Japan heading for war, fascism and poverty

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Japan heading for war, fascism and poverty
Nick G.
 
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues to push his country in the direction of war, fascism and poverty.

Senior Ministers and advisors are fuelling the entrenched xenophobia and racism of reactionary elements within the population.

All of this reflects the playing out of various contradictions embedded within Japanese capitalism, and the effect of the law of uneven development which sees the fortunes of the Japanese ruling class waxing and waning beyond the control of government policy.

External contradictions

Japan’s territorial disputes with neighbouring countries are growing at the same time as Abe adopts a more militaristic posture with plans to revise the US-Japan Defence Cooperation Guidelines and reinterpret the so-called Peace Constitution adopted after World War 2.
Abe wants to see Japanese forces overseas deployed in combat roles.  Troops sent to assist US wars of aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq were restricted to non-combat roles and are meant to be maintained strictly as a Self-Defence Force and placed in combat only if Japan itself is attacked.  Abe also wants to be able to breathe fresh life into zaibatsu – Japan’s version of the military-industrial complex – by allowing them to export arms - or in Australia’s case, to export submarines.

Although the Japanese and the US are strategic partners in US military domination of the East Pacific, they are economic rivals.  The US has lately reasserted some of its dominance in the world of finance capital, and both sides are finding it difficult to agree on the terms of the free trade Trans Pacific Partnership.

Japan has become increasingly strident in disputes with China (Diaoyu Islands), South Korea (Tok Do Islands) and Russia (Kurile Islands).  Although the first two in particular are pimples on the face of the ocean, there are rich oil and natural gas fields as well as fishing resources which are being claimed in the seas around the disputed territories.

Internal contradictions

The Japanese working class and small farmers face an implacable foe in Japanese monopoly capitalism.  Abenomics, as the Japanese version of reactionary neo-liberalism, seeks to smash labour protection laws, limit wage increases to less than the cost of living, impose restructuring and sackings to force the growth of precarious employment, and take away social security safeguards for the underprivileged and the aged.  Agricultural workers fear that the TPP will see their livelihood diminished.

In the ideological field there is conflict between a progressive and generally pacifist section of the people for a long time aligned with the Japanese Communist Party, and a reactionary, racist and militaristic outlook which holds the ruling position and is closely aligned to the monopoly capitalist class. In recent times there has been a big push for so-called right-wing “moral” education in schools together with more and more openly racist discrimination against peoples not part of mainstream Japanese society.  These include the barakumin, a Japanese “untouchable” caste; the relatively small Ainu minority who are Indigenous to the north of Japan and the Kurile Islands; several other minority nationalities including the Ryukyuans and Nivkhs; and nearly a million citizens of Korean descent.

Laws have been passed against discrimination against the Ainu but the discrimination still occurs.  Korean communities often face open hostility and neo-Nazi groups instigate violent pogroms calling for the killing of Koreans in Japan.
 
The historical basis for the view that the Japanese are a superior race was the religious claim that the Emperor is a direct descendent of Ameterasu, the sun goddess.  This was the superstition that led to the fanatical behaviour of Japanese soldiers in WW 2, to the code of Bushido (“the way of the warrior”) and kamikaze (“divine wind”).

Although the mythological and superstitious elements of this are no longer believed, they still inform the reactionary outlook that clings to “racial purity” and “racial superiority” and against which progressive opinion faces a daily struggle.

Calls for an immigrant workforce under apartheid rule

Like many OECD countries, Japan is faced with a declining birth rate and an ageing population.  Reflecting the uneven path of capitalist development, the once-strong economic superpower faces the loss of about half of its workforce by 2060 and with that, its status as an economic giant.

The former head of Tokyo’s Immigration Bureau flew a significant kite on February 15 when he proposed bringing in 10 million foreign workers over the next 50 years.

This was supported by a key confidante of, and advisor to, Shinzo Abe, the 83-year old famous novelist Ayako Sono, who used a column in the conservative Sankei Shimbun newspaper to call for apartheid-like conditions for the foreign workers.

“Ever since I learned of the situation in South Africa some 20 or 30 years ago,” she wrote, “I have been convinced that it is best for the races to live apart from each other, as was the case for whites, Asians and blacks in that country.”

Her comments led to protests from the South African ambassador to Japan and from progressive Japanese.

A government proposal for temporary three to five year work visas was condemned by the United Nations which likened the scheme to slave labour.

Publicity was also given to the plight of 300,000 Japanese-Brazilians who were recruited during the expansionary period of the 1980s and 1990s.  They were put to work in factories where they were poorly treated and then sent home when the downturn set in.  Some of those who remain say they are disadvantaged, bullied and disliked by mainstream Japanese.

Neo-Nazi links
 
In an attempt to cultivate a more female-friendly face for his government, Abe undertook a Cabinet reshuffle last September elevating five women to senior posts.

Barely a week later he had to deal with a crisis that erupted when Facebook photos showed two of the women, the internal affairs minister and the party’s policy chief, on separate occasions in front of a Japanese flag in the company of Kazunari Yamada, the 52-year old leader of the National Socialist (Nazi) Workers Party.  Yamada is notorious in Japan for having praised Hitler and the 9/11 attacks on the US World Trade Centre. 

Not long after these photos emerged, the Police minister was forced to reject claims that she had been in a 15-year relationship with Yamada.

These are significant and senior posts within the Japanese government and ruling party held by associates and friends of the country’s leading neo-Nazi.  It shows how easily, in the current environment, new fascist elements are situating themselves within mainstream conservative parties.  It is occurring in the Ukraine, the UK and the US and is a tacit acceptance by a worried bourgeoisie of its need to have fascist elements in reserve in case of a rising level of people’s struggle.

Japanese people will rise to the occasion

We have every confidence that the Japanese people will organise and lift the level of struggle against the reactionary trends in their society.
 
There is a broad coalition of opposition to the TPP.  There is a gearing up for a spring offensive for higher wages and better job protection. Okinawans are engaging directly with US occupation forces and struggling against US military bases; and progressive opinion is defying the militarisation of the Constitution and of society.

There is a broad range of contact between the Japanese and Australian peoples – from business relationships to school exchanges.

We must develop our ties with the Japanese working class and its allies and isolate our own and each other’s reactionary bourgeoisies.

 

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