In every intensely fought political battle there are moments of incongruous absurdity, but in the current tumult facing embattled Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, it doesn't get more ludicrous or desperate than the parallel drawn between the U.S. Supreme Court's decision affirming same-sex marriage and the constitutionality of the collective self-defense (CSD) legislation currently being debated in the Upper House of the Diet.
This is the vacuity dressed up as an argument expressed by ex-diplomat and Abe adviser Kunihiko Miyake of The Canon Institute for Global Studies. Boosting what Japan is prepared to do militarily might indeed be a Japanese neo-con's wet dream, but it is belittling to equate the expansion of the prime minister's discretionary powers to support U.S. war efforts with the long-standing struggle of same-sex couples in the United States for the legal right to get married.
"This looks like 'Alice in Wonderland' stuff, and I wonder if Mr. Miyake has followed Alice down the rabbit hole," Arthur Stockwin, a professor emeritus of Japanese politics at Oxford University, acidly observes. "Seriously though, such nonsense must surely make the Abe government vulnerable to reasoned criticism."