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This Week in AsiaPolitics

Japan’s outgoing PM eyes risky final act to blunt hawkish China tilt

Shigeru Ishiba is poised to give an address on Japan’s wartime past that could complicate incoming leader Sanae Takaichi’s agenda

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Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Photo: Kyodo
Julian Ryall
With his days in power numbered, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba appears poised to make one final, politically risky stand by invoking the country’s wartime past, a move that could complicate the agenda of his incoming, more hardline successor.
Ishiba has resisted pressure from within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and is expected to deliver a speech on Friday to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II – a politically fraught subject that has stirred anxiety among conservatives, who fear he might revisit Japan’s wartime guilt in ways that go further than previous official statements.
Analysts say the address, along with his revived campaign to restore a censored anti-war speech from 1940, seems calculated to shape the historical narrative and blunt any ideological shift under incoming LDP leader Sanae Takaichi – a staunch conservative set to become the country’s first female prime minister who is expected to adopt a more hawkish stance on defence and on China.
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At the heart of Ishiba’s push is his long-running effort to reinsert into the official Diet record the full text of a speech delivered by lawmaker Takao Saito in February 1940, which condemned Japan’s escalating war in China. The military had demanded that the speech be retracted, and the lower house speaker ultimately deleted about two-thirds of it. Saito was later expelled from the Diet.

Ishiba has long campaigned for the full speech to be restored to the official transcript of Diet proceedings – and seems intent on doing so before he steps down later this month.

Japanese lawmaker Takao Saito delivered a speech in February 1940 which condemned Japan’s escalating war in China. Photo: Handout
Japanese lawmaker Takao Saito delivered a speech in February 1940 which condemned Japan’s escalating war in China. Photo: Handout

Neither the planned address nor the push to revive Saito’s words is expected to sit well with Takaichi or her future cabinet, which is widely seen as aligning with the LDP’s revisionist wing.

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