Following Family Agenda

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe achieved another goal of his personal agenda: being Prime Minister for longer than his Grand Father, Nobusuke Kishi. Abe’s days as Prime Minister exceeded Kishi’s record of 1,241 days, raising Abe to the sixth position among former Premiers with long tenure. Beyond decades, Abe seeks as same political agenda as his grand father.

Kishi was one of the A-class war criminals, who committed to the leadership of wartime administrations as Minister of Commerce and Industry in Hideki Tojo Cabinet. Regarded as not participating in the decision of opening war against United States and encouraged dismissal of Tojo Cabinet by opposing war continuation, Kishi was released from a war prison in Sugamo, Tokyo in 1948.

Kishi restarted his political career after when purge against past war criminals was lifted with San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951. Amendment for independent constitution or   independent rearmament was the core of his political agenda, driven by firm resentment of defeat to wartime United Nations. Restoring values of Japan before surrender was his ideological goal, which affected to the political viewpoints of his grandson.

For Kishi, Japan’s war against major Western nations was not about aggression. “I cannot stand with calling Great East Asian War an aggressive war,” told Kishi in his time in the prison. As if following it, Abe insists on not including the word of “aggression” in his statement for seventieth anniversary from the end of war this summer.

Current renewal of Japan-U.S. security guidelines was also based on the same conviction of his grandfather: rebuilding independent military. Kishi took a major step to Japan-U.S. alliance by redefining the security treaty, inviting broad opposition among the leftists and college students. Abe tried to persuade the public, being afraid of approaching U.S.’s war, by quoting Kishi’s decision. “Even with the controversial redefinition, we have not been involved in war of U.S.,” told Abe, ignoring involvement to the Cold War, the strike on Afghanistan or Iraq War.

For China, Kishi was one of the traumatic aggressors who promoted building Manchu State in the northeast China during the war. Kishi was an actual architect of Manchu State with his idea of governance with highly controlled industrial policy. There is no basic reason for the Chinese to have positive sentiment to Kishi’s grandson. While it was all right for them as long as Abe was saying that he would seek strategic mutual reciprocity, rearmament of Japan with integrated strategy with U.S. against China cannot be tolerable for the emerging dragon in East Asia.