What more compelling condemnation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's craziness can there be than the unprecedented, bipartisan outcries of three former prime ministers (Morihiro Hosokawa, Junichiro Koizumi and now Tomiichi Murayama). You would be hard pressed to find as serious an example of multidirectional outrage against any other Japanese postwar leader.
The irony is that the March 11, 2011, tsunami and resultant nuclear crisis (which long-term Liberal Democratic Party policies were largely responsible for) as well as the public apathy after the rise and fall of so many leaders in recent years (including Abe himself) would prove to be the nails in the coffin of the LDP's only concerted opposition in six decades since 1945.
This has left Japanese voters stuck in a kind of stupor, unable to grasp the reality of what is flashing daily before their eyes — a hard-core right-wing administration that has locked itself in the halls of power and is helping itself like kids in a candy shop to previously forbidden policy changes. They are trying to make the changes as fast as they can before people outside come to their senses and realize that these actions only lead down a one-way path — explosive confrontations with their neighbors.
Falling one by one, like dominoes, are pork-barrel budgetary records, nuclear power safeguards, war-crime accountability and a constitution that was Japan's insurance against a martial future.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.