Japan’s Leader Makes Veiled Threat to Quit

Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama indirectly threatened Wednesday to quit if hawks in his coalition block a resolution to apologize for Japan’s World War II atrocities.

Murayama appeared to raise the stakes in the battle over the resolution, which has come to occupy center stage as Japan considers how to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the war’s end.

Murayama said in a meeting with Labor Minister Manso Hamamoto that he would act with “grave determination” if conservatives in the coalition’s biggest party, the Liberal Democrats, block the resolution, Hamamoto said.

In the convoluted jargon of Japanese politics, that phrase generally is taken to mean that a prime minister will either resign or dissolve Parliament and call a general election.

In 1991, then-Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu said he would respond with “grave determination” if a political-reform bill did not pass. The bill failed, and he quit.

Apparently taken aback by the reaction to his remark, Murayama later retreated somewhat, telling reporters that he was simply repeating his support for an apology resolution.

Murayama and other Socialists want the war resolution to apologize for Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of Asian nations in World War II. But some conservatives claim that the war was fought to free Asia from Western domination.