Japan’s Takaichi revives push to criminalise defacing flag

Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, buoyed by a commanding majority in the powerful lower house after this month’s election, is poised to revive one of her longest-standing conservative causes: making it a crime to deface the national flag.At issue is the hinomaru, the national flag, which currently carries no specific criminal penalty if damaged or desecrated – even though the Penal Code sets punishments for defiling foreign flags displayed in Japan with the intent to insult.Takaichi has long argued that this imbalance is untenable. In 2012, she submitted a bill to amend the Penal Code to allow for penalties of up to two years’ imprisonment or a fine of 200,000 yen (US$1,285) for damaging, removing or defiling the Japanese flag.At the time, she and her Liberal Democratic Party colleagues said the change would bring the law covering Japan’s own flag into line with sanctions for similar acts against foreign flags.The latter provisions were designed to protect Japan’s national interests by preventing acts that could insult another country and spark diplomatic friction, but Takaichi decried the legal asymmetry.“It is not right that there are heavy criminal punishments for damaging foreign flags, while the handling of the Japanese flag is treated as something that does not matter,” she told reporters at the time.