Tomomi Inada, the hawkish chairwoman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council, will be named defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle on August 3.
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Inada would be the second woman in the defense post after Yuriko Koike, newly elected as Tokyo governor, briefly held it in 2007.
Public are eager to see the new cabinet that Shinzo Abe is due to announce on Wednesday, which will show what priorities Abe will place in the next cabinet.
The 57-year-old ex-policy chief for Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party has been a regular visitor to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine for the war dead.
Past year she called for the establishment of a panel within the LDP to re-examine the Tokyo trials that convicted several Japanese leaders as war criminals over atrocities in the second world war.
“The mood now is to try to promote cooperation”, Jeffrey Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University in Tokyo, said of relations between Japan and China.
Inada, a mother of two children, has a history of irritating Asian neighbours such as China and South Korea.
US oil prices rebounded slightly in Asian trade, but the market outlook remained bearish, mostly on news that Nigeria is working on reaching a cease-fire with militants.
Japan’s pacifist constitution following World War II does not allow the country to use war as a means of settling worldwide disputes, thus only allowing the country a Self Defense Force (SDF), and not a military.
A Japanese defence official said the main body of the missile launched by North Korea, following a series of missile tests by the isolated country, landed in Japan’s offshore exclusive economic zone (EEZ).
JAPAN STIMULUS: Japan’s Cabinet approved a fresh economic stimulus package worth more than 28 trillion yen ($275 billion).
Economics Minister Nobuteru Ishihara may be retained along with Health, Welfare and Labour Minister Yasuhisa Shiozaki. Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroshige Seko will become trade and industry minister.
I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that today’s nomination of Mrs. Tomomi Inada as the new Japanese Minister of Defense is not constructive news for securing peace in that region, which could cause at some time in the future, a broad based military conflict in the Far East, which of course would have a very negative impact on markets.
Tamayo Marukawa, who served as environment minister in the previous cabinet, was appointed minister in charge of overseeing preparations for Tokyo’s 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
Among changes in the LDP’s executive lineup, as party president Abe opted for Toshihiro Nikai, chairman of the LDP’s General Council, to replace Sadakazu Tanigaki as party secretary general and picked acting LDP secretary general Hiroyuki Hosoda to take over from Nikai.
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Japanese media said another would-be successor, Shigeru Ishiba, minister for regional revitalization, was considering declining to stay in order to prepare for a run at Japan’s top job when Abe’s LDP leadership term expires in September 2018.
