How will the world's only "mythical nation" confront postwar democracy? On the occasion of Ishiba's visit to Ise Shrine

When Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was elected as the new president of the Liberal Democratic Party in September last year , both the government and the media in South Korea generally commented favorably on the Prime Minister's past comments about South Korea. When the South Korean government decided to terminate the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) between Japan and South Korea in 2019, the Prime Minister said, "The fact that our country has not faced up to its war responsibility head-on since our defeat in the war is at the root of many of our problems." This was seen as an unprecedentedly sincere voice from a former LDP cabinet minister . Within the LDP, there were swirling voices of criticism saying, "This is the end for Ishiba," and "He will never be Prime Minister," but five years later, the Prime Minister's seat fell into his hands. Japan's invasion of Korea, which began immediately after the Meiji Restoration, is the origin of Japan's invasion of Asia and has decisively distorted Japan-South Korea relations. Prime Minister Ishiba visited Ise Grand Shrine, which is spiritually armed with the past war of aggression, at the New Year . How will the world's only "mythical nation" deal with its fading postwar democracy?

■ Ishiba vs. Abe over acceptance of the Tokyo Trials

The mission of Shinzo Abe, who had been in power for 8 years and 8 months by 2020, was to sway public opinion toward a restorationist nationalism that was commonly referred to as "Japan is amazing," and to lead Japan into becoming a military superpower that could confront the rising China. The key to this was the approval of the exercise of the right of collective self-defense in 2014 and the implementation of new security legislation the following year in 2015. However, this transformation into a military superpower is under the control of the Anglo-Saxon alliance of the United States and the United Kingdom, due to the Japan-US Security Treaty, the conclusion of the Japan-UK Forces-to-Forces Facilitation Agreement (2023) and the Japan-Australia Facilitation Agreement (2022), and Japan's de facto membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (2022).

In order to prevent Japan's military power from going off on its own, the United States and Britain have made the " expulsion of irresponsible militarism" stated in the Potsdam Declaration (1945), in other words, acceptance of the Tokyo Trials in order to dismantle the Empire of Japan, a prerequisite for "re-militarizing Japan into a great power."

Regarding this, Ishiba has repeatedly made extremely sensible statements for an LDP member, such as " I cannot understand why the acts that led the country to defeat are left unquestioned as 'we are all heroes when we die'" and "Accepting the Tokyo Trials is by no means synonymous with condemning all prewar Japan as wrong" (2008). In contrast, it is well known that Abe has thoroughly denied the Potsdam system, saying " The Tokyo Trials were condemned by the victors on the Allied side" (2013) and " Class A war criminals who were tried as war criminals at the Tokyo Trials are not criminals under domestic law" (2016). When Sanae Takaichi, then-Chair of the Policy Research Council and a "protégé" of Abe, who Ishiba won in a comeback in the recent LDP presidential election, questioned the use of "invasion" in the 1995 Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi's speech apologizing for Japan's colonial rule and aggression in 2013 , Ishiba, as Secretary-General of the LDP, expressed his anger and gave a stern warning, saying "I would like you to strictly refrain from making such statements."

These three LDP lawmakers have been competing for the top spot in two LDP presidential elections by a narrow margin. The first was in August 2012 (five candidates). In the first round of voting, Abe received 141 votes, including 54 assembly member votes and 87 party member and local votes , while Ishiba received 34 and 165 votes, for a total of 199 votes. He came in first with an overwhelming number of local votes. However, in the runoff vote, which was only for assembly member votes, Abe received 108 votes to Ishiba's 89, and returned to the presidency. The result was similar to this in the September 2024 presidential election (nine candidates). In the first round of voting, Takaichi Sanae received 181 votes, including 72 assembly member votes and 109 local votes, while Ishiba came in second with 46 and 108 votes, for a total of 154 votes. However, in the runoff election, Ishiba won 215 votes to Takaichi's 194, and was elected president for the first time. If the 2024 presidential election were to replace Takaichi, the LDP's most hawkish candidate, with Abe, Ishiba would have avenged his loss in the 2012 presidential election.

The reason I described these two elections as inversely similar is because Ishiba, who lost in the 2012 election, won the 2024 election in a similar way to Abe in 2012. And by the same token, Takaichi in 2024 lost in a similar way to Ishiba in 2012. This is likely due to the 12 years that passed between these two LDP presidential elections. In 2012, the US neoconservatives were determined to ensure "Abe's one -man rule" at all costs, and to get the 2014 approval of the right to collective self-defense and the accompanying massive military expansion , but in 2024, after Abe's death, they wanted to correct their excessive hawkish line to a more moderate one.

■ Ishiba opposes Abe's new security policy

As if factoring in Abe's seemingly precarious return to the presidency of the LDP in September 2012 and the launch of a second Abe administration at the end of 2012 after ousting the Democratic Party government, the Center for Strategic and International Studies ( CSIS) , the home base of Japan Handler, published the Third Armitage Report in August 2012. This report called on the Japanese government to restart nuclear power plants, expand the scope of legal authority for peacekeeping operations, and state that "the prohibition on the exercise of the right of collective self-defense is an obstacle to the Japan-US alliance and must be rectified."

Moreover, there was an instruction not to change the pacifist constitution that was enacted in 1947 under the US occupation. For this reason, in July 2014, the Abe administration made a cabinet decision to allow the exercise of collective self-defense through constitutional reinterpretation, and the following year the new security legislation was put to a vote. In June 2015, the LDP invited three experts from both ruling and opposition parties, including a constitutional scholar, to the House of Representatives Constitutional Review Committee, who all categorically stated that " allowing the exercise of collective self-defense is unconstitutional." Nevertheless, the Abe administration forced the new security bill through a vote. This was done in complete disregard of legal theory, and in truth it was based on the childish reasoning that "because America is ordering us to do so."

Ishiba's criticism of Abe's stance, whose relationship has been likened to oil and water, was obvious. What became decisive was when, prior to the launch of the second Abe cabinet reshuffle in September 2014 , Abe asked Ishiba to take up the newly established position of Minister of State for Security Legislation , but Ishiba declined. Ishiba's argument is that the exercise of collective self-defense rights should be permitted only after amending Article 9 of the Constitution (renunciation of the use of force and non-possession of war potential). Since the exercise of collective self-defense rights through constitutional reinterpretation would be in no way permitted, Ishiba declined, saying he could not accept the position of minister in charge.

In a TV interview in August 2022, one month after Abe was shot, Ishihara looked back on that time:

"It was a one-on-one meeting between Abe and me in the prime minister's office. There was a back-and-forth about whether I should accept the ministerial position or not. When I said, 'I can't accept the ministerial position because it would cause disagreement within the cabinet,' Abe's anger reached its peak. He said, 'If that's the case, you can do it when you become prime minister.' It was a parting shot."

From Abe's point of view, he was expressing his frustration at Ishiba's insistence on principle: "The United States is making unreasonable demands on us. I don't want to do this either. If you're going to say that, why don't you become prime minister and amend the constitution and then do it?" This testimony shows that Abe was also driven to the brink and distressed by the Armitage report.

The core of the security policy towards Japan of successive US administrations since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union has been "to have the Japanese Self-Defense Forces participate in the collective security system under the command of the US military ." However, the US occupation policy towards Japan has not changed, which is "in principle, we will not allow the wording of the current constitution to be changed so that Japan will not become a military threat again," and Abe's anger towards Ishiba seems to have been due to "not being able to look good by insisting on amending Article 9, which is impossible."

■ Visiting Ise Shrine and Overcoming the Imperial View of History

Within the LDP, Prime Minister Ishiba is considered a dove when it comes to historical perceptions . To understand the true nature of a "dove," one must first look at his attitude toward the Korean Peninsula. This is only natural, considering that the origin of Japan's invasion of Asia since the Meiji Restoration lies in the subjugation of Korea. Perhaps aware of this, he recently told reporters that he has been "reading a lot of books about Japan-Korea relations."

Japan, a strange "mythical nation" that is neither a republic nor a classical monarchy, and whose National Foundation Day is based on the birth of a "divine emperor" over 2,600 years ago, casts a deep shadow over present-day Japan. Since the time of the ancient Wa, Japan has had a chronic illness in relation to Korea, which is only a narrow strip of water away. The root of the illness dates back to the Japanese mythology written in the "Nihon Shoki" and "Kojiki," and the conquest of the Three Kingdoms by Empress Jingu, who followed Amaterasu Omikami and Emperor Jimmu. Even before the war, there were academic papers that pointed out that the story of Empress Jingu's conquest of Korea was almost entirely fictional. However, during the Meiji Restoration, the conquest of the Three Kingdoms was considered evidence that ancient Japan had a great dominance over the Korean peninsula, and the argument for the conquest of Korea was made, which called for the first step in the construction of the Japanese Empire.

Japan, which had hardly ever engaged in external wars, suddenly began invading Asia , starting with Korea, in the modern era, as if something that had been held back suddenly exploded . As mentioned above, this was because the feudal governments after the Meiji Restoration sought hegemony in East Asia, but it must be emphasized that the origins of this lie in ancient Wakoku and Japan, where a desire to become a small empire to rival the great Chinese empire had been cultivated and accumulated throughout the long history.

Kuramoto Kazuhiro, a historian of ancient Japanese politics, explains:

"The key phrase is 'a small empire of the eastern barbarians.' It claims that Japan and Wakoku were lower in rank than the Chinese Empire, but higher than the Korean nations, and were a small empire that ruled over aboriginal countries. At first glance, this seems like an absurd claim, but there is a recognition that Baekje, Gaya, and Silla were made "subjects" from the end of the 4th century to the beginning of the 5th century, and it is deeply etched in people's memories that the rulers of Wakoku were granted military command over the southern part of the Korean Peninsula by the Chinese (Sung) emperor in the 5th century, and this had a major impact that lasted until later generations."

Wakoku, an ally of Wakoku, was defeated by the Tang Empire in alliance with Silla in the Battle of Baekgang in 663, but was defeated by the Tang army in the Battle of Baekgang and was shut out from the Asian continent. Isolated under the sea, the Wa people gathered together and created the first unified kingdom in the Japanese archipelago, Japan, and compiled the first national history, the Nihon Shoki, which was completed in 720. The "Empress Jingu's Conquest of the Three Kingdoms" that appears in the national history should be seen as a way to make up for the humiliation of the defeat at Baekgang. Japan, ruled by an unbroken line of emperors, has been defined as "another empire competing with the Chinese Empire for control of the Korean Peninsula ." This self -awareness blossomed again with the rise of Japanese classical learning in the mid-Edo period, and led to the Mito school, Sonno Joi movement at the end of the Edo period, and the Meiji Restoration.

On January 4, Prime Minister Ishiba made his "regular" visit to Ise Grand Shrine. The Inner Shrine of Ise Grand Shrine enshrines Amaterasu Omikami, who is said to be the ancestor of the Imperial Family. The shrine was the spiritual base for the rulers of the Japanese Empire to arm themselves with the Nihon Shoki, Kokugaku/Mitogaku, Sonno Joi, Meiji Restoration, the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, and the original meaning of the national polity/Imperial history view, in preparation for the subjugation of Korea and the invasion of China. Judging from Ishiba's visit to Yasukuni Shrine and his comments on Japan-Korea relations, he should have been restrained in his visits to Ise, but it seems that he visited the shrine out of a sense of security that he would not be criticized for "violating the separation of religion and state." On the contrary, it seems that he made the decision because he thought that not visiting the shrine would bring attacks, especially from the bedrock conservative base.

Visits to Ise Shrine in the new year are said to have become a tradition since Prime Minister Sato Eisaku in 1967. However, with the exception of Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi, who apologized for Japan's invasion of Asia, all Prime Ministers during the Democratic Party era, except for those who were absent during the COVID-19 pandemic or due to illness, have visited Ise Shrine in the new year. Sato's visit is thought to have been prompted by Japan's conservative classes and the US ruling class, who are confronted with the leftward shift in society caused by the Security Treaty protests and campus unrest. Since Murayama used illness as an excuse to refuse to visit the shrine, the Socialist Party has effectively disappeared, and the forces that could oppose the LDP by promoting " democracy vs. the Emperor System" have disappeared from Japanese society. The Japanese Communist Party now has no power to oppose it.

"Opening the country to expel foreigners" - 170 years since the Treaty of Peace and Amity between the United States and Japan was concluded. Armed spiritually with State Shintoism, Japan rose to become a military nation, and then went to war with the United States, which resulted in the Great Expulsion of Foreigners. This collapsed into an unprecedented defeat. 80 years have passed since the US military occupation and democratization. How will the world's only "mythical nation" deal with postwar democracy, which has faded after 80 years ? How can we completely break away from the Imperial view of history?

Ishiba's true view of history will likely be revealed in his statement on August 15th. However, at present, the prevailing view is that Prime Minister Ishiba will step down before the July House of Councillors election. There are likely many LDP insiders who think, "We don't want Ishiba to say anything unnecessary." If Ishiba holds out until August, his statement could be memorable enough to rival the Murayama Statement.