Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is feeling quite confident, having recently sought a new electoral mandate and received it midway through his parliamentary term. Not that he did anything remarkable or even hopeful for his country plagued with multiple problems, but he exuded confidence and a can-do spirit to pull Japan out of its prolonged morass.
For instance, he came to power while Japan was still in the throes of the 2011 tsunami that killed thousands of Japanese and crippled its nuclear energy sector by disabling the Fukushima nuclear power plants. Apart from massive human and property losses, the shutdown of Japan’s nuclear power complex hugely increased Japan’s oil import bill.
The then-ruling Democratic Party of Japan was blamed for mismanaging the unprecedented crisis. The brief interlude of the party, which won a landslide victory in 2009 with great expectations, was an abject failure that brought the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) back to power with Abe as the country’s new prime minister in 2012. People looked to him for solutions and he promised to transform the country in all sorts of ways.
However, not much was achieved during his two years and his government was coming under criticism. To stem the tide of such criticism developing a momentum of its own, Abe decided to pre-emptively seek a popular mandate midway through his term and give himself extended time to hopefully change things in some recognizable ways.
Will he be able to do it? Japan’s biggest problem is that its economy has been stagnant and entered a deflationary phase over the past two decades. So far, during two years with Abe as prime minister, there has not been any appreciable improvement. His government has sought to put Japan on a growth trajectory by easing monetary policy and through increased public spending, even if that would mean a further increase in the country’s already enormous debt, much of it raised internally.
The idea behind easy money supply is to make credit cheaper and easily available for businesses to grow, create new jobs and build up consumer confidence so that people start spending more, thus creating a virtuous cycle of forward economic movement.
However, despite the initial kick-off from the new policies, it has not made any appreciable difference to the country’s economic environment. The government believes that it needs more time for its policies to work, and the new extended term will enable them to produce results.
During this period, the Abe government might also open up the Japanese economy to foreign investments and liberalize trade barriers in restricted sectors like agriculture.
However, it must be said that any structural change to the economy would run into strong opposition from the agricultural sector that also happens to be the ruling LDP’s power base.
Apart from reinvigorating the country’s economy, the LDP has a very strong nationalist agenda, which includes turning Japan into a “normal” nation, which means scrapping or amending Japan’s pacifist constitution, allowing it to function like any sovereign country able to use its armed forces to take on an enemy or come to the aid of its friends and allies.
Under Abe, Japan has increased its defense expenditure. It has also sought to do some “creative” interpretation of its pacifist constitution to make it more responsive to external challenges.
The most compelling factor driving this is a perceived threat from a resurgent China. With its renewed electoral mandate, the Abe government is expected to take this process of nationalist revival further. As part of this process, the government is likely to become more unapologetic about its wartime atrocities — whitewashing or denying their occurrence — which is likely to accentuate problems with China, on top of the sovereignty dispute over islands in the East China Sea.
It is important to point out here that although many Japanese are worried about a perceived security threat from China, they do not necessarily agree with Abe’s attempts to tinker with Japan’s pacifist constitution. Ever since the end of World War II, the country has developed a strong tradition of pacifism in terms of abjuring another war.
Another area where Abe might be swimming against strong opposition from many of his countrymen is his policy to restart the country’s many nuclear power reactors. The Japanese still have fresh memories of the Fukushima nuclear meltdown disaster, with neighboring areas turning into ghost towns. Japan was gripped with fear and there was talk then that even Tokyo might be affected.
This is still fresh in many people’s memories, and they are allergic to any talk of restarting the nuclear industry. However, buoyed by his renewed electoral victory, Abe will go ahead and do it.
How is he getting away with it, when many Japanese are not supportive of some of his important policy initiatives? His economic policies have not really worked to create confidence among people to start spending and lift the country out of its long deflationary phase. Many Japanese oppose his revamping of the country’s pacifist constitution and people are not particularly enthused about whitewashing the country’s wartime record. At the same time, there is significant opposition to restarting the nuclear industry.
There are two important reasons for this. The first is the long-time familiarity of the Japanese people with the LDP, which has been in power for a long time, except for brief interruptions by the opposition.
The last time the opposition Democratic Party was in power, it made a hash of things comprehensively. Much was expected and it failed miserably, creating conditions for the return to power of the LDP in 2012 — and it has now been re-elected midway through the normal parliamentary cycle. The opposition was fragmented and unelectable. In other words, the renewed mandate for Abe and his LDP is not essentially an endorsement of its policies, but a lack of any credible political alternative.
The second reason is that even though the Abe-led government’s strong nationalism, sometimes bordering on jingoism as with denying wartime crimes, is worrisome, there is a general unease among Japanese people with China’s own muscular nationalism, which reflects an attitude of “righting the wrongs of history” — as Beijing sees it.
The Abe government provides a counter narrative and way of confronting China, if need be. Part of this narrative, apart from strengthening Japan’s defensive posture, is further strengthening its US alliance and building regional linkages against China’s expansive nationalism.
The Japanese might not like what is happening, but they sense a need to do something to prepare if China were to turn its attention to Japan.
All this is dangerous stuff based on calculations of balance of power, which can go awry as it did in World War I, and lead to catastrophic results.
Sushil Seth is a commentator in Australia.
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