Abe attempting to relaunch Imperial Japan

In a testimony in the Diet last Thursday, ultra-nationalist lawmaker Yasunori Kagoike said Akie Abe had handed him cash in an envelope on behalf of her husband during her September 2015 visit to Kagoike’s kindergarten.
Abe has denied the donation, but said it would have been legal because Osaka isn’t his electoral constituency. Yet, the first couple’s ties to Kagoike have raised additional questions due to his extreme views on history and derogatory comments regarding China. Kagoike’s school is notorious for a curriculum that resembles the height of Japanese militarism – the same Japan that invaded China in 1937. Abe’s popularity has fallen so drastically as to cause speculation that he will not be able to retain control of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
But, for now at least, this will be a teapot tempest at most. The bigger danger, in fact, lies in Abe’s launching of the helicopter frigate JS Kaga last Tuesday.
The Kaga is purportedly a helicopter frigate, but is actually a quasi-aircraft carrier. Its displacement of 19,500 tonnes and length of 248 metres match the dimensions of an aircraft carrier. From its deck, five helicopters can take off and land at a time. It can carry up to 14 helicopters, and has other ships to provide fuel. Naval experts believe the Kaga is – in terms of tonnage, layout and function – in line with the modern standard light aircraft carrier because it has the ability to carry fixed-wing fighters and, with little transformation, can accommodate 12 vertical takeoff and landing F-35B fighters. Once equipped with such fighters, the Kaga can be turned into a real aircraft carrier.
The carrier inherits the name of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s (IJN) Kaga – a full-fledged aircraft carrier that was once the world’s largest. It was under construction as a battleship in 1920 when the Washington Naval Treaty was signed to limit Japan’s number of capital ships to three. The Kaga would have been one too many, and the IJN remodelled it into a 30,000-tonne aircraft carrier. Japan used to name battleships after its feudatories. So, the reborn aircraft carrier kept its old name after the feudatory of Kaga, which is the present-day prefecture of Ishikawa facing the Sea of Japan.
At the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the old Kaga patrolled the Chinese mainland’s coast, launching fighters and bombers to support the Japanese invasion army. Its fighters annihilated China’s fledgling air force and its bombers terrorised Chinese coastal cities. The Chinese called the Kaga, then ported in Taiwan, “Little Devil”. It took part in Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor but was sunk in the Battle of Midway in 1942.
Beijing will be further enraged by Abe’s assignment of the old Kaga’s namesake to patrol the East and South China Seas, no doubt to ingratiate Japan with Uncle Sam, who wants nothing more than to continue containing China. Tensions have mounted between Japan and China since Abe took office in 2012. He had the constitution reinterpreted to allow Japan’s Self-Defence Forces to come to the aid of, and defend, an ally under attack from China. Subsequently, the US-Japan defense cooperation guidelines were revised to make Japan an American ally in Washington’s containment of China.
US President Donald Trump, who once considered China a potential enemy, has moderated his stance by agreeing to honour Washington’s “One China” policy. He is going to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida next month to mend frayed Sino-American relations – in much the same way great Cold Warrior Richard Nixon met Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972 to woo China away from Brezhnev’s Soviet Union. If Trump succeeds in making friends with China, where would Japan’s prime minister stand? It could cause a crisis in the Abe cabinet, which itself may ignite a rebellion in the ruling LDP, toppling Abe before his current term as prime minister expires.