Surely the headline for the Oct. 19 article "Fukushima 2020: Will Japan be able to keep the nuclear situation under control?" is rhetorical, as the instigator of the nuclear coverup, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is about to pass his "Whatever-I-Feel-Like-Making-Secret-Is-Secret Act," for which he will be given carte blanche to extend to any dirt that he wishes to keep under the carpet by the one-party system of politics (plus a ramshackle collection of has-been, or never-will-be, smaller parties whose reason for existence has yet to become apparent).
Abe fully intends to make Japan "beautiful" again by revising and revamping the narrative of its past aggressions against Asia as well as its future catastrophes by hiding or tampering with any new damaging radiation data ahead of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
The Secrets Act looks to have no external supervision, except for the token charade of the "open" public meetings reminiscent of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's attempts to reshape public opinion to his own benefit.
There is more than a touch of irony in Koizumi's recent outbursts against nuclear power, as he was a supporter of it and other clandestine projects in his day. If we can separate the idea from the man, Koizumi's recent pronouncement should be taken at face value and taken to heart by the Japanese public, but such an initiative will not get very far, as I believe the Abe administration is bent on maintaining a nuclear base — importing the raw material for weapons production by pretending it's for a nuclear power future — no matter how suicidal it may be.
The political right-wing in Japan has long been investing money and ideology into nuclear power under the illusion that possessing it signifies and enhances Japan's ambitions. With the Japanese anti-war Constitution about to be fundamentally deconstructed if he has his way, Abe symbolically wants the idea of nuclear power to remain so that it will underpin his authority.
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.
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