,” Japan Focus, 9 July 2007 .
5 Abe Shinzo, Utsukushii kuni e, 2007.
6 Nihon keizai dantai rengokai, Kibo no kuni, Nihon, 1 January 2007, discussed in Minoru Nagata (introduced by Gavan McCormack), “Love your state, Love your boss: Whither Japan?” Japan Focus, 9 January 2006.
7 “Shusho hobei nandai zukushi,” Asahi shimbun, 9 November 2007.
8 In the words of the message published in all national newspapers in December 2006.
9 For detailed analysis: Gavan McCormack and Wada Haruki, “Forever stepping back: the strange record of 15 years of negotiation between Japan and North Korea,” in John Feffer, ed, The Future of US-Korean Relations: The imbalance of power, London and New York, Routledge, 2006, pp. 81-100.
10 See the interventions from the scientific journal, Nature, discussed in Wada and McCormack.
11 Shinto Seiji Renmei, to which as of 2006 223 members of the Diet belonged, including Prime Minister, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Finance, Chief Cabinet Secretary, etc. Details in my Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, New York, Verso, 2006).
12 On his pressure on the national broadcaster to sanitize any reference to the Comfort Women, see, inter alia, my “War and Japan's Memory Wars,” Japan Focus, posted 13 February 2005; Violence Against Women in War-NET Japan, “Responsibility Denied: Japan's Debate Over the Comfort Women,” March 31, 2007.
13 Larry Niksch, “Japanese military's ‘comfort women’ system,” Wikisource, 3 April 2007 (Congressional Research Service Memorandum)
14 Shimomura Hirofumi, See “Shimomura hatsugen - shusho no owabi ga dainashi da,” editorial, Asahi shimbun, 28 March 2007.
15 “Shinzo Abe's double talk,” Washington Post, 24 March 2007.
16 Bryan Walsh, “Japan's Abe reopens an old wound,” Time, 8 March 2007.
17 Norimitsu Onishi, “Call by US House for sex slavery apology angers Japan's leader,” New York Times, 1 August 2007. 1
19 House Resolution 121, submitted 31 January 2007, See here.
20 Norimitsu Onishi, “Call by US House for sex slavery apology angers Japan's leader,” New York Times, 1 August 2007.
21 “Comfort Women Issue,” Statement of the Embassy of Japan, quoted in Jeeyoung Choi, “Comfort Women: Japan's unpaid reparations,” Revisions - Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs
22 Jeeyoung Choi, op. cit.
23 Funabashi Yoichi, “Beikoiku kara no ‘jiritsu’ to ‘jisei’.” Asahi shimbun, 28 May 2007.
24 Funabashi, ibid, also “Nichi-bei-go-in daiwa, Raisu chokan ‘shincho ni’, Koike Boeisho to kaidan,” Asahi shimbun, 10 August 2007.
25 “‘Nichi-In wa kihonteki kachi o kyoyu’ shusho, Indo kokkai de enzetsu,” Asahi shimbun, 22 August 2007.
26 Transcript, speech of 19 September 1990, ANA Hotel, Tokyo, and media reports.
27 See, for example, reports in The Age, 26 March 1988, and the Weekend Australian, 26-27 March 1988.
28 Department of Defence, Australia's National Security - Defence Update 2007, Canberra 2007.
29 “Australia - Japan Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation,” Australian Government, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 13 March 2007.
30 Hugh White, “An Australia-Japan Alliance?” Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, December 2012, p.3.
31 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, “Japan-Australia Relations - Basic Data, September 2012.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/australia/data.html
32 Desmond Ball, “Whither the Japan-Australia security relationship?” Austral Policy Forum 03-32A, 21 September 2006.
33 Malcolm Fraser, “Australia-U.S. Relations in the ‘Asian century’,” Asialink, The University of Melbourne, 25 September 2012.
34 For details, Client State, passim.
35 Details in Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace, London and New York, Verso, 2007.
36 Following the reports issued in 1995 by Joseph Nye and in 2000 and 2007 by Nye, Armitage, and their associates. For further discussion see McCormack and Norimatsu, Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Lanham MD, Rowman and Littlefield, 2012, passim.
37 Richard Armitage and Joseph S. Nye, “The US-Japan Alliance: Anchoring Stability in Asia,” CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies), August 2012, (Link).
38 Nishibe Susumu, “Seiron,” Sankei shimbun, 5 September 2006.
39 Hiroshi Matsubara, “Interview//Kiichi Fujiwara: Abe's revisionism may diminish Japan's credibility,” Asahi shimbun, 20 December 2012.
40 “Yes, we remember the facts,” Star-Ledger, 4 November 2012 (New Jersey). Palisades Park in New Jersey is the site of a “Comfort Women” monument to which denialists have taken great exception, and which the Japanese Consul- General has attempted (unsuccessfully) to have removed. (“The Comfort Women monument in New Jersey,” japan probe, 24 May 2012.) Link.
41 “Abe pays Yasukuni visit amid isle rows,” Japan Times, 17 October 2012.
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