Japan's Aso spits Weimar venom

Japanese Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso has created a storm of outrage well beyond Asia with a recent speech to a nationalist group of the Liberal Democratic Party, the governing party of the country. In a key part of the speech, Aso indicated that the LDP should learn a lesson from the Nazis on how to revise the Japanese Constitution: Do it "without anyone noticing it".

Aso, who is former Japanese prime minister and foreign minister, subsequently issued a statement saying that he meant in effect the opposite of what he said. Militants for constitutional amendment know which of the two messages is the true position of Aso, one which he surely shares with a good part of Japan's current government and with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Aso's exhortation to learn from the Nazis to change the Constitution when no one is looking is but one of a series of increasingly ominous outbursts of senior members of the current Japanese government.