While Taro Aso’s public statements as foreign minister have done little to help ease tensions between Tokyo and the rest of Asia, a family connection to wartime forced labor has raised further questions over his ability to oversee good relations with Japan’s neighbors.
Speaking at the opening of the Kyushu National Museum in Fukuoka last October, he described Japan as “one nation, one civilization, one language, one culture, and one race, the like of which there is no other on earth.”