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Gauging Shinzo Abe’s legacy

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People receive an extra edition of newspaper reporting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to resign his post due to his health concerns in Tokyo, Japan, 28 August 2020 (Photo: Naoki Nishimura/AFLO via Reuters).

In Brief

On 28 August, four days after he set the record for the longest consecutive tenure of a Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe suddenly resigned. Despite rumours about his health, he seemed to catch even his closest colleagues off guard.

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In explaining his decision, Abe cited recurrence of ulcerative colitis which also forced him to resign from his first stint in the top job in 2007. He said he was resigning before his condition worsened so as not to leave a vacuum in the fight against COVID-19. Yet a number of other factors must have weighed on Abe’s prime ministership before his health issues came to the fore.

Political dramas have dogged his administration and eroded his political support over the years including the Moritomo Gakuen, Kake Gakuen and cherry blossom party scandals as well as the arrest in June of close Abe associate Katsuyuki Kawai and his wife, Anri Kawai, accused of vote buying.

Public discontent over the Abe government’s muddled response to COVID-19 was also a contributing factor, as Aurelia George Mulgan explains in our feature article this week. Prefectural governors, Yuriko Koike in Tokyo and Hirofumi Yoshimura in Osaka, took the lead in articulating the COVID-19 threat and pressuring the government to declare a state of emergency while Abe seemed missing in action. Japan has been widely faulted for its low rate of COVID-19 testing. There was ‘confusion and slowness around stimulus payments and lagged roll-out of poor-quality face masks, derided as “Abenomasks”’, George Mulgan observes. And the promotion of the domestic ‘go to’ travel campaign to boost the tourism industry was criticised for prioritising the economy over health.

Abe’s indecisive approach to COVID-19 seems to have stemmed from his view of the virus as an unwelcome distraction from his long-cherished objective to lead Japan’s escape from the so-called ‘post-war regime’. Abe’s nationalistic perception of the constraints imposed on Japan’s sovereignty — by the US-led occupation reforms and the choices made by post-war prime minister Shigeru Yoshida, after its defeat in the Second World War — put revising Japan’s post-war constitution, as well as resolving the abduction issue with North Korea and concluding a peace treaty with Russia, at the centre of Abe’s political aspirations. The coronavirus situation dashed any hope over what Abe would have been able to achieve in the remaining year of his term in moving forward his pet project.

As he exits the prime ministership, Abe leaves a mixed record.

On the economy, he will be remembered for his flagship Abenomics economic policy package comprising quantitative easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reform. Abe can be credited for keeping Japan’s economic ship afloat. Yet the lack of follow-through on promised structural reform and the havoc wreaked by COVID-19 given the underlying reality of Japan’s ageing and declining population nonetheless leave its economy vulnerable. Abe held the global banner on free trade, leading the conclusion of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership and concluding the Japan–EU Economic Partnership Agreement. Yet imposing trade restrictions on South Korea in 2019 was widely seen as retribution for South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s stance on the comfort women and forced labour issues.

Diplomacy is where Abe shone. He was a tireless traveller, raising Japan’s profile around the world, and especially in Southeast Asia. His record on China was complicated, earlier worsening the relationship with his decision to visit Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013 and drawing rebuke from the United States for undermining regional stability, but steadily and cautiously repairing relations through his visit to Beijing in October 2018 and an agreement to cooperate with China on over 50 joint infrastructure projects in third countries. Improving the China relationship while managing the economic and security unpredictability of the ‘America First’ agenda scored him diplomatic points. Abe was one of the few world leaders to achieve positive personal rapport with US President Donald Trump, gaining accolades at home for avoiding the worst of Trump’s demands on host-nation support for US military bases and tariffs on automobiles, despite the one-sided and shallow 2019 US–Japan Trade Agreement.

On security policy, Abe achieved a number of significant reforms. They included the establishment of a National Security Council to better facilitate inter-ministerial coordination, planning and crisis management led by the prime minister’s office. The Abe government controversially reinterpreted the Article 9 peace clause of the Constitution and passed the implementing security-related bills in September 2015, legally enabling the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to engage in limited forms of collective self-defence and sparking the biggest protests against the government since 1960. Despite Abe’s fixation on revising Article 9, realising that was always a tall order given the need to persuade both the Japanese public and his coalition partner Komeito of its wisdom. Abe’s proposal to formally revise Article 9 by explicitly recognising the legitimacy of the SDF was a significant watering down from his original goal and would have been a symbolic rather than transformative change, reflecting the practical difficulties involved in navigating this politically controversial issue in Japan.

Abe is likely to be remembered as a captain who steadied the ship but, for better or worse, failed to navigate it towards his own ambitious goals. One can’t help but wonder what economic headway Abe may have achieved if he had not invested so much political capital into the constitutional revision project. Yet without the motivation to revise the Constitution, Abe may never have taken up economic reform so enthusiastically.

The political stability to Japan and to the regional and global arenas that Abe brought will be missed.

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is now left to appoint a successor by early to mid-September. The LDP’s party rules require a leadership election every three years, irrespective of resignations and switches. Whoever lands the job now will have a year at most to prove himself before the next party election in September 2021.

The top priority for Japan’s new prime minister must be Japan’s second wave of COVID-19 infections, which have spiked sharply since July. Only then can Japan give itself a shot at successfully hosting the postponed Tokyo Olympics, take the steps needed to rejuvenate its economy post-COVID-19 and regain much-needed diplomatic momentum.

The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.

One response to “Gauging Shinzo Abe’s legacy”

  1. Abe’s Womenomics and Equal Pay for Equal work were announced with great fanfare. Little real structural reforms were even suggested, let alone implemented.

    Not noted in this piece is his response to The Triple Disaster. Instead of using it as an opportunity to proactively redirect the economy into renewable energy Abe directed his government to reopen as many nuclear power plants as possible. Some of the supposed stricter safety rules were ignored. Safer storage of spent fuel was not even considered. He proved how beholden he is to the nuclear power industry rather than the long term future of a Japan. . Additionally, thousands of people are still in ‘temporary housing’ more than 9 years after The Triple Disaster!

    For a leader who achieved ‘diplomatic success’ why did he allow the situation with S Korea to deteriorate as it has in the last 2 years?!? His much anticipated apology in 2015 was half hearted at best. Abe has never been willing to break with Nipponkogi when it comes to S Korea. He has never grasped that reconciliation requires ongoing face to face engagement rather than a formal apology and grants of money.

    How likely is it that the LDP will choose a successor who will take a different approach to these failures? Sadly, I would not hold my breath.

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