Japanese Defence Minister Tomomi Inada has made something of a ruckus as of late after she was quoted on Monday as having told a meeting of LDP supporters ahead of a gubernatorial election for the city of Tokyo that she, the Ministry of Defence, the Self Defence Force, and the LDP wanted their support for the up-coming election.  For a nation in which the defence force is meant to be kept strictly separate from any suggestion of political influence, the combining of the MOD and SDF in a call for voter support has ignited calls for Inada’s resignation and once again spurred debate on whether this will negatively impact on the LDP’s chances in the election.

The incumbent mayor of Tokyo, Koike Yuriko, herself a former member of the LDP and leader of the Residents First Party, is currently leading in popularity polls as a result of her exposes of wasted public funds during the LDP’s tenure in city government and the knock-on effect from the criticisms directed at LDP party leader and PM Shinzo Abe’s links to educational institutions espousing right-wing ideologies and which appear to have received favoritism for funding school building projects.  

The combined LDP-Komeito majority in both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Diet ensured that any further debate on these links ceased with the closing of the current Parliamentary session last week, and so far there has been no indication that the government intends to placate the opposition parties by convening a special session of Parliament to examine the links in greater detail. 

These issues, along with the government’s decision to ram anti-conspiracy legislation through the Diet (legislation that itself had attracted criticism from the UN for its overly broad application and potential for misuse), has thus made the LDP nervous about Tokyo residents might do to its fortunes in the up-coming election.  A re-election of Koike would weaken the LDP’s already tenuous hold over major cities in Japan, and that could then have repercussions at a national level should the Residents First Party expand to other parts of the nation.  Hence for Defence Minister Inada to make her rather ill-judged appeal during campaigning could not come at a worse time for city LDP planners.

Realizing her mistake, late on Monday evening Minister Inada attempted to make amends for her remarks, however by that stage they had been seized upon by both the media and opposition parties who immediately began calling for her to either resign or be removed from office. The LDP-Komeito dominance of the Diet makes this highly unlikely, and words to that effect were made by Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga on Wednesday who foresaw no need to have Minister Inada step down and urged her to concentrate on her work. Yet members of the LDP standing for election were less sanguine in their comments concerning Inada’s behavior, describing it in blunt terms as “stupid”.  

Inada’s history of making verbal gaffes, and her strident displays of nationalism would ordinarily lead to either a censure or possible demotion, yet in the current political climate in Japan her position is safe so long as the LDP suffers no ill-effects at the national level.  With the Komeito already distancing itself from the LDP in the Tokyo mayoral election, the LDP will need to regain public trust in its judgment and its willingness to confront awkward questions related to its finances and influence. With voting set to kick off on Sunday, the LDP will be hoping that it can weather some the blowback from its recent scandals, although its prospects at the moment do not look too bright.  

In what has become a time-honoured tradition on this particular blog, I do apologise for the very, very long hiatus between posts. In a sense this is a good thing, because it does give me more time to be able to absorb more subject matter and then think about it on a deeper level. On the other hand it means that weeks go by before I actually get around to writing anything, which is a tad tardy of me and for which I can only ask forgiveness.  The reason I have decided to update the ol’ blog is because I finally got around to watching Martin Scorsese’s version of Endo Shusaku’s “Silence” (沈黙) on the weekend. My initial reaction to the film was that it certainly kept to the mood of the book, with some liberties taken in order to ensure the narrative didn’t become too stuck in existential questions on the meaning of faith.

The film did address the subject matter well, and Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver did a very good job conveying the devoted yet ultimately doomed Jesuit priests making their way to Nagasaki (or Bizen province) in the early 1600s to find out the fate of a Father Ferreira (played by Liam Neeson), a Jesuit who is reported to have abandoned his faith in the face of interrogation and torture at the hands of provincial officials.  The film (and original novel) take place in the aftermath of the Shimabara Rebellion, a Christian inspired uprising (covered in this blog) by lower caste samurai and peasants against Bakufu rule. The rebellion itself was brutally crushed, which was in part a response to the nearly two centuries of warfare that Japan had been subjected to in which religion had played a role in prolonging and intensifying the conflict.  Given that the Christian (or more accurately, Catholic) population of the Shimabara peninsula acted in defiance on central rule, the Tokugawa Bakufu was in no mood to compromise with what were regarded as lower caste rebels with affiliations with foreign powers (i.e., Portugal and Spain) and which might ultimately undermine the relative stability that the Tokugawa had imposed on Japan.

Of course the historical threads behind the edict banning the teaching of Christianity in Japan are diverse and originate further back into sixteenth century Japanese history. As to whether the average person would be aware of this background when they watch the film is unknown, but I think the context behind the novel needs to be understood if one is to get the most out of watching the film. There is a very good element of suspense and danger hanging in the air throughout the film, as you the viewer are made aware of just what sort of risk these Jesuits are taking in attempting to preserve the Christian faith of those Japanese who still consider themselves Christian and who carry out masses and confessions in secret.  Discovery can be fatal, although it does seem somewhat odd that it is the Kakure Kirishitan who undergo a majority of the suffering in the film. The existence of Catholic priests in Nagasaki, in defiance of a Bakufu edict, would itself be a cause for execution, yet these priests are kept alive and questioned, and (at least in the case of Father Rodrigues) are persuaded to apostatize .

While I can see the logic behind using former priests to persuade other Christians to abandon their faith, we (the viewers) have no idea whether this strategy actually worked, and so we are left to draw our own conclusion about its efficacy. What we are really meant to focus on is how, having abandoned their faith, these former priests have become shadows of their former selves, broken in spirit and resigned to living out their days in a land that views them with suspicion. Without giving too much away, the film also illustrates to how faith can sustain one in the most trying of circumstances and what one sacrifices in order to keep their faith. It is a profoundly spiritual film, however by running in at nearly 3 hours in length, only those who wish to learn the fate of its main characters will watch it through to its conclusion.  It can be ponderous at times, and visceral in its depiction of torture, but that violence is necessary to convey the dangers present and the degree of courage necessary to transcend it.

If I have a particular gripe about the film (apart from its length), it is the fact that you have supposed Portuguese priests speaking English but pretending they are speaking Portuguese (although they do have accents!). While the Japanese cast deliver much of their dialogue in English (which, again, is supposed to be Portuguese), the Japanese that they do use is very much in the modern vernacular. Not that there is anything wrong with this. If they spoke in the language of officialdom of the mid-seventeenth century, most contemporary Japanese viewers would have a hard time understanding what they were saying. The use of English is a bit jarring, but then again the film wasn’t sponsored by Portuguese backers or featured Portuguese actors so I suppose they could speak in whatever language they wish.    

The film is ultimately worth watching, just don’t have anything urgent to do while you do so.