This issue of our newspaper is the last of the year. A title ‘Looking Back the Year’ is given to this column each year. I wonder why I will write just for a year. History changes rapidly and drastically today. A year is too short to describe. Where will the world go?


AN OMEN OF CATASTROPHE AND SIGN OF HOPE


In France people reacted indignantly to the terrorist attacks which hit the country twice this year. Ultra-rightist forces won the majority in the local assemblies. Meanwhile in Japan, the Ishin-no-to led by Mr. Hashimoto won in the election in Osaka. A support rate toward the Abe government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has risen again. Eighty years ago the German government led by Hitler decided to deprive the rights of Jewish citizens. In the following year in Japan the February 26 Incident happened. Both countries later ushered in audacious aggressive wars to be self-destroyed.


History does not repeat the same event. First the act is regarded as a tragedy, but, subsequently, it is a comedy. A chain reaction of hatred grows today to produce intolerable poverty and gaps. People cannot laugh at a comedy. People fear the world may fall into catastrophe.


Government Returns to Absurdity


Fascism and the World War II ? they were tragedies. But the world rehabilitated itself. Capitalist contradictions, which have led to the worldwide depression of the 1930s, a hotbed of fascism, have hidden in the background stage from time to time after the WWII. German people swore to eliminate fascism as a national pledge, while Japanese people proclaimed the Peace Constitution. The two events have contributed significantly to promoting democracy and peace.


External pressures against the socialist world system, though it had contradictions inside, obliged capitalist nations to take policies to be a welfare state. Co-existence between the two different world camps encouraged peoples to expect eternal peace.


Collapse of the socialist system has, however, paradoxically, intensified hastily capitalist contradictions.


In the condition in which the competitor weakened transnational corporations voraciously exploited the world in the neo-liberal globalist context. Workers’ lives have aggravated, social welfare measures have been undermined and a public space has been replaced with a profit-first structure. Self-intoxication has turned to be the longest depression across the world to lead to the so-called Lehman Shock.


The military intervention to the Middle East Region and poverty and gaps spread in the US and European societies have caused a series of terrorist attacks, which disturbs us that something unanticipated may happen as nuclear arms have proliferated today. The world looks like to descend to bottomless quagmire. In a sense it is grimmer than the days before the start of WWII.


Under these circumstances the Abe government has reduced the corporate tax rates and intensified deregulation measures so that ‘business could enjoy the most favorable conditions in Japan’. Now poverty and gaps torment people to an unbearable degree. The rate of public workers has recorded the minimum, compared with that of the industrially-developed countries. What does the government want to do next?


Article Nine of the Constitution is a glimpse of hope in the prevailing odium. But the Abe government wants to revise it, to remove a wedge that prevents destruction of world peace. That is an absurd act in the history. It is planned to re-operate nuclear power plants which have caused fatal accidents. It will even export the systems. That means to plant time bombs everywhere to destroy the planet.


Young People Rise up


Waves of mass movements have risen: people protest, saying, ‘No to the War Legislation’, ‘No to Nuclear Power Generation’ and ‘No to New US Military Base at Henoko-Okinawa’. Many people, young people, in particular, have begun to act for themselves, reacting to the tormenting evils.


We have a hope. A path is built up after people walk. Voices are heard far and wide; to run with joint efforts in the election of the House of Councilors candidates who appeal against the ruling LDP and the Komeito. People’s desire has been successful in several constituencies. Let’s win, making the best.


December 22, 2015