Though it’s not something we think about often, Japan has a number of very strange and ardent groups of ultra-right-wing conservatives. You can often catch them riding around in black vans or stinking up online forums denouncing pretty much everything. The ideology that each of the groups expresses tends to vary, though rabid nationalism and emperor-worship are typical.
Some of them also apparently love the Nazis–and one of them, one Hiroyuki Seto, has even called on people to join him for a party celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday. “Crazier than a barrel of monkeys” is an appropriate description…
▼Hiroyuki Seto, right-wing blogger and Hitler lover
One of the bigger names in the right-wing Japanese movement is Hiroyuki Seto, a blogger who was once the vice-president of the Restoration Political Party・New Wind and made a failed attempt to get elected to the upper house of the Japanese Diet in 2007. His political positions include abolishing immigration into Japan, patriotism based on historical view that the Emperor system is the heart of Japan, and getting rid of parliamentary democracy. The blogger also believes that the Rape of Nanking, the use of comfort women, and the Holocaust were all fabrications, despite the numerous first-person testimonies and mountains of evidence that have been accumulated.
Seto recently got a bit of attention from the Japanese Communist Party’s newspaper, Shimbun Akahata, after he called on people to join him for a party celebrating Adolf Hitler’s 125th birthday. The blogger asked people to “gather on the day of the birth of the great and excellent supreme leader to drink wine and chat.”
▼Japanese Communist Party election bus, note the lack of Hitler
Shimbun Akahata also pointed out Seto’s support of politicians such as Toshio Tamogami, who was fired from his position as Chief of Staff for Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force due to an essay claiming that Japan was not an aggressor during World War II. The communist newspaper also noted that Seto is a member of Zaitokukai, a Japanese ultra-right group whose president was recently forced to pay damages for hate speech by a Kyoto court.
▼Toshio Tamogami
However, we wondered if perhaps Shimbun Akahata were accurately representing Seto–after all Seto has said some pretty nasty things about the Communist Party in the past. So, we tracked down Seto’s blog and found a post in which he responds the article.
Turns out the communists had been showing considerable restraint…
In his response, Set first expresses surprise that the newspaper mentioned his party and then goes on to ask his readers what the problem is with having a party for a historical figure as long as he’s not breaking the law. He also wonders why the newspaper decided to point out his support of Tamogami before taking a turn to the absolutely bizarre by claiming that the Communist Party is trying to deny his freedom of speech…by criticizing him?
And then things get crazier than a screaming match between Gary Busey and Meatloaf: Seto tells his readers that he doesn’t see what’s so wrong with agreeing with Hitler.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with agreeing with Hitler. Is it the holocaust of six million Jews? Are there still people who believe that happened? That’s a lie. It’s the same fabrication of history as the Rape of Nanking and the forced comfort women.”
The rest of Seto’s blog post is a long screed attempting to deny the Holocaust, and it’s really not worth reprinting here. Suffice it to say, we can see why the Japanese Communist Party felt it necessary to report on Seto’s party, which has even made it onto the Zaitokukai’s calendar–hardly a personal little get together.
Of course, crazy people can be found anywhere, at either end of the political spectrum. And though we’re certainly sick of hearing their garbage, we’re still kind of glad to have them sharing their thoughts so vocally–it makes it easier to know who to avoid.
Sources: Wikipedia (Hiroyuki Seto, Toshio Tamogami), Japan Times, Shimbun Akahata, Seto Hiroyuki BLOG
Images: Wikipedia (Adolf Hitler, Toshio Tamogami, Japanese Communist Party Election van), Twitter