The Nikkei Shimbun is reporting that while in Istanbul, Japanese PM Junichiro Koizumi declared his intention to make crystal clear who his preferred successor for the LDP leadership (and therefore the Prime Ministership) should be before the party holds its election in September, with an ability to lead the party to electoral victories being a major factor in deciding who he'll throw his weight behind.
Seeing as by far the most popular of the likely candidates is the right-leaning, pro-Yasukuni Shinzo Abe, the implications of Koizumi's announcement are obvious: barring a major scandal or disaster of some sort, Abe is guaranteed to be Japan's next Prime Minister, and we can expect all the tiresome Korean* and Chinese grumbling over the "provocative" nature of visits to Yasukuni to continue indefinitely. Still, I suppose things could be worse: by comparison with the certified bigot Taro Aso, another candidate for the LDP leadership, Shinzo Abe is the very embodiment of moderation and tolerance.
On a tangential note, while it is almost always mentioned that one of Shinzo Abe's grandfathers was Nobusuke Kishi of Manchukuo notoriety, it is hardly ever noted that one reason why Park Chung Hee was able to obtain much-needed Japanese aid and investment for his grand schemes to grow the Korean economy, where the likes of Syngman Rhee could not, was that Park and Kishi had a shared history and outlook on the world from their days advancing the Imperial Japanese cause in Manchuria: Korea would be a much poorer country than it is today without the likes of "traitors" [sic] like Park Chung Hee in high places, and if this attitude whereby local elites who had worked with former colonial rulers were commonplace, scarcely a former colony anywhere would have had leaders worth anything upon independence. Without the benefit of those native elites who benefited from British education, the British Empire's one-time colonies be probably be in just as bad shape as the Republic of Congo, the entirety of which had less than 30 native university graduates when granted independence from Belgium in 1964. None of this will likely stop Roh Moo-hyun and his Uri Party from milking the Kishi-Abe connection for maximum populist appeal, of course (as if the sins of the grandfather were those of the grandson), nor will it prevent them from using this history as a club against General Park's daughter Park Guen-hye, leader of the opposition GNP.
*What has never been made clear to me is why Koreans should object so strongly to Japanese politicians' visits to Yasukuni. Chinese people getting upset I can understand, though I think their rage on the issue overdone, but Koreans were hardly passive victims of the 14 "Class A war criminals" whose enshrinement is supposedly the bone of contention, as witnessed by the fact that convicted war criminals General Hong Sa-Ik and Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo (birthname Park Mu Tok), were both Koreans. For Koreans to froth at the mouth about a war monument in which some 22,000 of their own compatriots are enshrined - the majority of whom perished as volunteers in Hirohito's armies, including at least one kamikaze pilot - is as reasonable as Austrians acting as if they too were victims of the Wehrmacht, rather than recruitment fodder for it.
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