Japanese Prime Minister just a week ago reshuffled his cabinet to make it more inclusive of women.  Unfortunately, two of them are inclusive to racist scumbags – the new cabinet members are distancing themselves from rightwing extremism after photos emerged of them posing with a neo-nazi.

One is Sanae Takaichi, the new internal affairs minister selected from the right-wing of the conservative ruling party LDP.  She is seen smiling and posing next to Kazunari Yamada, the 52-year old leader of the National Socialist Workers party.  The other is Tomomi Inada, another close Abe ally who was given the powerful job of LDP policy chief.  She was also photographed posing with the diminutive would-be ubermensch.

Yamada is a real peach – he and his followers march around in nazi armbands, praise Hitler and the 9/11 attacks, and preach hatred of Jews as well as ethnic Koreans and Chinese living in Japan.  The usual nazi scum crap, but with caricatures of samurai.  The party’s website hilariously claims to be the master race, while showing all of the symbols of other racist groups that claim to represent their own master races.  

Takaichi claims she didn’t know Yamada had extremist views, despite his being the country’s leading right-winger, and that she doesn’t share Yamada’s views. Inada’s office was quick to distance the MP from Yamada.

The pictures fuelling fears that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is increasingly surrounding himself with people on the rightwing fringe of Japanese politics, something that has not escaped the notice of South Korea and China, which are concerned about Abe’s alleged lionizing of Japan’s World War II past.