Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda: Extreme Right-Wing Nationalist?
Few people expected that Yoshihiko Noda would win Monday’s DPJ election and become Prime Minister of Japan, so when the first English news reports about Noda’s victory appeared, few contained much about his political views or his past. He was virtually unknown, so most of the reports contained vague and general statements about how he had pledged to work hard at tackling the various problems facing post-disaster Japan.
In South Korea and China, however, Noda was not unknown. Just a couple weeks ago, Noda’s public views about pre-1945 history had incited anger from Japan’s nationalist neighbors. The Chinese media expressed concern about Noda’s historical views and his “hawk” stance towards China. Korean newspaper headlines about his election victory stressed Noda’s “extreme right-wing” views.
Some information on his views about war criminals, from a Kyodo Article:
Noda, who will likely run for president of the Democratic Party of Japan and thereby prime minister, reiterated Monday his view that Japan’s A-class war criminals are not war criminals, and thus there is no merit in asking a prime minister not to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which honors, along with the nation’s war dead, several convicted Class-A war criminals.
And from the Asahi Japan Watch:
In October 2005, when the Democratic Party of Japan was still in the opposition, Noda submitted a written question to the government in which he wrote, “The honor of all ‘war criminals’ has been recovered in a legal sense. In other words, those people who have been referred to as ‘Class-A war criminals’ are not war criminals.”
At the Aug. 15 news conference, Noda was asked if there had been any change in his beliefs on the issue.
“There is no fundamental change in my thinking,” Noda said.
He was also asked about the appropriateness of prime ministers visiting Yasukuni Shrine, which memorializes 14 Class-A war criminals as well as the war dead.
While saying such a decision was up to the individual who becomes prime minister, Noda did not say what he would do if he takes over from Kan on the grounds that was a hypothetical question.
The Economist’s Banyan column has commented on Noda’s legal viewpoint:
Some legal commentators have made a similar point in the past, arguing that Japanese law does not recognise the verdicts of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, which convicted them. Legal hair-splitting aside however, Japan’s government accepted the verdicts as part of the 1952 San Francisco peace treaty, Article 11 of which begins: “Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and of other Allied War Crimes Courts both within and outside Japan, and will carry out the sentences imposed thereby upon Japanese nationals imprisoned in Japan.”
The bizarre part of Mr Noda’s argument is that he says the San Francisco treaty “restored the honour” of all Japan’s war criminals. When he made this point to Junichiro Koizumi in 2005, in response to the then-prime minister’s controversial visit to Yasukuni, even Mr Koizumi said he did not know what Mr Noda was talking about.
Observers in China and Korea are expecting that Noda’s election will cause a deterioration of their countries’ somewhat good relations with Japan. However, Noda is already backing away from his previous statements. He’ll probably follow the example set by every other recent Prime Minister, reiterating Japan’s official apologies and accepting the verdict of the war crimes trials.
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