TOKYO — On Sept. 3, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet for the first time since he came to office in late 2012. Determined to show that he is progressive on women’s issues, he appointed five new female ministers, tying the record set by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. The foreign media seem to have been impressed by the gesture. But Japanese outlets were more interested in the gains of another group: Fifteen of the 19 members in the new cabinet belong to Nippon Kaigi, the “Japan Conference,” a nationalistic right-wing group that was all but unknown until recently.

A U.S. Congressional report on Japan-U.S. relations from early this year mentioned Nippon Kaigi as one of several organizations to which Mr. Abe has ties that believe that “Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from Western colonial powers, that the 1946-1948 Tokyo War Crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Imperial Japanese troops during the 1937 ‘Nanjing massacre’ were exaggerated or fabricated.” This is standard fare in the noxious world of Japanese ultra-nationalism. So, too, are the goals of Nippon Kaigi.

On its webpage the group calls for preserving Japan’s “beautiful traditional national character,” which centers on the imperial household; adopting “a new constitution suited to a new age,” which would presumably allow Japan to maintain a full-fledged military; and instilling patriotism and morality in Japanese schoolchildren by revising our “masochistic” history curriculum and “the rampant spread of gender-free education.” The group also staunchly opposes the notion that a woman could be emperor — even though there have been female emperors in the past — or allowing women to use their maiden names after they get married.

Nippon Kaigi started drawing attention to itself late this summer. The daily Tokyo Shimbun reported that two local politicians who had come under fire for sexist or otherwise insensitive comments belonged to the group, and noted its size and reach. And the daily Asahi Shimbun reported that local politicians throughout the country who are affiliated with Nippon Kaigi were trying to stir up a grassroots movement to eliminate the so-called “peace clause” from the Constitution. With the recent reshuffling of Mr. Abe’s cabinet, Japanese people are only just realizing that a group they had not even heard of a month-and-a-half ago is helping shape national policy.