Japan’s Right wing brags of its clout

Press, 8 October 1987, Page 33

Japan’s Right wing brags of its clout

JANET SNYDER

NZPA-Reuter Tokyo Yukio Suzuki gets crack service at bis favourite Tokyo watering boles. He spends freely and is always quick to buy drinks all round. That is, when he doesn’t scare his fellow patrons away.

Suzuki is the leader of a small but vocal Rightwing organisation which declares itself staunchly against communism and for Emperor and country.

One of Suzuki’s favourite haunts is a low-down bar in suburban Tokyo frequented by construction workers in mudcaked trousers. The owner and staff salute him as "Chairman” and make sure his glass is never empty. Suzuki says his 40-mem-ber group, the Japan Doshi-kai, has a comfortable relationship with both the police and Tokyo’s largest yakuza (gangster) organisation, Sumiyoshi Rengo.

Giving an acquaintance his card, he said: "If you ever get in trouble with the cops, just show them my card.’’ Political analysts say many of Japan’s police sympathise with the country’s estimated 120,000 Rightists who preach loyalty to the Emperor, stronger national defence and a hatred of communism.

A National Police Agency spokesman, sounding non-plussed, would neither confirm nor deny police ties with the Rightists. “It is very difficult to answer you,’’ he said.

Chairman Suzuki, built as solidly as a refrigerator, spoils a shaven skull and favours white uniforms with a Japanese Rising Sun flag patch on one arm.

His arrival at a restaurant is heralded at least a block beforehand with martial music blaring from his convoy of battle-ship-grey sound-trucks.

Suzuki’s vehicle is emblazoned with slogans. One demands that the Soviet Union should “Return the Northern Territories to Japan.” Another says "Down with the Japan Teachers* Union” — a Left-wing group. Suzuki appears to have plenty of cash, although like other Right-wingers interviewed he is loath to say where it comes from. “We get most of our funds through donations from companies,” he said. One recent evening Suzuki insisted that two acquaintances go to a sing-along bar as his guests. As soon as he appeared in the doorway of the establishment, nearly all the other customers cleared out

Speaking through a haze of cigarette smoke, Suzuki said his group had recently switched loyalties to Tokyo’s most powerful gangster group, the Sumiyoshi Rengo, from another gang and was mov-

ing its office into Sumiyoshi territory. Suzuki’s mentor is Bin Akao, aged 89, the grand old man of the Japanese Right who is still going strong. ■ ..

Akao was once close to wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo, who was later executed for war crimes. Nowadays Akao harangues passers-by from a sound-truck in Tokyo’s Ginza shopping, district on the threat of Soviet spies. In 1960, one of his followers, Otoya Yamaguchi, stabbed to death Socialist Party chief Inejlro Asanuma in front of television cameras.

Yamaguchi, who hanged himself in prison, is revered by the Right wingers. Many of them light incense in front of the boy’s portrait en shrined in Akao’s reception hall.

“You don’t see Japanese putting their lives on the line like that any more,” Suzuki sighed.