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| Japan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso |
TOKYO — Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso has retracted comments
suggesting Japan should follow the Nazi example of how to change the
country’s constitution, following protests by neighboring countries and
human rights activists.
But on Friday, Aso said he stands by all his other remarks in the
speech and refused to resign as cabinet minister or lawmaker. He also
refused to offer an apology over the remark.
“I have no intention to step down,” Aso told reporters.
Aso drew outrage for saying Japan should learn from how the Nazi
party stealthily changed Germany’s constitution before World War II
before anyone realized it, and for suggesting that Japanese politicians
should avoid controversy by making quiet visits to Tokyo’s Yasukuni war
shrine.
Aso said Thursday that he was misunderstood and only meant to say
that loud debate over whether Japan should change its postwar
constitution, and other issues, is not helpful.
“It is very unfortunate and regrettable that my comment regarding the
Nazi regime was misinterpreted,” Aso told reporters. “I would like to
retract the remark.”
Aso, who is also deputy prime minister, made the comments about Nazi
Germany during a speech Monday in Tokyo organized by an
ultra-conservative group.
Critics of the ruling Liberal Democrats are uneasy over the party’s
proposals for revising the US-inspired postwar constitution, in part to
allow a higher profile for Japan’s military.
Japan and Nazi Germany were allies in World War II, when Japan
occupied much of Asia and Germany much of Europe, where the racial
supremacist Nazis oversaw the killings of an estimated 6 million Jews
before the war ended in 1945 with their defeat. Japan’s history of
military aggression, which included colonizing the Korean Peninsula
before the war, is the reason its current constitution limits the role
of the military.
According to a transcript of the speech published by the newspaper
Asahi Shimbun, Aso decried the lack of support for revising Japan’s
pacifist constitution among older Japanese, saying the Liberal Democrats
had held quiet, extensive discussions about its proposals.
“I don’t want to see this done in the midst of an uproar,” Aso said,
according to the transcript. Since revisions of the constitution may
raise protests, “doing it quietly, just as in one day the Weimar
constitution changed to the Nazi constitution, without anyone realizing
it, why don’t we learn from that sort of tactic?”
Government spokesman Yoshihide Suga said that postwar Japan has consistently supported peace and human rights.
“Cabinet ministers should fully understand their role and make sure
to avoid misleading remarks,” Suga said Friday. He said Aso has already
retracted the Nazi comment and doesn’t have to resign.
Aso often speaks in a meandering style that has gotten him in trouble
for off-the-cuff remarks in the past. He has apologized previously for
accusing the elderly of being a burden on society, joking about people
with Alzheimer’s disease, saying the ideal country would be one that
attracts “the richest Jewish people,” and comparing the opposition
Democratic Party of Japan to the Nazis.
On Thursday, Aso insisted that he was referring to the Nazis “as a
bad example of a constitutional revision that was made without national
understanding or discussion.”
“If you listen to the context, it is clear that I have a negative
view of how the Weimar constitution got changed by the Nazi regime,” he
said.
“This is a constitution for all,” Aso said. “I just don’t want [the revision] to be decided amid a ruckus.”
The Nazis’ rise to power in the early 1930s amid the economic crisis
brought on by the Great Depression was facilitated by emergency decrees
that circumvented the Weimar constitution. So was Adolph Hitler’s
seizure of absolute power after he was made chancellor in 1933.
It was not a matter of revising but of abusing the constitution.
Opposition leaders condemned Aso’s remarks, saying they showed a lack
of understanding of history and hurt Japan’s national interest. Some
demanded Aso resign.
Aso’s comments “sounded like praise for Nazi actions and are totally
incomprehensible,” said Akihiro Ohata, secretary general of the
Democratic Party.
“Minister Aso’s ignorance about historical facts is so obvious,” said
Seiji Mataichi, secretary general of the Social Democratic Party. “I
also want to remind him that praising the Nazis is considered a crime in
EU nations.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center, a group dedicated to keeping alive the
history of the Holocaust, urged Aso to “immediately clarify” his
remarks.
“What ‘techniques’ from the Nazis’ governance are worth learning? How
to stealthily cripple democracy?” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean
of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said in a statement.
“Has Vice Prime Minister Aso forgotten that Nazi Germany’s ascendancy
to power quickly brought the world to the abyss and engulfed humanity
in the untold horrors of World War II?”
In South Korea, Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young said Aso’s remark “will obviously hurt many people.”
“I believe Japanese political leaders should be more careful with their words and behavior,” Cho said.
In China, which also suffered invasion and occupation by Japanese
imperial troops before and during the war, Foreign Ministry spokesman
Hong Lei said the comments showed that “Japan’s neighbors in Asia, and
the international community, have to heighten their vigilance over the
direction of Japan’s development.”
Hong also objected to Aso’s comments on visits to the Yasukuni
Shrine, which commemorates Japan’s 2.3 million war dead, including 14
wartime leaders convicted of war crimes.
Aso urged lawmakers in his speech to visit the shrine at times other
than the closely watched anniversary of the end of the war on Aug. 15 to
avoid diplomatic flare-ups.
“We demand that Japan seriously contemplate history, remain committed
to promises it made on historical issues, and take concrete actions to
win the trust of its Asian neighbors and the international community,”
Hong said.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/m86db93 
