Rather than confront China directly by sailing warships past its man-made island bases in the sea, Japan is providing equipment and training to the Southeast Asian nations, including the Philippines and Vietnam, which are most opposed to China’s territorial ambitions. In 2013, the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo issued a strong, and rare, condemnation of Prime Minister Abe’s visits to the shrine, saying, “The United States is disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors”.
Advertisement
Shinzo Abe reshuffled more than half of his 19-member Cabinet in a bid to win backing for his economic and security policies.
Inada, a 57-year-old lawyer, is the second woman to hold the defence post.
An article in Japan’s pacifist constitution written after World War II does not allow the country to use war as a means of settling worldwide disputes, and until recently the country’s military, the Self-Defense Forces, was permitted to operate only domestically.
Japan has no direct territorial claim.
In 2014, Inada and Sanae Takaichi, who was retained by Abe on Wednesday as internal affairs minister, were seen in separate photographs standing next to the leader of a Japanese neo-Nazi party.
“It is important for us to reinforce the Japan-US alliance as well as the trilateral relationships between Japan, the US and South Korea who share the same strategic interests and values”, Inada told reporters.
She also regularly visits Tokyo’s contentious Yasukuni war shrine, which both China and South Korea see as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
Other crucial positions in the cabinet remained more-or-less the same, as Abe will be retaining his right-hand man, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga.
A Japanese defence official said earlier the main body of the missile that North Korea launched, which followed a series of missile tests by the isolated country, landed in Japan’s offshore exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Yet, when asked about her suggestion in a 2011 magazine interview that Japan should consider possessing atomic weapons, she said the country at the moment is supposed to keep its military capability at a bare minimum and it’s not the time to study the nuclear option.
For state foreign minister, Abe kept in place Nobuo Kishi, his younger brother, who has a seat in the Lower House.
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.
Advertisement
The reshuffle was the third since Abe took office, and the first since October.
