Japan has held elections. The Democratic Liberal Party (DLP), the great Nipponese capital historical party, in office for 54 years non-stop, was defeated and the Democratic Japanese Party ( DJP), born within the DLP’s flanks, achieved an outstanding total majority. Commentators on duty, rushed to talk about " the end of the liberal era" and even mentioning the birth of " a new Japan". It is the Japanese version of the Obama operation within the USA. A discredited and corrupt leader class which manoeuvres in order to defend its hard authority over society.
Japan is bogged down in an endemic economic and social crisis of huge proportions. The Second World War, which during decades was considered the capitalist development "engine", lives in a state of stagnation for about twenty years and has lost it’s positions within the global market. And the Japan, where the so-called "life employment "existed, (although, under a particular and sinister exploitation mechanism) is today, a country with 5,7% unemployment ( the greater index since World War II ), in which a third of the salaried workers are precarious and were exists more than 10 million workers in poverty. The DJP ‘s victory is the reflexion of a desire of change which runs into the lack of real alternatives.
Within this scenery it is encouraging that the Japanese Communist Party, the only party which has persistently fought against the JLP –Komeito government home and foreign policy, has achieved an expressive electoral result with 4,94 million votes and 7,03% of the electorate.
Nevertheless, an important angle to be observed in these Japanese elections, is the foreign and defence Japanese policies. To which direction is the DPJ policy guided unto? Unto disarmament? The destruction of nuclear weapons, as demanded by the combatant Japanese peace movement? The withdrawal of military bases and North-American troops stationed in Japan since World War II and have been the object of great popular protests? In the respect for the Constitution and in particular its article 9 which forbids the participation of the Japanese armed forces abroad ? No, not at all. Besides, all indicates that the DJP, under the " Japan’s greater military autonomy" slogan before the USA, and just alike the European Union, will intensify the run to armaments, accelerate the efforts to undergo the Constitution revision, and involve more and more the "Self – Defence Forces", on aggressions abroad. It is a path to which the Japanese communists call upon the alert. The mixture of the capitalist crisis and militarism endures great dangers.
History does not repeat itself, but involves lessons that mustn’t be ignored. The late Japanese capitalism development, militarism and the imperialist expansionism were always linked. World War II practically begun with Japan’s aggression to Manchuria, in 1931, and even nowadays, the crimes committed by the imperial soldiers, during the inter-imperialist dispute towards China ‘s fragmentation and domination, are well alive in the memories of the Chinese people. Not forgetting, among many other occupied countries, the martyr Korea, which during more than forty years suffered, under the Japanese occupant boots, up to its revolutionary liberation, but continued and continues to be the imperialist siege’s target. At the moment we witness the most indecent operations on World War II history revision, the greatest vigilance is essential before the rise of the Japanese imperialism. And all the more when the current great Nipponese economic groups are, in a large measure, the heirs and followers of those who forced Japan into the " Anti-Comintern Pact"along with Hitler and its criminal adventure within Asia. And when the Nippon-American Military Alliance, with which imperialism tries to impose its laws within the Far-East and the Pacific Ocean, has been increasingly reinforced.
