Roundup: Abe, ruling LDP members blasted for remarks calling for press restrictions, aggressive sanctions

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe found himself in hot water Friday and forced to express his regret after junior members of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), along with a best-selling LDP-linked novelist suggested that negative coverage by the media of Abe's controversial security legislation was responsible for the bills' low public support.

At a ruling LDP study session held on Thursday comprising some 40 LDP lawmakers close to the prime minister, along with best- selling novelist Naoki Hyakuta, a guest speaker at the session on culture and arts, lawmakers along with Hyakuta slammed the media for creating a lack of public understanding about the ruling party 's proposed security legislation that would allow for the nation's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to have an expanded military role in domestic and overseas operations.

According to sources close to the matter, multiple LDP lawmakers denounced media organizations for their role in supposedly "warping the public's understanding" of Abe's war bills that have been found by leading scholars to be unconstitutional, with one lawmaker calling for government intervention to punish the media outlets by "disposing" of advertising revenue, with Japan's most powerful Keidanren business lobby being pressed to take action on that front.

Novelist Naoki Hyakuta, one of the nation's most popular, and a former governor of public broadcaster NHK who was hand-picked by Abe for the position, told the LDP session that two newspapers in Okinawa should be "destroyed" for their views opposing the central government's relocation of the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan to the coastal Henoko district of Nago, also in Okinawa Prefecture.

Along with lawmakers, Hyakuta, himself a controversial figure who has publicly denied the incontrovertible 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China by the Japanese Imperial Army, took aim at both the Okinawa Times and The Ryukyu Shimpo, stating that they, "must be closed down by any means."

Another LDP lawmaker was quoted at the study group as saying of the two Okinawa newspapers that they, "Have been completely hijacked by left-wing forces," and that the government must " reorient the contorted public opinion in Okinawa toward the right direction."

"Okinawa's distinctive media structure is a product of the neglect of corrupted conservatives in the postwar era," the lawmaker was also quoted as saying in coverage of the issue by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Further proposals were made to impose stricter regulations on TV and mainstream media by LDP panel members, headed by Minoru Kihara, director of the LDP's Youth Division.

Opposition party members were quick to lambast the junior lawmakers' and outspoken novelist's remarks, with Manabu Terada, a legislator from the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) , slamming the comments as being "problematic" and threatening the sanctity of press freedom -- the erosion of which has been brought into question following high profile dismissals and reprimands in major media outlets including NHK, following both direct and indirect governmental pressure, after reports and coverage printed and broadcast ran contrary to the government's increasingly right wing-leaning stance.

Abe, in response to major concerns raised by opposition party members regarding the latest incident implicating the ruling party in actively trying to restrict the freedom of the press, said that the remarks were unfortunate.

"If it's true, it would be very regrettable,"Abe told a session of the House of Representatives panel Friday, adding that he had yet to confirm exactly what was said, brushing off the remarks as they had been made in an unofficial capacity.

Abe, a staunch nationalist and proponent of historical revisionism, who is currently eagerly trying to recast the nation' s military by pushing contentious war bills through parliament against the public's will, also offered at the lower house session his preprogrammed maxim stating, "Freedom of the press is the base of democracy. Paying respect to that notion is a matter of course. "

Former Defense Minister Akinori Eto, an LDP director, however, offered his apologies for the remarks made by the party's junior members, vowing to punish those responsible.

"We are sorry, particularly regarding a certain LDP lawmaker's reported remark that advertisements should be cut to punish the mass media. We will strictly reprimand the relevant lawmaker," Eto said Friday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, Abe's top spokesperson, kept mum on the monumental gaffe, however, citing a lack of information regarding Thursday's meeting, although stated that media expression is underwritten by Japan's Constitution, with Yoichi Miyazawa, Economy, Trade and Industry Minister, stating separately that press freedom is very important and that threatening such freedom is wholly "inappropriate."

The latest media surveys reveal that around 60 percent of people in Japan oppose the security legislation package that would allow for a Japanese military unconstrained by geographical protocols, to use force to defend itself or and ally under attack, in a monumental reversal of the nation's decades-old war- renouncing ideology and in direct contravention of Japan's pacifist Constitution -- as testimony given by leading constitutional scholars and lawyers has confirmed.

According to the Center for Research on Globalization (CRG), a Montreal-based independent research and media organization, Abe and his administration are resolved to remilitarize the country and propagate a brand of nationalism not seen since World War II.

"Abe is rapidly remilitarizing Japan, freeing its armed forces from any legal or constitutional constraints and revising history to whitewash the past crimes and atrocities of Japanese imperialism. (He) has been engaged in an ideological offensive that was marked by his visit to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine to Japan's war dead, including 14 convicted Class-A war criminals. The same month, he appointed four right-wing figures to the board of governors of Japan's public broadcaster NHK in order to shift its political orientation," the CRG highlighted.

"The purpose of the appointments quickly become apparent... NHK chairman, Katsuto Momii, triggered a public furore by justifying the systematic abuse of hundreds of thousands of women as sex slaves by the Imperial Army in the 1930s and 1940s..., another Abe appointee, Naoki Hyakuta, declared that the Nanjing Massacre, one of the worst atrocities of the twentieth century, 'never happened', " said the independent research center in a recent discourse on the matter. Endi