Roundup: Abe vouches for press freedom but latest LDP furore, opposition to war bills sees ratings slide

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Monday made it abundantly clear what his position on press freedom is, following a monumental gaffe by members of a group of his junior ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) members suggesting that some media organizations should be stripped of their advertising revenue for not supporting the government's line on the contentious security bills.

With public approval for Abe's cabinet on a steady decline according to recent polls, and with the majority of Japanese citizens standing opposed to the prime minister's plans to enact a legislative package that would reverse the nation's decades-held pacifist ideology and allow for the country's Self Defense-Forces to act without geographical constraint, Abe made it clear to LDP Secretary General Sadakazu Tanigaki Monday that the ruling party respects the freedom of expression of the press.

Abe said it was regrettable that the junior lawmakers had made remarks that had troubled the people of Okinawa as well as mainland Japan and reiterated that the freedom of expression, including that for the media, is the foundation of democracy.

Abe's comments Monday came as the main opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is stepping up its attack on Abe and the ruling party over the recent gaffe, which led to the dismissal of Minoru Kihara as director of the LDP's Youth Division after comments made at a study group he heads sparked outrage across Japan.

Kihara was dumped by the LDP to take responsibility for comments made in the group he heads, specifically at a study session held on June 25 comprising around 40 members, some of whom remarked at the session on culture and arts, that it was the media 's fault for creating a lack of public understanding about the ruling party's proposed security legislation that would allow for the nation's SDF to have an expanded military role in domestic and overseas operations.

At the session numerous LDP lawmakers denounced media organizations for their role in supposedly "warping the public's understanding" of Abe's war bills -- despite the fact that they have been found by leading scholars to be unconstitutional -- with one LDP 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.

Also in attendance at the session was LDP-linked novelist Naoki Hyakuta, a former governor of public broadcaster NHK who was hand- picked by Abe for the position, who told the session two newspapers in Okinawa should be "destroyed" for their views opposing the central government's plans to relocate the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma in Ginowan to the coastal Henoko district of Nago, also in Okinawa Prefecture, causing outrage from the newspapers involved and the islanders themselves.

Along with the LDP lawmakers, Hyakuta, himself a controversial figure who has publicly denied the incontrovertible 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China by the Japanese Imperial Army, said that the Okinawa Times and The Ryukyu Shimpo newspapers should be "closed down by any means."

Another LDP lawmaker said that two Okinawa newspapers have been completely "hijacked" by left-wing forces and that the government must, "reorient the contorted public opinion in Okinawa toward the right direction," much to the ire of the people and officials of Okinawa.

"Okinawa's distinctive media structure is a product of the neglect of corrupted conservatives in the postwar era," the lawmaker said and further proposals were made to impose stricter regulations on TV and mainstream media by LDP panel members, headed by Kihara.

Opposition party members slammed the ruling party for threatening the sanctity of freedom of expression within the media, to which Abe's reaction on Friday was muted as was his chief spokesperson Yoshihide Suga, but 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.

With protests against the security bills rising in numbers on a weekly basis around the Diet building and at other key location in the capital and around Japan, the percentage of voters opposing Abe's cabinet rose to 40 percent, the highest since he took office in December 2012, a survey by Nikkei business daily and broadcaster TV Tokyo, showed Monday, with the support rate down 3 percent at 47 percent.

Those opposing Abe's plans to reverse the nation's self-imposed ban on exercising the right to collective self-defense and normalizing the military, stood at 56 percent, with more than 80 percent of the public feeling that the government's explanation on the war bills currently delayed in an extended session of parliament has been woefully insufficient.

Despite the ruling coalition having a majority in both houses of Japan's bicameral system of parliament, if Abe is seen as forcing the bills through parliament to be enacted into law without sufficient debate, as has been the case with previous defense and security-related bills, his reputation as an autocratic leader will further dent his already tainted image with the public, ahead of the LDP's presidential election in September. Endi