
© AFP Photo/Toru YamanakaJapanese Finance and Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso.
Japan's Deputy PM has called on local politicians revising the constitution to learn from Nazi Germany when it amended the Weimar charter. Although he later retracted his words neighbors Beijing and Seoul said such militaristic remarks "hurt many people".
"Germany's Weimar Constitution was changed before anyone knew. It was changed before anyone else noticed. Why don't we learn the technique," Japanese media quoted Taro Aso as saying during a far-reaching event in Tokyo.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, to which Aso also belongs, has been keen to revise the US-imposed pacifist constitution, including war-renouncing Article 9, so Japan can use the right of collective self-defense as stipulated by the UN Charter.
The LDP also wants to define Japan's defense forces as a full-fledged military force amid territorial tensions with China and South Korea.
South Korea, which had suffered under Japan's past militarism, has slammed the Japanese minister's speech.
"Such remarks definitely hurt many people," the Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai-young as saying. "It is clear what such comments on the [Nazi] regime mean to people of the time and to those who suffered from Japan's imperialistic invasion."
Comment: Remember, officially, the FSA/rebels/al Qaeda-in-Syria/Syrian protest movement has not yet received any weapons from the West nor its client regimes in the Middle East... so where are we supposed to think they're conjuring anti-aircraft, anti-tank, mini-nuke type explosives, shells, machine guns, millions of rounds of ammunition, satellite comms, etc, etc, etc... do they have a genie in a lamp which they rub to get three wishes?