Japan's Aso spits Weimar venom

Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso has created a storm of outrage well beyond Asia with a recent speech to a nationalist group of the Liberal Democratic Party, the governing party of the country. In a key part of the speech, Aso indicated that the LDP should learn a lesson from the Nazis on how to revise the Japanese Constitution: Do it "without anyone noticing it".

Aso, who is former Japanese prime minister and foreign minister, subsequently issued a statement saying that he meant in effect the opposite of what he said. Militants for constitutional amendment know which of the two messages is the true position of Aso, one which he surely shares with a good part of Japan's current government and with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Aso's exhortation to learn from the Nazis to change the Constitution when no one is looking is but one of a series of increasingly ominous outbursts of senior members of the current Japanese government.

In the run-up to the recent elections, we had the travesty of seeing the Japanese prime minister enthusiastically strapped into the cockpit of a jet fighter with the infamous number, 731, inscribed on the fuselage. His officials claimed it was a complete coincidence and oversight that the 731 fighter was chosen for the photo opportunity.

However, across Asia, this immediately brought to mind the unspeakable wartime human medical experiments performed by Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army. In this embrace, there is nostalgia for a past of perceived greatness. But that was a time when the IJA rained death and destruction on the world, especially Asia, including the bombing of Pearl Harbor in the US and Darwin in Australia. Moreover, there is a cold determination to enact fundamental changes to the Japanese Constitution.

What Aso's allusions to stealthy constitutional change signals to his party militants is that, in today's domestic and international political context, a formal amendment of the Constitution is unlikely to happen. But the interpretation of the Constitution could be quietly stretched and twisted. Eventually, the effect of such manipulation would be the same as a formal amendment.

While selecting the example of how the Nazis were able to have the Weimar constitution in effect modified without a formal amendment was a particularly provocative comparison for many, but not necessarily for many within his own party. Although the LDP did well in the recent Upper House elections, it fell short of its ambition, both in terms of seats and popular votes. A two-thirds majority is required in the Diet to amend the Constitution. The LDP and its still more extreme nationalist fringe supporters simply do not have the numbers to amend the Constitution.