靖国参拝：安倍首相は今年も止めそうにない

のめりこんで泥沼化した日支事変の再現にならなければ良いが。
中国は今回の労せずして日米間に生じた隙間に乗じていけばよいので、良い位置を占めている。安倍氏にとって苦戦は必至だ。
いまさら彼の頭の中を変えることはできないが、大局的にタカ派的言動を棚上げする冷静さはあると信じたい。
以下は、WSJの記事”Abe Lets New-Year Hawk Fly a Bit”の引用。

WSJ　
http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2014/01/01/abe-lets-new-year-hawk-fly-a-bit/
January 1, 2014, 5:00 PM
Abe Lets New-Year Hawk Fly a Bit

By ELEANOR WARNOCK
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, fresh from roiling neighbors China and South Korea with an unexpected year-end visit to a controversial war-linked shrine, delivered a New Year message that suggests he remains unfazed by the unease his nationalist agenda is stirring.

In the prime minister’s traditional New Year’s greeting, posted Wednesday on his official Web site, Mr. Abe offered his vision for what needs to be done on the security front: “active pacifism,” in which Japan “plays an active role in world peace and stability.”

The hawkish Mr. Abe also called for a deeper public debate on amending the nation’s 68-year-old constitution. In the past such debate has focused on revising the constitution’s renunciation of war. Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party has proposed clarifying Japan’s right to self-defense and to participate in peacekeeping.

Mr. Abe’s remarks come days after his visit to a shrine that commemorates war dead, including convicted war criminals—a visit that drew expressions of ire from neighboring Asian countries, disapproval from the U.S. and even a tsk-tsk from Moscow, usually silent on these issues.

They also represent a shift from the New Year’s greetings for 2013, which were short and almost entirely focused on the economy. Mr. Abe, elected just a few weeks earlier, devoted only two lines to security and foreign relations—pledging to strengthen ties with the U.S., secure peace in East Asia and protect Japanese territory. In this year’s message, more than one-third longer, two full paragraphs are devoted to constitutional reform and security.

To be sure, the bulk of his 2014 greetings are again about the economy, though much of it looking back with satisfaction on Japan’s improved performance last year.

“Japan’s economy—thanks to my three-pronged policy—has made a big change from negative to positive,” Mr. Abe wrote.

He added, however, that the work to end nearly two decades of falling prices was still far from done, and pledged to keep striving to make Japan’s economy strong.

Mr. Abe does have reason to be triumphant, as a comparison with his predecessor’s New Year’s note for 2012 shows. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda started his greetings by recalling bad news from the previous year: torrential rains, the March 2011 earthquake and subsequent nuclear accident, and the yen’s appreciation against other currencies. There are “multiple crises facing us,” Mr. Noda wrote.

Mr. Abe, who has said that security issues are near to his heart, characteristically rang out the old year with a war flick. According to local press, after working out at the Grand Hyatt Tokyo hotel in Tokyo’s trendy Roppongi district, Mr. Abe went to the movie theater next door to see the World War II drama ”The Eternal Zero” with his wife, Akie, and his mother.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” Akie Abe wrote on her Facebook page, about the film. “It made me really think how we should never wage war again, and we should never ever waste the precious lives that were lost for the sake of their country.”

The group later ate dinner at the Grand Hyatt’s Oak Door steakhouse.