New Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has unveiled his cabinet lineup including ultra-conservative politicians, raising concern over escalated diplomatic tension with South Korea and China.

Some of the new ministers are expected to spur Japan’s rightward shift. They refuse to recognize their country’s wartime atrocities and maintain a hard-line stance in territorial disputes with Seoul and Beijing.

Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party was sworn in on Wednesday as Japan’s seventh prime minister in six and a half years after his party clinched a victory in the Dec. 16 elections and ousted the unpopular government of the Democratic Party of Japan. 

Unveiling the list of 18 cabinet members, he called the cabinet a “crises breaker,” stressing it prioritizes overcoming economic and diplomatic challenges.

Observers said that although Abe’s cabinet formation indicates the possibility of Japan’s tougher external policy, Tokyo might have to maintain good relations with Seoul should the territorial row between Japan and China escalate.

“Abe has a strong stance on the territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea and, having said that, it is possible that the Sino-Japan ties could further worsen,” said Kim Soung-chul, senior fellow at the think tank Sejong Institute.

“Thus, Japan may have to strengthen its alliance with the U.S. and maintain friendly ties with South Korea. Though it may sharpen its rhetoric on the surface level, Japan may not want to seriously damage ties with Korea.”

Kim added that should Abe’s party win in the upper house election next July and gain enough parliamentary seats to rewrite the pacifist constitution, it would pave the way for Japan’s rearmament

“(After the upper house election) with this cabinet formation, Tokyo could take a stronger stance in territorial disputes with Seoul and Beijing,” he said.

Among the conservative cabinet members is Taro Aso, ex-premier. He has taken the posts of deputy prime minister and financial services minister. In the past, he infuriated Koreans by claiming Koreans changed their names to Japanese ones during the colonial period ― not because they were forced, but because they wanted to.

Also in the cabinet are Yoshitaka Shindo, internal affairs and communications minister, and Tomomi Inada, minister for administrative and public servant system reforms. The two were denied access to Korea in August 2011 as they came here to assert their country’s claim to Dokdo.

Shindo and Inada have also made a set of remarks apparently denying Japan’s wartime atrocities. Shindo once joined a campaign to remove a monument erected in the U.S. to honor the spirits of women forced into sexual slavery by Japan’s military during World War II.

Inada has claimed that judgments of the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal were in breach of international law, and once said that the Nanking Massacre, which occurred during the Japanese capture of the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937, was fiction.

Also in the new cabinet is Hakubun Shimomura, minister of education, culture, sports, science and technology. Along with Abe, he has shown his desire to revise Japan’s wartime history education in a way that promotes patriotism with less repentance.

Another conservative member is Sadakazu Tanigaki, justice minister. He has sought to revise the country’s 1947 pacifist constitution that bans it from waging war and possession of potential war materials.

During the election campaign, Abe’s party made a series of pledges including elevating the status of the Self Defense Forces to a national defense force; setting up a national security council to handle territorial disputes and others: and seeking the collective self-defense right ― the use of force to respond to an attack on an ally, namely the U.S.

Meanwhile, South Korea’s President-elect Park Geun-hye is now coordinating with Tokyo over the issue of her meeting Abe’s special envoy in Seoul. Before Abe took office, Tokyo expressed its desire to send an envoy last weekend, but Park turned it down due to her tight schedule.

Her aides appeared cautious about meeting the envoy of the conservative Tokyo government as the incoming president could face a public backlash. South Koreans still harbor bitterness over Japan’s 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

By Song Sang-ho (sshluck@heraldcorp.com)