Analysis | Shrine visit a worrying signal of Abe’s 'militaristic, anti-China' streak: analysts
Abe's actions nudge his country further right and reflects a lack of restraint in potentially escalating regional tensions, experts say
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s inflammatory visit to a Tokyo war shrine demonstrates his determination to drag pacifist Japan to the right and nudges northeast Asia a significant step closer to conflict, analysts say.
Frayed ties in the region will be further damaged by what Abe claimed was a pledge against war, but what one-time victims of Japan’s aggression see as a glorification of past militarism.
Abe’s forthright views on history – he has previously questioned the definition of “invade” in relation to Japan’s military adventurism in the last century – have raised fears over the direction he wants to take officially pacifist Japan.
If you stand up against China … then you appear to be strong and heroic [at home]
“His ultimate goal is to revise the [pacifist] constitution,” said Tetsuro Kato, professor emeritus at Tokyo’s Hitotsubashi University. He is “arrogant and running out of control”.
After a creditable performance in getting Japan’s chronically underperforming economy back on track that has kept his poll numbers respectable, Abe is now spending his political capital pursuing pet nationalist issues.
He sent shockwaves around the region when he went to pray at Yasukuni Shrine on Thursday, the anniversary of his coming to power and just days after approving the second consecutive annual budget rise for Japan’s military.
Partly, the money will be used to buy stealth fighters and amphibious vehicles intended to boost Japan’s ability to defend remote islands, the government said, citing fears over Beijing’s behaviour in a row over the sovereignty of an East China Sea archipelago.