Lower house OKs bill outlawing flag desecration amid opposition boycott

TOKYO - Japan's House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill to outlaw desecration of the national flag, but all opposition parties were absent in protest at what they see as the high-handed way Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's Liberal Democratic Party pushed through the measure, a key plank of its conservative policy agenda.

Although the Democratic Party for the People and the Sanseito party joined the LDP and its coalition partner the Japan Innovation Party in submitting the bill, the two conservative forces were among the parties boycotting the lower house vote in protest at the governing bloc's steering of parliamentary debate.