Korea-Japan and the End of the '65 System - Part IV: The '65 System's Decline

[soryang]

Korea-Japan and the End of the '65 System - Part IV: The '65 System's Decline

BY T.K. PARK Sep. 11 AAK Ask a Korean

...It only took 11 years since the Murayama Statement for Abe Shinzo to be the prime minister of Japan, succeeding Koizumi Junichiro in 2006. When the far-right factions in Europe gained some measure of political power, the alarm bells went off around the world. The world freaked out when Alternative fur Deutschland barely missed the cut to join Germany’s Bundestag in 2013, or when Marine Le Pen came in third in France’s presidential election in 2012. But few in the Western world cared when a blatant history-denier like Abe Shinzo became the prime minister of Japan in 2006, and again in 2012. The fact that 15 out of the 18 members of Abe’s 2014 cabinet were members of Nippon Kaigi received virtually no attention.

The only Western observers who recognized Abe as a far-right revisionist were his ideological bedfellows. Donald Trump’s alt-right advisor Steve Bannon has called Abe “Trump before Trump,” drawing parallels between the nationalistic agenda between the two leaders. But that’s wishful thinking on Bannon’s part, for Abe is incomparably more competent than Trump. The better US analogue for Abe, instead, is Richard Nixon.

Like the way Nixon failed to win the presidency in 1960 after serving as the vice president for Dwight Eisenhower, Abe’s first run as the prime minister barely lasted a year, and his LDP turned over power to the Democratic Party that held government from 2009 to 2012. Then, just as Nixon positioned himself as a candidate of stability in the midst of the disastrous Vietnam War, Abe’s LDP promised a return to normalcy after the catastrophic Tohoku earthquake in 2011, which raised the specter of a nuclear disaster as the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant suffered three nuclear meltdowns.

This is part 4 of a series

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2019/09/korea-japan-and-end-of-65-system-part_11.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter


The Religious Cult Secretly Running Japan
Nippon Kaigi, a small cult with some of the country’s most powerful people, aims to return Japan to pre-WWII imperial ‘glory.’ Sunday’s elections may further its goal.

Jake Adelstein
Mari Yamamoto
Updated 04.13.17 3:25PM ET / Published 07.10.16 12:15AM ET

The influence of Nippon Kaigi may be hard for an American to understand on a gut level. But try this: Imagine if “future World President” Donald Trump belonged to a right-wing evangelical group, let’s call it “USA Conference,” that advocated a return to monarchy, the expulsion of immigrants, the revoking of equal rights for women, restrictions on freedom of speech—and most of his pre-selected political appointees were from the same group.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-religious-cult-secretly-running-japan?ref=scroll