Re: Most Japanese favor revision of pacifist statute

[cstaylor]

"Revised" to allow for self-defense? Has the SDF been unconstitutional or extra-constitutional all this time?

You can't get any clearer than this:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized

And a more disturbing quote from an ex-leader of Minshuto:

Japan's Constitution should be revised to grant the emperor status as head of state

From the hand of MacArthur's staff, approved by the post-war Diet:

The Emperor shall be the symbol of the State and the unity of the people, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power.

And article 20 (where all the issues of Koizumi's trips to Yasakuni are unconstitutional):

Freedom of religion is guaranteed to all. No religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority. 2) No person shall be compelled to take part in any religious acts, celebration, rite or practice. 3) The State and its organs shall refrain from religious education or any other religious activity.

I predict a return to the Meiji constitution in less than 5 years, maybe sooner if Jimento can push through a constitutional revision task force, and that won't be a pretty picture, as we're already seeing rumblings from Ishihara and ilk about Article 14:

All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.

[cstaylor]

No problem, Constitutional law is a hobby of mine (I don't have Kamome's credentials, but I like a good argument).

[Taro Toporific]

"Sitting under the moonlight

At the right time,

Comes a gentle breeze.''

War criminals' poems uncovered
The Japan Times: May 12, 2004

[GuyJean]

"What a country!"

Where the hell did you find that!?..

GJ

[GuyJean]

I always get Yakov confused with the other Bosom Buddies Gaijin Buddy type show... Uhm.. Can't recall the name. Not Latka.. I think you made reference to the show before... Damn! It's driving me crazy!

GJ

[GuyJean]

Balki!!

GJ

[Buraku]

Despite the crimes their authors were charged with, the lines sometimes can be poignant. Another wartime prime minister, Koki Hirota, wrote before he was hanged:

"Sitting under the moonlight

At the right time,

Comes a gentle breeze.''

A watercolor by Adolf Hitler went on display in Tokyo theater to promote the Nazi dictator's life, the Japanese film distributor announced to a shocked world.

How to rhyme like an A class war criminal

The poets, however, are an unlikely bunch -- they were imprisoned as war criminals for Japan's wartime atrocities.

The 30 poems are assembled in two booklets that came to light this month after a historian obtained them from the family of a prisoner who served with other suspected war criminals held by U.S. Occupation authorities in the 1940s and early 1950s.

The bards include several Japanese officials who were convicted of war crimes and hanged -- including wartime Prime Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo and air force commander Kenji Doihara.

war criminal art of poetry

The poets, held in Tokyo's Sugamo Prison, mused wistfully about the seasons and dwelt sadly on their own impending deaths, writing in short Japanese forms like haiku, in free verse or in meters borrowed from ancient China.

The fact that politicians and military men would dedicate themselves to verse in their final days illustrates the honored poetic tradition in Japan, where the seasons and flowers can be used to depict everything from a love affair to bloody defeat in battle.

But there is little hint of regret for Japan's bloody conquest of East Asia or its harsh treatment of prisoners of war.

the hitler paintings prof of compassion and humanity

"The showing of the watercolor is meant to back up the message of the film -- to show that Hitler had a human side to him and that is all the more reason why he is terrifying because a despot could be born again," said Kobayashi.

The watercolor of Vienna's Karlskirche, also known as Saint Karl's Church, will be on display at the Theatre Times Square in Tokyo's Shibuya ward

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20040512f1.htm

Tojo, who ordered the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into the war, probably was one of those, citing a passage from a Buddhist sutra in 1946:

"Removed from delusive hindrance,

He has not been made to tremble,

He has overcome what can upset.'

http://www.nsjap.com

The "Nationalsozialistische Japanische Arbeiterpartei", or Japanese Nazi`



Kunio Suzuki, former chairman of the Issuikai, has written that it is
often the police itself that directs uyoku to gatherings of Nikkyoso or
JCP to disturb these events. He complains that some uyoku are even proud
of being treated as "nakama" by the police


I wonder: why do average Japanese citizens seem to be so tolerant of - or passive toward - these swine? Do they secretly agree with their neo-Nazi hate speech? Are they just cowed by them? Why don't the
police enforce traffic and noise laws and clear them? The police were
clearly not in charge, and if there is no rule of law, then there is no civilization. In Chiba (near Port Square to be exact), there was no civilization today

http://www.nsjap.com/axis/demo01.jpg
Wayside Speech against Israeli Embassy to Japan

http://www.nsjap.com/axis/991205e.jpg

There is a reason uyoku sound trucks circle Yasukuni, and it's because they've appropriated the shrine as a symbol of what Japan should be- a country ruled by a divine emperor where the men who created the Greater Japanese Empire are remembered as heroes rather than devils. When Koizumi goes to Yasukuni and writes "Prime Minister" in the registry it sends a clear message to the uyoku that they have support in the highest levels of government. Banzai.


From Skins, Punks, and Other Japanese I Know: Quote:
In Japan, I noticed only two types of skinheads- the trads (similar to other trads elsewhere in the world) and the SSS, which stands for Skinhead Samurai Spirit. The SSS is difficult to describe, there are members who are ultra-nationalistic boneheads and those who are trads and have a sense of loyalty similar to Bushido to the skinhead scene. The ultra-nationalistic SSS pose a difficult problem that cannot be answered. If they are truly ultra-nationalistic, why do they chose a Western subculture style to express themselves?



Some groups like the Sakigate, the Japanese C P or Nikkyoso, one or the other, were
> having some kind of meeting here in Chiba. Blocking all of the nearby
roads were dozens of buses full of uyoku, the yakuza-affiliated neo-nazis of Japan. The din or ugly, bellicose screeching and ranting had to be heard to be believed. I sauntered over to check things out (holding my ears of course). What I saw were hundreds of the absolute
> dregs of Japanese society - real machi no dani - dressed in military garb and milling about

Do the Japanese today still hold Foreigners in contempt? Do they still regard their fellow Asians as "maruta," or "logs." The evidence in Japan says yes. Japanese media is full of hysterical stories of a Korean conspiracy to buy up Japan's economy of bad outsider American pressure on Japan and of Chinese "criminals" invading Japan. Japanese claim the Chinese are "dirty" ("Chukogujin kitanai ne.") Demonstrations by Japanese Nazis called "uyoku" are daily events in most big cities here in Japan. These "uyoku" blare violent diatribes over loudspeakers - diatribes frequently Japanese at the Chinese. And when these "uyoku" have their demonstrations, how many Japanese counter-demonstrators can one see? None. Not one Japanese dares to challenge them that I've seen. Cowardice, or are they in tacit agreement with them? The words of the democratically-elected governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, suggest the latter. Ishihara has made a point of using derogatory language to describe foreigners and he wrote of agressively breaking up the american economy in his book Japan can say NO. Sometimes he refers to Chinese as "Shinajin" ("chiinks") in his speeches.

Ultra nationalism has had two main faces in Japan: the right-wing extremists, who blare out martial music from trucks emblazoned with rising sun flags, and the elderly ruling party politicians, who pay their respects each year to dead war criminals at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine.

For most Japanese, the first is an irritating part of everyday life, the second an embarrassing reminder of the past. But attitudes are changing along with everything else in Japan. 'Salarymen', who took life-employment for granted, are haunted by fears of 'resutora' (restructuring), as companies adjust to global competition.

Foreign firms are swooping on ailing corporations, such as Yamaichi Securities and Nissan Motors, once symbols of Japan's economic power.

'The current trends could lead to a resurgence of nationalist sentiment in Japan,' Kunihiko Saito, the country's ambassador to Washington, warned recently.

A campaign to revise Japan's 'masochistic' view of wartime history, has attracted many young Japanese. Last year, Sensoron, a manga comic book that depicts the Japanese army as the defenders of Asia against Western colonialists, became a best seller. Pride: The Fateful Moment, a film lauding war criminal Hideki Tojo, was a box office hit.

Japan now has its most hawkish government in a decade. In January, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi joined hands with Ichiro Ozawa, the Liberal Party leader, who champions Japan's right to self-defence and advocates revision of the constitution.

'Now we have a blatantly revisionist coalition in power,' noted professor Takao Takahara, adviser to the Kawasaki Peace Museum.

In the past, the main brake on nationalism was applied by the pacifist Social Democratic Party, but its influence has dwindled in recent years.

[Buraku]

Most Japanese favor revision of pacifist statute

A majority of Japanese people favor revising the constitution, with close to a third wanting to rewrite a pacifist clause and a tenth agreeing to the use of military force abroad, according to a new poll.

Some 31 percent said the constitution's Article 9, in which Japan renounces war as a sovereign right, should be changed, up from 17 percent in the last poll. Some 60 percent opposed any change, down from 74 percent.

Ok,
didn't see you were running these articles aldready