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What an Abe prime ministership would mean for Japan

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In Brief

Last week, Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) elected the man most likely to be Japan’s next prime minister — Shinzo Abe.

Abe has already been in the job once before — for just under one year in 2006–07.

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Not short by Japanese standards, but the manner of his departure left the strong impression that he did not have the necessary physical and mental toughness to withstand the vicissitudes of being prime minister.

Certainly, Abe’s tenure as prime minister was marked by a succession of political scandals including missing records of pension premium payments and a string of scandals involving cabinet members, including the suicide of his minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, Matsuoka Toshikatsu, over money politics problems. Abe’s difficulties were compounded by the fact that he was facing a twisted Diet, with the Upper House in the hands of the opposition and with Ichiro Ozawa as the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) leader making Diet management as difficult as he could.

There are many ways in which Abe’s return will be bad for Japanese politics. He represents a throwback to an old LDP era. The way in which he secured the LDP’s presidency suggests that the LDP ‘old guard’ and factional influences are once more in the ascendancy. The LDP factions have a long record of imposing their choice on the party and long-suffering Japanese public. In this case, Abe was imposed by the parliamentary party not party rank and file, whose first choice was the anti-faction Ishiba by a large margin. Ishiba was also the popular choice in the wider electorate if opinion polls are to be believed. Ishiba opposes factions and would have bypassed them in the selection of party executives and cabinet ministers, making the jobs open to those of talent and experience rather than personal loyalty and seniority. Although Abe has promised not to select a ‘cabinet of cronies’, which marred his first administration, he will be indebted to those party heavyweights and factions that put him in the top job.

Another question mark over Abe is whether he will pursue old LDP agendas, such as public works spending. Although he inherited the mantle of economic reform from his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, and vowed to ‘keep the torch of reform burning’, no sooner had he become prime minister in 2006 than he allowed back a group of anti-postal reform renegades who had been kicked out by Koizumi in 2005. He reversed Koizumi’s priorities by making growth a precondition for economic reform and fiscal reconstruction, whereas Koizumi’s slogan was ‘no growth without reform’. Abe has recently spoken about a ‘growth’ policy, but his commitment to economic reform in principle, and the consumption tax increase in particular, remains ambivalent.

Abe’s position on the US alliance is similarly ambivalent. Although he has been repeating the mantra of alliance importance, he is a conservative nationalist, a group that deep down is anti-American. This shone through in negative comments he made about the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership during the recent DPJ leadership campaign. Conservative nationalists fundamentally resent the alliance and want to reclaim Japanese sovereignty. They are uncomfortable with what they perceive as their country’s subordinate status. The security relationship is an affront to their national pride. Given that Japan cannot afford either to lose the security of US deterrence or fund the huge fiscal costs of defence independence, their nationalism takes the form of historical revisionism. This doctrine places emphasis on visits to the Yasukuni shrine, the North Korean abductee issue, rejecting war history about ‘sex slaves’ (so-called comfort women), history textbook reform, and constitutional revision including exercising the right of collective defence.

Historical revisionism is the strand of Japanese nationalism that has fatally impaired Japan’s leadership credentials in Asia. It veers between an unapologetic view of Japan’s history during World War II and outright denial. If Abe revises earlier statements of apology for Japan’s wartime behaviour or repeats the claim that wartime sex slaves were either willing volunteers or prostitutes, it will inflame relations with other Asian countries, including both China and South Korea.

Abe is considered the patron of the historical revisionist movement. In a personal manifesto written for his 2006 bid for the LDP presidency, entitled Towards a Beautiful Country: My Vision for Japan, Abe wrote: ‘The framework of [Japan] has to be created by the Japanese people themselves from a blank sheet. … Only then can [Japan] regain its true independence’. He wants, once and for all, to end what he considers a ‘defeated nation’ mentality in Japan. This viewpoint is encapsulated in phrases about ‘breaking away from the postwar regime’.

Abe’s policy priorities when prime minister provide some clues to what lies ahead. He had a single-minded focus on revising the constitution, studying the option of collective defence, engendering greater patriotism among school children, boosting defence spending and the status of the Defence Agency, and tacitly encouraging the debate about Japan’s acquiring nuclear weapons.

Revising the constitution and taking a bigger role in global security by exercising the right of collective defence will not help Japan defend its national or maritime territory. Abe’s contribution to the Senkaku/Diaoyu Island dispute is to propose building structures on the Senkakus at a time when it is vital to restore the status quo ante on these contested territories. What Japan needs at this time is an internationalist prime minister who seeks to build diplomatic, economic and trade bridges with Asia Pacific countries and who will open Japan up to globalisation as a spur to economic growth. Abe has pledged to build a ‘strong Japan’. If so, he needs to observe the slogan used by Bill Clinton in his campaign for the White House in 1992: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’.

For the DPJ, Abe’s victory in the LDP leadership race was good news. If he repeats his 2007 Upper House general election performance (when he lost the LDP its majority) in the forthcoming Lower House election, there might be some hope for the DPJ after all.

Aurelia George Mulgan is a professor at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra. 

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