Aso retracts his Nazi remarks
Print Edition
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.
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 yesterday he had been 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 said. “I would like to retract the remark.”
Aso, who is also deputy prime minister, made the comments about Nazi Germany during a speech in Tokyo on Monday.
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 Nazis oversaw the killings of an estimated 6 million Jews.
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?”
In China, 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.”
“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.
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