DOWN WITH JAPANESE MILITARISM!

LET THE JAPANESE PEOPLE ACT!

The Japanese people learned much from the adventures of their militarist regime in the 30’s and 40’s of the previous century.

They also learnt about the cruelty of Western imperialism when the US attacked two of their cities with atom bombs to force a surrender before Soviet troops could arrive in the country and be involved in shaping its future.

They were then betrayed by the MacArthur regime, which protected both the huge zaibatsu corporate regimes like Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, and the criminal Emperor Hirohito.

The zaibatsu should have been nationalised, if not socialised; Hirohito should have been jailed for life, if not executed.

Instead, the germ of militarism and the festering sore of capitalist industry and finance were left to grow and enjoy good and long-lasting life.

The monarchy has been given a prettier, if no less reactionary, face.

Japanese industrial corporations and financial institutions plunder much of the world.

A succession of Prime Monsters pay their respects to dead war criminals in annual pilgrimages to the Yasukuni Shrine.

There is strict control over text books so that young Japanese people are not taught the criminal history of Japanese imperialism and its numerous crimes like the Rape of Nanjing, the sex slavery of the so-called "comfort women", the live experimentation on humans of chemical and biological weapons, the Bataan Death March and countless other glories of the Bushido spirit.

For every gain that is made by the victims of these crimes, the organised Japanese Right fights tooth and nail to divest its ruling class of responsibility.

There is a refusal to formally apologise to the comfort women.

There is the weird logic of the Tokyo High Court, which two days ago overturned Niigata District Court’s landmark ruling that had ordered the Japanese Government and a Japanese company to pay compensation to the Chinese who were made to work as slave labourers during World War 2.

And yet this is the "great Asian democracy" to which Australian Prime Monster John Howard has tied Australia’s military fortunes in the interests of a declining US imperialism.

The only positive out of all this is that it will further develop the emergence of those conditions that will allow the Japanese people to act with responsibility towards themselves and the people of the whole world.

They are the key to exposing and defeating US imperialism and Japanese militarism.

Let the Japanese people act!