South Korea - Japan Relations: A Japanese Social Movement Perspective
Hirano Emiko (Head of the International Section, New Japan Women’s Association (Shinfujin))
interview by
Merci Llarinas Angeles (Solidarity Correspondent)
edited by
Ned Darlington
May 29, 2019. Hirano Emiko (with Shinfujin members) speaking at the Seoul Wednesday Demonstration for the Sexual Slaves of the Japanese Imperial Army. Red banner reads, “No to Abe’s Attempt to Revise Article 9.” The white banner reads, “No to women’s Human Rights Violations - Listen to the Voices of the Survivors of Sexual Slavery by the Japanese Military.” Source: Shinfujin
In October and November of 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court ordered Japanese companies to pay reparations to forced laborers under Japanese colonization. On June, Seoul’s High Court ruled that another group of forced laborers be compensated 100 million won (US$86,400) each. In response, in July, Japan imposed restrictions on export of three chemicals crucial to the manufacture of Korean semiconductors. Korean civil society began a boycott of Japanese goods and on Aug. 22, the Moon Administration announced it would pull out of the Japan-Korea intelligence sharing General Security of Military Information Agreement. ISC Solidarity Correspondent Merci Llarinas Angeles interviewed Hirano Emiko on her understanding of the situation on Aug. 26, 2019.
Hirano Emiko is the head of the International Section of the New Japan Women’s Association (Shinfujin). Founded in 1962, Shinfujin is the biggest individual-membership based women’s organization in Japan, with its 130,000 members working to achieve a peaceful, nuclear-weapon-free, gender-equal, just and sustainable society, nationally and globally. It holds consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council.
The Abe government has built political support around its hard stance against North Korea and using it as justification for removing South Korea from its list of privileged trading partners (i.e. the white list) and reform Article 9 of the Peace Constitution of Japan to militarize Japan. Could you talk a bit about the Abe government? What is his motivation for his actions? What is his ultimate goal? Polls indicate Abe’s actions have support from Japanese people. What is the reason for this? Whose interests does he represent?
The worsening relations between Japan and Korea are attributed to the Japanese government’s lack of sincere remorse over the grave human rights violations imposed on Korean people during its colonial rule such as forced labor and sexual slavery. In school education, especially since Abe amended the Fundamental Education Law in 2006 with emphasis on patriotism, children grow up without being educated on Japan’s modern history. State screening of textbooks has been reinforced and there’s no longer any reference to the sexual slavery issue in junior high school textbooks.
With Abe at the head of the government, extreme rightists have stronger voices and have become even more violent. Abe has also increased his influence over the mainstream media, whose CEOs regularly dine with him. For all these reasons, ordinary people are misled into having anti-Korean sentiments. This may explain why the majority of the Japanese public supports the restriction of exports to Korea. Nonetheless, polls show that more people support a self-restrictive, non-violent approach to resolving these disputes rather than unilateral pressure or a military response.
Abe is a leader in the Nippon Kaigi (Japanese Conference). 80% of Abe’s cabinet is made up of its members. Nippon Kaigi has been classified as an ultranationalist right-wing group attempting to restore Japan to its imperial past through historical revisionism (glorifying its imperial past) and by reforming the Japanese Constitution to allow Japan to militarize. What does the average Japanese think about Nippon Kaigi? Why? What is the basis of its power?
Let me answer this question by giving the views of Shinfujin (New Japan Women’s Association). According to them, Abe and Nippon Kaigi are hindering Japan from making progress in gender equality. Japan ranks 110th of the 149 countries under the 2018 Global Gender Gap Index, remaining at the bottom of the developed nations. Shinfujin reckons there are 2 major causes for this:
First is the financial circle’s neoliberal strategy backed by government policies. They have increased low-paid and precarious jobs with no rights, while adversely revising the social security system to deepen poverty and widen the gap between rich and poor. Prime Minister Abe Shinzo keeps speaking of “utilizing female power” and a “society where women shine” and his cabinet approved a bill on promoting women’s active participation in the economy. However, their aim is to make the best use of women as “resources” for “growth strategy”, and the bill lacks concrete measures to redress the pay gap and to eliminate discrimination against women such as increasing full-time employment and establishing equal treatment of all workers. Almost 60% of working women are irregular workers[1] receiving only half what their male counterparts receive. More than half of these women earn less than 2 million yen a year (~18,000 US$), and 1 out of 3 single working women between 20 and 64 years of age live in poverty. The poverty rate of single mothers exceeds 50%[2]. Low wage results in low pension benefits, and poverty is indeed a women’s issue in today’s Japan.
Secondly, Abe’s government is dominated by extreme rightists leading the backlash in Japan. Abe Shinzo has had a major hand in Nippon Kaigi’s undermining of efforts to resolve the Japanese military sexual slavery issue, to promote human rights and science-based sex education and to amend the discriminatory clauses of the civil code, including the one forcing married couples to take the same family name. Nippon Kaigi was established in 1997 by those who glorify Japan’s past wars against Asian nations and aim to revive the pre-war patriarchal system. It desperately seeks to amend Article 9. 19 of the 20 members of Abe’s cabinet belong to Nippon Kaigi and other right wing groups. It is also hostile to gender equality, opposing even to the CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society. Cabinet members like Financial Minister Aso Taro and parliamentarians in Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have repeatedly made sexist and abusive remarks against women and sexual minorities. The government has little will to take legal measures to prohibit sexual harassment and toughen punishment for sexual violence. They disregard the recommendations from the CEDAW and other human rights treaty bodies, saying that their recommendations .are not binding.
In the 2019 election for the National Diet’s House of Councillors, the LDP won 72 out of 124 seats. While it won a majority, it failed to secure the ⅔ super majority necessary to change the constitution. One of Abe’s policies was to reform the peace constitution by 2020. What do you envision will happen in 2020 around the attempts to reform the constitution? Would such constitutional amendment give Japan the ability to wage war? Is there a social movement trying to block this? How?
The fact that Abe’s coalition failed to seize a two-thirds majority in the House of Councilors is a major victory of the alliance between women, citizens and opposition parties. The alliance, which formed in 2015 against Abe’s attempt to enact “security legislation” enabling Japan to become a war-waging nation once more, consolidated this time to agree on the 13-point common agenda for the Upper House election. And they fielded united opposition candidates in all the 32 single-seat constituencies winning 10 of them.
Moreover, despite Abe’s victorious remarks that his policies won people’s support, the votes cast for the LDP dropped by 2.4 million from the previous 2016 election, and the ratio of LDP votes fell to 16.7%, the lowest for the party during Abe’s second stint at the helm of the government. Even combining the seats obtained by Komeito, the ruling coalition secured 71 seats, 6 fewer than before. The latest poll by Jiji Press issued on August 17 shows that 41.3% opposed the constitutional revision under Abe, while 32.1% supported it. In the Aug. 17-18 poll conducted by Kyodo News, 52.2% answered “No,” and 35.5% said “Yes” to constitutional revision under Abe.
Abe will use every possible means to fulfill his ambition of revising the Constitution. He’s already started to reach out to the opposition Democratic Party for the People, whose stance is more flexible than other opposition parties. The DPP leader first reacted positively to Abe’s call, but came under fire for betraying voters who supported the party for being part of the opposition coalition. Abe may also dissolve the Diet to hold the Lower House election while maintaining his popularity through the anti-Korea sentiment that he intentionally fostered among the people. Anything can happen between now and 2020. The key to stop Abe’s revision of the Constitution is people’s power or the alliance of citizens and opposition parties. We have been organizing, mobilizing, rallying the opposition parties and keeping the alliance alive and strong. One of our most effective tools is the signature campaign “No to Abe’s Amendment of Article 9,” with which we exposed Abe’s real intentions to the public and showed them there is a way to stop it. We, citizen members, will continue organizing and mobilizing while urging the opposition parties to stay united against Abe and for the Lower House election.
Another great challenge for us is to have the biggest possible voter turnout. For the Upper House election, it was only 48.8% - Japan’s democracy is at stake. The Prime Minister’s Office distracted people’s attention from the issues that affect people’s livelihood. The mainstream media, especially TV stations, should be held accountable for their lack of coverage on those issues. And Japan’s public office election law is ridiculously restrictive – campaigners cannot say the name of the candidates in public after the official start of the election when not in the presence of candidates. Opposition parties and citizens have effectively used social media to disseminate information and convince people that their votes can make a difference, but we need to do more and be better prepared for the Lower House election.
Going beyond the Abe government, what is your view of a better Japan? How do you think this can be achieved?
Our alternative to the Abe government is an opposition coalition government, which works for a nuclear-free, peaceful, just, sustainable and gender-equal society by fulfilling the election agenda agreed by all members of the alliance. It will be a government that listens to people’s voices.
- Different from regularly employed workers, irregular workers work on a contract basis. This makes it more difficult to increase their wages or benefits. Not only does this make workers’ well-being precarious, it also makes them easier to exploit and harder to unionize.
- From the Statement by the New Japan Women’s Association to the 63rd United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. Oct. 22, 2019. https://undocs.org/E/CN.6/2019/NGO/138