politics

Abe's militaristic funeral captures Japan's tense mood

12 Comments
By FOSTER KLUG

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12 Comments

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Abe was such a great prominent figure. He brought Japan back to international importance after World War II,” 

Didn’t know that Abe was PM back in the 1960s.

12 ( +13 / -1 )

“Former Prime Minister Abe was such a great prominent figure. He brought Japan back to international importance after World War II,” said one of the mourners, Masae Kurokawa, 64.

……

No!

Abe was very insulated from the ordinary Japanese person.

Born into wealth,with a privileged legacy,tainted with a family history of criminality.

Abe turned out to be a forlorn and ineffective figurehead wrapped up in his own closeted thoughts on what Japan should be.

The housewife’s comments in the article are spot on…

12 ( +16 / -4 )

I'd like to ask some of these supporters of Abe, what did he do for them? Did he cut their taxes, did he raise the minimum wage, did he help restore the pension system? No to any of these things. He was a corrupt, self-serving politician who had ties to different nefarious groups like Nippon Kaigi, the Unification Church, and others.

12 ( +15 / -3 )

Sections of Tokyo, still on edge after Abe's assassination in July, looked more like a police state than the capital of one of the most stable nations in the world. Twenty thousand police officers and more than 1,000 soldiers crammed the neighborhoods around the massive funeral hall, as thousands of protesters took to the streets.

Even for Japan, this seems like overkill. Were they expecting a Tiananmen Square-esque mass protest? Just goes to show that they know how much the public disapproves of the funeral.

12 ( +13 / -1 )

Military bands, 19 gun salutes, leader worship, bemedaled general hoisting the ashes around - it looked like the 1930s all over again.

11 ( +16 / -5 )

it looked like the 1930s all over again.

It IS the 1930s again.

you do know about Kishida’s unlimited military budget and his promise to go to war with China over Taiwan? His full support for the right wing G7?

-1 ( +8 / -9 )

Are we EVER going to get a respite from Abe in the news???

The funeral is over JT. Give it a rest already!

-2 ( +5 / -7 )

Shinzo Abe has not done a single thing for regular people,” said Kaoru Mano, a Tokyo housewife who was at one protest.

Good to know that some people here get it.

4 ( +10 / -6 )

If Japan is sometimes seen from abroad as a monolith of sorts, a largely uniform middleclass haven of social harmony

maybe seen that way by 'some' from 'abroad'... however, a close friend remarked to me recently that his generation (he's 75) are the last to have anything material to hand on to their kids. when he was doing his 45 years as a salaryman, most Japanese were "middle class.... not any more". I don't suppose he's the only Japanese to know this....

4 ( +8 / -4 )

“Former Prime Minister Abe was such a great prominent figure. He brought Japan back to international importance after World War II,” said one of the mourners, Masae Kurokawa, 64.

What? What year is Masae Kurokawa living in? Many people here have gotten into the habit of praising Abe, but only because they don't have an outside view. And also because he was really just a shouting, populist-radical politician.

Abe has done nothing good for this country. His financial reforms have been one big failure. Perhaps the only things he is really known for in the world were his constant excesses, the scandals regarding his wife's strange financing, his connections to the mafia (sorry, "perfectly legitimate businesses"), and his comments/actions regarding the past.

And most importantly, he never took responsibility for anything. For any of his actions. Most of the failures ended up being some reform of the previous failure and so ended up in some fiasco again.

And the main thing not to forget is Nippon Kaigi.

7 ( +9 / -2 )

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