Japan opposition leader calls prime minister Shinzo Abe 'revisionist'
Banri Kaieda says prime minister's conservatism could be a 'destabilising factor'
Japan's main opposition leader chided Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for conservative statements on history and voiced fear he could be a "destabilising" factor in East Asia.
During a visit to Washington, Banri Kaieda, president of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, said he remained fully committed to the country's past expressions of regret for its wartime behaviour.
Kaieda said that the Abe government's remarks and actions had alienated Japan's neighbours as well as its US and European allies by "fuelling suspicions that Prime Minister Abe may be a historical revisionist".
Speaking at the Brookings Institution think tank on Tuesday, Kaieda said: "I clearly reject historical revisionism and will oppose it." He said his party would "safeguard the mature democracy fostered by post-war Japanese society".
He went on: "Domestically, the Abe administration has now made its authoritarian tendencies clear and internationally, the Abe administration could move beyond the realm of healthy nationalism and become a destabilising factor in East Asia."
In December Abe isited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honours 2.5 million Japanese war dead including convicted war criminals from the second world war. The move outraged China and South Korea and led to a rare public rebuke by the United States, Japan's key ally.