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from the the-best-defense-is-a-good-offense dept.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) coalition has won big in the recent elections and may eventually push for changes in Japan's constitution, although such plans are tentative:
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling bloc scored a big win in Sunday's election, bolstering his chance of becoming the nation's longest-serving premier and re-energizing his push to revise the pacifist constitution. Abe's Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition won a combined 312 seats, keeping its two-thirds "super majority" in the 465-member lower house, local media said.
A hefty win raises the likelihood that Abe, who took office in December 2012, will secure a third three-year term as LDP leader next September and go on to become Japan's longest-serving premier. It also means his "Abenomics" growth strategy centered on the hyper-easy monetary policy will likely continue.
[...] The U.S.-drafted constitution's Article 9, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. But Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense. Backers of Abe's proposal to clarify the military's ambiguous status say it would codify the status quo. Critics fear it would allow an expanded role overseas for the military. Abe said he would not stick to a target he had floated of making the changes by 2020. "First, I want to deepen debate and have as many people as possible agree," he told a TV broadcaster. "We should put priority on that."
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reportedly benefited from tensions with North Korea and is likely to serve as Prime Minister until 2021:
The elections were a result of a risky move on Abe's part. He dissolved the lower house of parliament last month and called for fresh elections a year earlier than scheduled to "face a national crisis" in North Korea. It was a gamble, considering Abe's approval ratings over the past year have ranged from iffy to dismal. One Washington Post headline from the summer read "Japanese prime minister's poll numbers are so low they make Trump's look good." "Abe is personally not that popular of a guy," Hu said. "But after North Korean missiles flew over Japan two times this year, Abe's popularity shot back up."
Also at The Diplomat and Bloomberg. Japanese general election, 2017.
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(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @12:42AM (8 children)
Japan wants to be a normal country. The only country that got nuked. Country that doesn't want to/can't face up to its history.
So "normal".
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @12:59AM (2 children)
> Country that doesn't want to/can't face up to its history.
That much is normal, isn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @01:15AM (1 child)
Dang, I wish I can I argue, but I can't. All the more reasons that countries that managed to face up to it deserve ... I don't know what.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Friday October 27 2017, @01:43AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @01:50AM (4 children)
Google Japan plutonium stockpile
Google HII-A Japan
Make 2+2=5 (Factor in return to overt militarism...)
Old saying: one years not seven....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @03:28AM (1 child)
You misspelled H-IIA [wikipedia.org]. I'm unfamiliar with the saying you allude to.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @09:21AM
H-IIA .. ouch ... I plead serious lack of sleep over the past week (caring for a sick relative)
One years not seven: didn't realise it was a rather parochial saying, best way of summing up the meaning is
'We'll have our revenge, maybe not this year, maybe not the next, maybe not this decade, maybe not this generation even, but we *will* have our revenge' (though it's hard to emphasise here the right degree of 'malevolance' with which it is usually uttered.)
Probably very Celtic in origin, both the Irish and Scottish sides of my family have muttered it over the years, usually against other family members, and I'd hate to tell you how many of these 'vendettas' are still extant, some of them have been going on now for over 40 years..
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday October 27 2017, @04:19AM (1 child)
Liquid fuel rockets are terrible for ICBMs. Some fuels are cryogenic, so they are constantly boiling off and require a lot of power, and infrastructure to keep them liquefied, which is expensive and difficult. Once you fuel up a liquid rocket, your fuel and oxidizer (hydrogen and oxygen, typically) start evaporating and you have to keep topping the tank off until launch. Even if you use other fuels that can be stored at higher temperatures, they're so corrosive that you can't keep a rocket tank fueled up and on standby for too long. So typically rockets are fueled right before launch--this is also for safety reasons. Fueling takes a long times. For large rockets, it could take hours.
So while you're doing this lengthy process, every other nation state with satellites has noticed you're preparing to launch and they might have hours to destroy your delicate and exposed launch site, or just preemptively launch their own nukes. You could bury the entire launch complex, and use different propellants than hydrolox, but these days that's an absurd anachronism. It's more dangerous, expensive, and you still have a lag-time for fueling.
What you want is solid-fuel rockets with multiple stages arranged in a linear stack. You can keep them underground, for years, and they can launch in minutes. The JAXA rockets aren't immediately suited for military use. They do incorporate solid-fuel boosters, so Japan has the technology to make the right fuel but they've never built the kind of rocket they'd want for a nuclear program. They have all the technology, but they need to spin up a substantial engineering program to actually turn working concepts into a unified weapons platform. Then they'd have to convert their civilian nuclear program to a military one (their plutonium stockpile would need substantial processing), including testing real nuclear bombs. Although wealthy countries like Japan can do substantial work simulating these weapons with supercomputers (which they already have). They'd still probably want to do at least one live test for real.
This could take years, and it would be obvious to the international community it was happening.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @08:04AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Friday October 27 2017, @01:13AM (2 children)
The LDP for those wondering is neither liberal, nor particularly democratic.
They have held government for almost the entire time since WW II with the help of the CIA and huge subsidies to rural voters.
The Japanese people are wealthy though, so probably don't really care, which is fair enough. I can't see them invading any neighbours any time soon either.
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Friday October 27 2017, @10:59AM
A so-called Democratic Party that rigs elections, where have I heard that before?
(Score: 1) by Guppy on Friday October 27 2017, @09:27PM
Yet those rural populations are gradually dying out, regardless. I wonder, could the subsidies actually be hastening the process, by driving out younger folks (who don't own land and so don't get the subsidies)?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @02:07AM (1 child)
Sure, the Nazi gassed the Jews (and others) in industrial fashion, but the Japs pulled the Unit 731, live vivisection among others.
I suppose we are no better for confiscating all the reports and cover it up, though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 27 2017, @01:30PM
It's not covered up in China. I've been to the Unit 731 Museum outside Harbin. Nothing hidden there. It's also in living memory of professors still teaching university, who grew up next to the compound. The Japanese didn't advertise what they were doing exactly, but neither were they particularly circumspect.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @06:34AM (1 child)
The Empire needs more foreigners to help fighting its wars. Even Swiss soldiers are deployed nowadays.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @08:54AM
Nowadays? Switzerland was built on mercenary wages and arms export sales for centuries. Swiss neutrality meaning is "all (well, most) paying customers welcome".
(Score: 3, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 27 2017, @07:25AM (1 child)
If they revise their constitution, they should also revise the bit that forces all Japanese pr0n to be censored.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 27 2017, @01:27PM
That might take care of the pixelation, but it won't fix the screaming.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 27 2017, @01:41PM
If Japan revises its pacifist constitution it will revive the specter of their militarism and re-awaken memories of the atrocities they committed and never atoned for. To this day no matter where you go within the area of the former Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere, people will candidly tell you how much they deeply hate the Japanese for what they did. All of them have stories of massacres, grandparents abducted to forced labor camps or as "comfort women." They did not confront and make good for the pain they caused the way Germany has genuinely tried to.
On the other hand, the Chinese and North Koreans aren't sweethearts either, and would do the same to the Japanese and all the rest of us on Earth in a heartbeat, if given the chance. So as fraught as it is, we could use a muscular military ally in Japan to help us counter that threat.
Washington DC delenda est.