The Defense Agency Thursday fired an army major who had proposed a coup to clean up Japan's scandal-stricken politics, officials said.
The major, Shinsaku Yanai, had written in the Oct. 15 issue of the magazine Shukan Bunshun that "it is no longer possible to correct injustice through elections in a legitimate way that is the basis of democracy.""A coup d'etat or revolution" is the only option, Yanai wrote in the right-leaning news magazine, which has a circulation of 700,000.
The article was published one day after Shin Kanemaru, Japan's most powerful political kingpin, resigned in disgrace from parliament for accepting $4 million in illegal donations from a mob-linked trucking company.
In the piece, Yanai, a 45-year-old instructor of war history, said scandals have occurred repeatedly in Japanese politics and that there was little hope of reform.
Defense officials said this was the first time a military officer had been fired because of a published article since the nation's Self-Defense Force was created in 1952.
Yanai, who belonged to the military's Shimoshizu Garrison in Chiba, east of Tokyo, was not immediately available for comment.
Kyodo News Service, however, quoted him as saying his dismissal was unjust. "If you read the article properly, you will see I did not write a denial of democracy," he reportedly told the news service.
Miyashita and other government leaders had sharply criticized Yanai's views and promised strong disciplinary measures.
The director-general of the Defense Agency, Sohei Miyashita, issued a statement Thursday saying Yanai's public advocacy of a coup and denial of the democratic system "is never permissible under any circumstance and extremely inappropriate."
Yanai's action, the statement said, damaged the military in the eyes of the public.
He was dismissed after Defense Agency officials questioned him several times, said officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.