Japanese moderates sidelined as Abe takes charge

JAPAN: Senior Japanese lawmaker Koichi Kato paid a heavy price for criticizing outgoing Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, with a right-wing activist burning down his family home.

The moderate in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had accused Koizumi of inflaming tensions with neighboring countries by visiting a war shrine linked to Japan's militarist past.

"I will have to continue speaking on my political beliefs even after the attack because I am a parliament member," Kato told AFP in an interview.

But experts say LDP moderates, who have dominated Japan for half a century, are increasingly being sidelined.

Shinzo Abe, 52, is set to become prime minister on Tuesday with an unabashedly conservative agenda that includes rewriting the country's pacifist constitution.

The LDP has stayed in power almost continuously since 1955 through cozy ties with business and special interests, with leadership determined by politics among the party's factions.

Two-thirds of LDP members backed Abe, who like Koizumi was seen as popular with the public and who left his own faction to show he represented the party as a whole.

Kato's parents' house and office in northern Yamagata prefecture were gutted on August 15, the emotionally charged anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, when Koizumi paid a defiant last visit to the Yasukuni shrine.

Kato's 97-year-old mother, who was out for an evening stroll, barely escaped the attack. The arsonist, 65, who unsuccessfully tried to commit ritual suicide, said he was enraged by Kato's criticism of Koizumi's visit to the shrine, which honors 14 war criminals along with 2.5 million war dead.Kato said moderate LDP conservatives differed on history issues with Abe, who has positioned himself to the right of Koizumi on certain issues, such as questioning the post-World War II Tokyo Trials of war criminals.

"I believe the war was wrong," Kato said of Japan's past aggression.

Tokyo, Monday, AFP