Abe’s Statement on 70th WWII Anniversary

Crush catastrophic attempt to justify Japanese military aggression and colonial domination!

Stop the War Legislation in the name of “Proactive Contribution to Peace”!

August, 24 2015

Japan Revolutionary Communist League National Committee

 

Abes’s attempt is defeated by the struggle of working class and people

First of all, Abe’s Statement has been fully exposed as a total failure of his policy to promote revision of the Japanese Constitution and rush to the war legislation, a policy of “Departure from the Post-war Regime”

Even before assuming office in September 2012, Abe had openly and repeatedly persisted on right-wing papers “the necessity of a total review of the previous statements of prime ministers on WWII”. He even declared arrogantly: “Call me right-wing militarist if you will”

 

From that time on he has been endeavoring to sweep away once and for all the previous governmental views on WWII, which, according to Abe, are based on the historical standpoint forced upon Japan by the victorious powers of WWII. The primary intention of the Statement is to justify the 15 years’ war of aggression on Asia and the Pacific area, starting from “the Manchurian Incident” in 1931, as “righteous wars of Japanese self-defense and for Asian liberation”. For the Japanese imperialism to reappear on the world stage as “a nation capable of waging war”, it is absolutely necessary to carry out this sort of outrageous distortion of history and to “Departure from the Post-war Regime”.

 

A series of powerful protest actions of workers and students in front of the Parliament Buildings in June and July, however, has given a decisive blow to the governmental plan of war legislation. The railroading of the “Security Acts” in the House of Representatives on June 15^th fueled anger of people ever more and resulted in explosion of denunciation of the war policy in face of Abe on the occasion of successive commemoration ceremonies of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima (August 6) and in Nagasaki (August 9).

 

Scared by the drastic drop of the popular support to the government and keeping clear of the US, China and Korea, the Statement ended in a formulation full of ambiguous, deceitful and false expression after bitter discussions in the cabinet meetings with the result of dissatisfaction on the part of right-wing minded surroundings of Abe Shinzo.

 

Ultra-right-wing historical view – distortion of facts and praise of war

The Statement refers often to “aggression” “colonial rule” “remorse” “apology” etc. but fails to mention “who” did it. It writes: “In China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific islands and elsewhere that became the battlefields, numerous innocent citizens suffered and fell victim to battles as well as hardships such as severe deprivation of food”. It is quite outrageous that no word to Korea is found here. Needless to say, Korea was the major colonial country of Japan and suffered a tremendous disaster under Japanese rule. Current imperialist intention of Japan to participate in the imminent war in Korean Peninsula is blatantly exhibited here. The aim of ongoing governmental drive of the war legislation is to serve this purpose.

The Statement describes Japanese wars since the Meiji-era (1868~1912) as wars against colonial domination by the “Western countries” and writes: “The Japan-Russia War (1904~05) gave encouragement to many people under colonial rule from Asia to Africa.” Also the “Manchurian Incident” and succeeding aggressive wars are justified as inevitable Japanese reaction under the pressure of building of “the economic blocks” by the “Western countries”.

 

Contrary to these shameless arguments, however, the historical fact is that Japan played a vital role in assaulting and colonizing Asian countries more severely and brutally than western countries since the Meiji-era, a founding process of Japanese imperialist state. And Japanese brutal aggression overseas was combined with severe exploitation and suppression of workers and peasants at home by the ruling class, a handful of capitalists headed by the Emperor. All the wars that followed were nothing but a continuation of this imperialist policy.

 

The Japan-Russia War was caused by the conflict over the domination of Korea. At that moment Japan had rapidly emerged as developing imperialist country in Asia as opposed to the Russian influence there. Therefore, it was a war of imperialist robbery for both of the belligerent nations. In carrying out the war against Russia, however, Japan at that time was obliged to be largely financed by the UK, the largest colonial Empire, and the US, a new big world power. In fact Japan was assigned by the two dominant imperialist states a role of “watchdog in Asia” to suppress mounting anti-imperialist national liberation movements in China and Korea by military force and fought with Russia for its own aggression in Asia.

 

It is to be noted that Japan’s annexation of Korea was admitted by the UK and the US in exchange of recognition by Japan of British rule in India and US domination of the Philippines. Thus Japan became a worst accomplice of British and US aggression on Asia instead of a liberator of Asia.

 

As a written proof, we have a document, “Imperial National Defense Policy” of 1907, in which it was clearly insisted: “An effective policy for the expansion of our national interest is an active move toward China” and “it is quite possible and inevitable that our aggressive operation in China could provoke a war with the US in the future”. It evidently shows Japanese imperialist intention of and preparation for, an over-all aggressive war in the whole area of China as well as Japan-UK and Japan-US wars over Asian domination even before the intensification of the move for “the economic blocs” in 1930’s, which Abe claims to be the major cause of Japanese invasion in Asian countries.

 

No more apologies over the future

Thirdly, the Statement says: “We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.” By saying this, Abe openly declared his will to stop apologizing for the past once this Statement is issued.

 

Down with the Abe Administration! Crush chauvinist move of JCP with the slogan, “Defend Senkaku-islands by the Self-Defense Forces”

Fourthly, the fatal bankruptcy of Abe’s Statement is exposed in its negligence or silence over the historical developments of the struggle of Japanese working class and people that formed a foundation of the society, while speaking a lot in a deceitful way over Japanese history before and after WWII. 　

 

Japanese history since the Meiji-era was filled with incessant explosion of class struggle often developing into civil-war like upsurge of working class people, which shook the domestic rule of Japanese imperialism all through the period. The failure of establishing inner peace through suppressing workers’ revolt at home drove Japanese imperialism to aggression abroad. Endless invasion into Chinese continent ended up after all with desperate plunge into the Asian-Pacific War.
 

In the meantime, due to the fatal failure of the leadership of the Japan Communist Party (JCP), Japanese workers were forced to face a grave defeat in the struggle against Japanese imperialist invasion on Asian countries. The JCP abandoned proletarian world revolution under the control of Stalinist Comintern. In spite of this bitter experience, revolutionary tradition of militant Japanese workers’ movement has been inherited in the post-WWII revolutionary upsurge and maintained till today by class struggle labor movement embodied in national railway struggle and revolutionary communist movement.

 

Though Abe insists that “prosperity is the foundation of peace”, prosperity under capitalist system is nothing but “prosperity of capitalists”, which means in reality survival of Japanese imperialism by every means and impoverishment of a vast majority of population, working class people, destruction of jobs and deprivation of every kind of human rights. The war starts at the moment when this “prosperity of capitalists” comes to end and capitalists can find no other way than to resort to the state violence abroad in the name of “self-defense for the maintenance of peace and prosperity”. Once the age plunges into war, class collaborationists represented by system-friendly left-wing organizations immediately turn over to the side of “patriotic defense of the fatherland”.

Now JCP loudly persists: “Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands is a Japanese territory” “The Self-Defense Forces will continue to play an active role under the (future) JCP’s administration.” “70 years after the end of WWII are characterized by peace and prosperity”. These contentions are completely identical with Abe’s political line and thought.

 

Abe closes the Statement with an outrageous appeal, “Japan will . . . hoist the flag of ‘Proactive Contribution to Peace,’ and contribute to the peace and prosperity of the world more than ever before.” He has quite intentionally chosen the term “proactive” to distinguish from “reactive.” “Proactive Contribution to Peace” means to act not as a reaction to the actual military action of “enemy force” but to act beforehand to crush the possible menace of war. In other words, “Attack and defeat the enemy before being attacked”. It is an overt bellicose declaration. Thus the Statement reveals the underlying intention of the ongoing war legislation.

 

Let’s smash chauvinist move of the Japanese Stalinist Party and drive it away from the political scene!

We call you all to rise up vigorously for the decisive September Battle to stop the war legislation and oust Abe administration in a powerful international solidarity with the fighting working class people all over the world, above all with striking Korean workers represented by the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions).