The aggressively nationalistic Chinese tabloid Global Times claims that the Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, allegedly admitted that he was preparing for a war with China, criticized the United States and South Korea, and brushed off the controversy over wartime "comfort women" at a media function earlier this month. Citing weekly Japanese magazine Shukan Gendai, Global Times said Abe made the "shocking" comments at an informal function attended by domestic media heads at an upmarket hotel in Tokyo at the start of the month.
After downing a glass of red wine, Abe is alleged to have kicked off a candid rant by heavily criticizing opposition leader Katsuya Okada from the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), slamming the former deputy prime minister for regularly spewing "pointless nonsense," before adding that the DJP is "finished."
Abe is then said to have admitted that his efforts to fully lift Japan's postwar ban on collective self-defense — the right to go to war to support an ally even if Japan is not under direct threat — was indeed aimed at China, with which Japan is engaged in a territorial dispute over the Diaoyutai islands (Senkaku to Japan, Diaoyu to China) in the East China Sea.
The article claimed that Abe went as far as admitting that he was making plans for a possible war with China, adding that it is part of Tokyo's strategy to side with the US to target China's assertive behavior in the South China Sea, where it is embroiled in territorial disputes with several neighbors.
The conservative prime minister was also allegedly full of complaints about President Barack Obama of the US, according to Japanese website Litera, as he expressed anger over Obama's failure to garner enough votes on June 16 to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership. "I really don't know what the hell the US is doing, what Obama is doing!" he allegedly said. The Republican-controlled Senate subsequently passed the Trade Promotion Authority bill on June 24 granting the president authority over trade pacts.
On the 50th anniversary since the normalization of postwar ties between Japan and South Korea, Abe allegedly gloated that he was right to wait for Seoul to make the first move to request a meeting of leaders to celebrate the event. Recent polls showed that mutual distrust and dissatisfaction between the two countries was probably at its highest since 1965.
Perhaps the most shocking allegation reported was that Abe remains unrepentent over the issue of compensation for former "comfort women" — the tens, probably hundreds of thousands of women forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War II — as he was said to have stated that the problem could easily be resolved with 300 million yen (US$2.44 million).
Those in attendance were allegedly asked not to report on Abe's more "impactful" comments, Litera said, but noted that the news was nevertheless leaked to tabloids and websites.
Regardless of whether they are true or not, the allegations compound what has already been a difficult month for Abe. On June 23, the prime minister was heckled and showered with cries of "Go home!" at a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the bloody Battle of Okinawa. Residents of the southern island acrhipelago, which lost a third of its population during the US invasion, have long resented being forced to host thousands of US troops and military facilities occupying nearly a fifth of the main island's area.