hankyoreh

Children say

“We hope that grownups will protect the Senkaku Islands, Takeshima [the Japanese name for Dokdo] and the Northern Territories so that Japan doesn’t lose to other countries. We hope that China and South Korea, which are being mean to Japan, will fix their attitude and not tell lies in their history textbooks. Stay strong, Prime Minister Abe! Stay strong, Prime Minister Abe! You did the right thing to pass the national security legislation in the Diet!”

In video footage from Oct. 11, 2015, four children wearing white shirts and orange shorts stood on the stage and began the vow with their right hands in the air. It was the autumn sports day at Tsukamoto Kindergarten. The kindergarten is operated by an educational foundation called Moritomo Gakuen, which is accused of having received a huge discount on government land it purchased in the city of Toyonaka in Osaka Prefecture. The kindergarten staff were having children recite a vow containing blatant stereotypes about South Korea and China as “lying countries.”

Then the camera turns to Yasunori Kagoike, principal of the foundation and the Osaka regional executive of Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), Japan’s leading right-wing organization. “Samurai of Choshu,” shouted Kagoike, referring to the former name of Yamaguchi Prefecture, the hometown of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, “now is the time to depose the shogunate!” At this, children can be seen running around with swords on their waists or dropping down into the push-up position and other pseudo-military positions on the sports field.

The release of this video on Feb. 27 threw the Japanese islands into turmoil. People were already aware of the outlandish approach to education at this kindergarten, which had its students recite the Imperial Rescript on Education, a symbol of Japan’s militaristic period. But this video provided a detailed glimpse at how kindergarten students were being taught a hateful form of right-wing education.

Considering that Kagoike even had the children talk about the “national security legislation” that Abe rammed through the Diet in Sep. 2015, some are accusing him of violating the Basic Education Act, which forbids political bias in education. Japanese have been expressing their concern that teaching young children such things will lead to a dangerous right wing.

During a meeting of the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee on Feb. 28, Abe faced another grilling by the opposition about his relationship with this educational foundation. Katsuya Okada with the Democratic Party and other opposition lawmakers took issue with the fact that Akie Abe, Shinzo Abe’s wife, served as the honorary principle of this school and that donation documents issued by the school used the expression “Shinzo Abe commemorative elementary school.”

“If I’d allowed them [to use my name], I would take responsibility, but I refused,” Abe said as he strained to explain these developments. As recently as Feb. 17, Abe had endorsed the school’s educational philosophy, remarking that he had “heard that the teachers have an outstanding passion for education.”

With his back to the wall, Abe invited the pool of reporters assigned to the cabinet to a fancy restaurant on the evening of Feb. 27 for a closed-door meeting. This has prompted rumors that Abe personally asked the reporters to refrain from covering the story.

By Gil Yun-hyung, Tokyo correspondent

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