A man in Tokyo set fire to himself after railing against Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's plan to re-militarize the country in light of recent Chinese aggression against neighboring country Vietnam. The man, still as of yet unidentified, sat in public with a megaphone, speaking out against Abe's plan, before dousing himself in flammable liquid and self-immolating.
Local fire fighters, who had gathered at the area at the behest of concerned passersby, immediately put out the fire. He was taken to a local hospital where he is expected to survive. The entire spectacle was captured on video and uploaded to Youtube. A warning: the images are graphic and may not be suitable for some.
The scene is reminiscent of the famous photo of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk self-immolating in protest of the Ngo Dinh Diem regime's anti-Buddhist policies in South Vietnam. The regime was thoroughly repressive of Buddhists, the vast majority of the population, in favor of Catholicism, which had been brought to the country by French colonialists.
The plan by Abe would reverse decades of post-World War II policy by creating a new understanding of the Japanese constitution. As of the current interpretation, Japan only maintains self-defense forces and can only engage in military action if it is attacked first. Abe's new interpretation would see Japan committed to the defense of its allies and would bolster its military might in the face of an ever-growing China.
Memories of World War II and the years preceding it arise easily in the minds of the elder generation of Japanese, as incidents such as the Nanking Massacre are difficult to forget. Along with that is Shinzo Abe's reluctance to accept the wrongdoing of the Japanese during its expansionist and imperialist colonial period, where it carried out brutal repression and injustices against the Chinese. That period has left its watermark on Sino-Japan relations since then, as relations between the two countries could only be described as cordially frosty, at best.
The Japanese public is split on the issue of enlarging the military, though Abe plans to push through the measure. Originally in 2006-07, Abe tried to alter the constitution so as to allow for a direct method of enlarging the armed forces, only to have his tenure as Prime Minister cut short. When he was re-elected in 2012 in the wake of Japan's ongoing economic woes, Abe tried to enact a law that would allow for easier adjustments to the constitution. That measure was shot down by the Diet (Japan's congress).
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
