The promotion of Japanese nationalism Clearly some factions within the LDP are calculating that the best means of boosting the party's flagging chances in the coming elections is to make a more open and direct appeal to nationalist sentiment. A series of huge government spending packages under Obuchi have failed to end a decade of economic stagnation in Japan and left the country with massive public debt. The turn by Mori and the LDP to the politics of nationalism is an attempt to create a social base for themselves as the next government comes under pressure to press ahead with a program of drastic economic restructuring that will further erode the living standards of the working class. As elsewhere, the targets of the right-wing agenda will be the most vulnerable sections of the working class. No doubt they have been encouraged by the apparent popularity of Shintaro Ishihara, a long-time LDP politician, who stood as an independent in the last elections and won the position of Tokyo governor against a field of party heavyweights.
Police have their limits.
I hope that you will not only fight against disasters, but also maintain public security on such occasions. Ishihara's comments are a deliberate reference to the racial attacks on Koreans following the huge earthquake that struck Tokyo and Yokohama in 1923, killing an estimated 97,000 people. In the aftermath of the quake, right-wing thugs abetted by the police attacked Koreans, claiming that they were responsible for setting fires and looting. Several thousand ethnic Koreans as well as a number of socialists were murdered. As trade and economic tensions have sharpened, so have the pressures in ruling circles in Tokyo for changes to Japan's economic, political and military policies to defend their interests.