Monday Asia Events October 17, 2022

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken holds a conversation on the evolution and importance of technology, diplomacy, and national security with Hoover Institution Director and 66^th Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at 1:45pm EDT/ 10:45am PDT at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, CA. Livestreamed.

Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue documentary screening with director Miki Dezaki. In person only at 5:00pm (BST), University of Cambridge, United Kingdom.

INCLUSIVE ECONOMIES IN AN AGE OF RECESSION. 10/17, 9:00-9:45am (CDT), YOUTUBE. Sponsor: Chicago Council. Speakers: Indermit Gill, Chief Economist of the World Bank Group and Senior Vice President for Development Economics; Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value, University College, London; Dambisa Moyo, Co-Principal of Versaca Investments, Global Economist, Author, and Board Member; Gillian Tett, Chair of the Editorial Board and Editor-at-Large, US, Financial Times. 

THE FOURTH NORTH KOREA ECONOMIC FORUM ANNUAL CONFERENCE. 10/17, 9:00am-3:00pm (EDT), IN PERSON AND ONLINE. Sponsor: Institute for Korea Studies, GW. Speakers Include: Robert King, Former US Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, William Brown, Chair, North Korea Economic Forum, GW; Matthew Abbott, Director of Government and Diplomatic Programs, Chicago Council on Global Affairs. 

LAUNCHING THE BRETTON WOODS 2.0 PROJECT. 10/17, 9:30am (EDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers Include: Carmen M. Reinhart, Minos A. Zombanakis Professor of the International Financial System, Harvard Kennedy School, Former Senior Vice President and Chief Economist, World Bank; Ajay Chhibber, Senior Visiting Professor, ICRIER, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Hung Tran, Former staff member, IMF, Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council; Nisha Narayanan, Head of Country Risk, Previous World Bank Consultant; Victor Shih, Ho Miu Lam Chair in China and Pacific, UCSD.

RENEWING AMERICAN INDUSTRIAL POLICY. 10/17, 9:30-10:30pm (EDT), VIRTUAL ONLY. Sponsor: Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Speakers: Alexandra Seymour, Associate Fellow, CNAS; Emily Jin, Research Assistant, CNAS; Chris Miller, Associate Professor, Fletcher School, Tufts; Jeane Kirkpatrick, Visiting Fellow, AEI; Jonas Nahm, Assistant Professor, SAIS, Johns Hopkins; Ryan Fedasiuk, Adjunct Fellow, CNAS. 

GLOBAL STATUS OF CCS 2022. 10/17, 10:00am (EDT), WEBINAR ONLY. Sponsor: Global CCS Institute. Speakers: Alex Milward, Director, Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy; Brad Crabtree, Assistant Secretary, Department of Energy’s Office, Fossil Energy and Carbon Management; Chris Bolesta, Policy Lead, European Commission. 

EMBARKING ON A PATH OF RENEWAL: A REPORT BY THE COMMISSION ON STABILIZATION AND GROWTH IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA. 10/17, 10:30am-Noon (EDT), IN-PERSON AND WEBINAR. Sponsor: Middle East Institute (MEI). Speakers: Masood Ahmed, President, Center for Global Development; Jihad Azour, Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department, IMF; Ishac Diwan, Lecturer in Public Policy and the director for Africa and the Middle East at the Growth Lab, the Center for International Development; Ibrahim Elbadawi, Managing Director, Economic Research Forum; Roberta Gatti, Chief Economist, Middle East and North Africa region, World Bank; Hanan Morsy, Director of the Macroeconomic Policy, Forecasting and Research Department, African Development Bank; Mustapha Nabli, Senior Associate, North Africa Bureau of Economic Studies (NABES); Moderator: Paul Salem, President and CEO, MEI.

2022 GLOBAL MULTIDIMENSIONAL POVERTY INDEX, 10/17, 11:00am-12:15pm (EDT), WEBINAR. Sponsors: Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at George Washington University, Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI), United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report office (UNDP HDRO).

UPCOMING GEO-STRATEGIC TRENDS IN THE INDO-PACIFIC. 10/17, 11:00-11:40am (PDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall. Speakers: Chairman (ret) Ed Royce, Former Chair, House Foreign Affairs Committee; Admiral Harry Harris, U.S. Navy (Retired), Former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea; Moderator: Eric Nishizawa, Owner, The Law Office of Eric Y. Nishizawa. 

STRENGTHENING TAIWAN’S TRADE AND ECONOMIC STABILITY. 10/17, Noon (EDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Hudson. Speakers: Wendy Cutler, Vice President, Asia Society Policy Institute; Rupert Hammond-Chambers, President, US-Taiwan Business Council; Abby Fu, Research Fellow, Hudson Institute; Moderator: Riley Walters, Deputy Director, Japan Chair, Hudson Institute. 

HOW MUCH TROUBLE IS PUTIN IN? 10/17, Noon (EDT), LIVESTREAM ONLY. Sponsor: Foreign Policy. Speakers: Andrea Kendall-Taylor, Director of the Transatlantic Security Program, Center for a New American Security; Ravi Agrawal, Editor in chief, Foreign Policy. 

CHINA AND JAPAN IN THE GLOBAL POLITICS OF CLIMATE CHANGE. 10/17, Noon-1:15pm (EDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. Speakers: Kelly Gallagher, Academic Dean; Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, Director, Climate Policy Lab, Co-Director, Center for International Environment & Resource Policy, The Fletcher School Tufts University; Miranda Schreurs, Professor of Environment and Climate Policy, School of Government, Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich; Moderator: Christina L. Davis, Director, Program on U.S.-Japan Relations, Edwin O. Reischauer Professor of Japanese Politics, Department of Government, and Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University.

DOMESTIC EXTREMISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE: THE THREAT TO LIBERTY. 10/17, 1:00pm-2;30pm (EDT), ONLINE ONLY. Sponsor: Cato. Speakers: Mike German, Fellow, Brennan Center for Justice, NYU; Christopher Vials, Professor, University of Connecticut; Patrick G. Eddington, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute. 

WHAT’S IN STORE: THE FUTURE OF ENERGY THROUGH NATURAL GAS. 10/17, 2:00-3:00pm (EDT), IN-PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Association of Women in International Trade. Speakers: Joshua Volz, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Africa, Middle East, Europe & Eurasia, US Department of Energy; Dr. Dagmara Koska, Deputy Head of Section Global Issues and Innovation and Counsellor for Energy and Climate at the Delegation of the European Union to the United States; Leslie Palti-Guzman, Co-founder and CEO of Gas Vista, Senior Associate (Non-Resident), Energy Security and Climate Change Program; Moderators: Cassandra Kuball, Co-Chair of WIIT’s Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Section; Soozhana Choi, Co-Chair of WIIT’s Agriculture, Energy, and Environment Section. FEE. 

RUSSIAN INFORMATION WARFARE. 10/17, 2:00-3:00pm (EDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Carnegie. Speakers: Author: Dr. Bilyana Lilly, Director of Security Intelligence and Geostrategy, Krebs Stamos Group; Moderator: Gavin Wilde, Senior Fellow, Carnegie. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3EwHNF1

THE CHILLING EFFECT & FEARS OF CHINESE-AMERICAN SCIENTISTS AND THE IMPLICATIONS TO U.S. SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY: A NATIONAL STUDY. 10/17, 3:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: Asian American Scholar Forum. Speakers: Judy Chu, Congresswoman (D-CA); Xihong Lin Professor, Harvard University; Yu Xie, Professor, Princeton University.

A CONVERSATION WITH FORMER USTRS. 10/17, 3:30-5:00pm (EDT), IN-PERSON AND ONLINE. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Amb. Carla Hills, Former United States Trade Representative; Amb. Charlene Barshefsky, Former United States Trade Representative; Amb. Susan Schwab, Former United States Trade Representative; Amb. Ronald Kirk, Former United States Trade Representative; Amb. Michael Froman, Former United States Trade Representative. 

THE PERSONALITY OF AMERICAN POWER: A CONVERSATION WITH GISELLE DONNELLY. 10/17, 4:00-5:00pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: AEI. Speakers: Giselle Donnelly, Senior Fellow, AEI; Kori Schake, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies, AEI. 

NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE: AMERICA’S RECONCILIATION WITH VIETNAM. 10/17, 4:00-6:00pm (EDT), IN-PERSON ONLY. Sponsors: Columbia SIPA, China and the World Program, Weatherhead East Asian Institute. Speaker: Author Ted Osius, Former US Ambassador to Vietnam.  PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3RtRx5P

THE NATIONAL SECURITY IMPACT OF THE GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS. 10/17, 4:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR. Sponsor: American Leadership Initiative. Speakers: Jim McGovern, Congressman (D-MA); Dan Glickman, Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; Caitlin Welsh, Director, Food Security Program, CSIS. 

THE RUSSIA/UKRAINE WAR AND ITS IMPACT ON GLOBAL FOOD SUPPLY CHAINS. 10/17, 4:00-5:15pm (EDT), ONLINE. Sponsor: Congressman Jim McGovern (D-MA); Eric Mitchell, Executive Director, Alliance to End Hunger; Caitlin Welsh, Director, Food Security Program, CSIS; Dan Glickman, Former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture; Michelle Grogg, Vice President, Corporate Responsibility Executive Director, Cargill Foundation.

THE PROBLEM OF DEMOCRACY: ISLAM, LIBERALISM, AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. 10/17, 4:00-5:30pm (EDT), ONLINE ONLY. Sponsor: Brookings. Speakers: author, Shadi Hamid, Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy, Center for Middle East Policy; Francis Fukuyama, Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Stanford University; Amaney Jamal, Dean, School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. PURCHASE BOOK: https://amzn.to/3Ta5zLb

STRATEGIC STABILITY AND EXTENDED DETERRENCE ON THE KOREAN PENINSULA: A CONVERSATION WITH ANKIT PANDA. 10/17, 4:00pm (PDT); 7:00pm (EDT), ZOOM WEBINAR ONLY. Sponsor: Korea-Pacific Program, UC San Diego. Speakers: Stephan Haggard, director, Korea-Pacific Program, UC San Diego; Ankit Panda, Senior Fellow, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie. 

THE RESULTS OF ABENOMICS AND KISHIDA'S NEW CAPITALISM. 10/17, 5:00-6:30pm (JST), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies (ICAS), Temple University, Japan Campus. Speaker: Naohiro Yashiro, Specially Appointed Professor with the Faculty of Global Business at Showa Women’s University. 

Abe the Gamechanger Stumbles to Exit Under a Cloud

The abrupt resignation of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo due to poor health has sent shockwaves across the political landscape. This has raised concerns about the implications for Japan’s economy and foreign policy. 

By Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan

Australian Outlook, Australian Institute of International Affairs, 9/4/2020.

Leaders seldom time their exits well, hanging on to burnish a legacy only to get slammed by a crisis or scandal. Scanning the mass media political obituaries, there is a consensus that Abenomics was a flop and his womenomics policy a sham, while his cherished goal of constitutional revision never gained traction. He stood tall for free trade and managed Trump better than anyone else, but his most important legacy is providing stability just by lasting so long. The “Teflon premier” weathered a number of scandals involving document tampering and shredding, various cover-ups, and sweetheart land deals and special permissions for cronies, but this eroded public trust in him.

Under Abe, the political centre of gravity shifted sharply rightward, and there was a recrudescence of reactionary nationalism. He also strengthened the power of his office over top-level bureaucratic promotions, enhancing political control over the mandarins (Japanese bureaucrats). This, however, encourages a culture of sontaku (doing what one assumes a boss wants done to curry favour) among the ambitious that obscures responsibility for the alleged abuses of power that have dogged Abe since 2017. There is considerable speculation that these numerous scandals played a role in Abe’s decision to step down.

Abe came to power promising to rev up the economy, enact sweeping reforms, and assume a bolder role on the international stage. Abenomics entered the global lexicon, and his three arrows of monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and structural reform generated a positive buzz. After two lost decades of anaemic growth and policy drift, Abe seemed like a gamechanger who could help Japan regain its mojo. On his watch, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) engaged in massive quantitative easing, driving down interest rates and the value of the yen. Corporate profits soared, and it seemed that Abe’ shock therapy had revived a wallowing economy. The Nikkei stock average doubled during his tenure, boosted in part by massive BOJ and government pension fund purchases and a surge in foreign investments. But the party was short-lived, as Abe implemented two tax increases that doubled the consumption tax and the shock of unconventional monetary policy wore off.

Moreover, the benefits never trickled down as wages remained stagnant and households didn’t feel the love. The conceit of Abenomics was that deflation was a mindset, and if the government could change the national mood and generate optimism then consumption would rise along with the economy. Alas, low consumption was due to thin wallets not a collective psychosis. Abe tried to jawbone Japan, Inc. into boosting wages, but had no luck because corporate Japan didn’t think Abenomics was sustainable.

Abenomics sputtered along, but Abe never managed to push through significant structural reforms. His signature policy of womenomics pledging to empower women never got off the ground, and according to the 2020 World Economic Forum, Japan’s ranking on gender equality slipped to 121, the lowest among advanced economies and down 11 rungs from the previous year. Due to Japan’s ageing and shrinking population, labour shortages have intensified, and expanding women’s employment, mostly in non-regular employment, has not been a sufficient remedy.

Immigration offers a solution, but Abe opposed welcoming immigrants, instead promoting limited migrant labour in certain sectors for a limited duration. The target of 345,000 migrant workers by 2025 is too small to make much of a difference in a labour market exceeding 60 million, and since the program was implemented, it has attracted few applicants because the conditions are unwelcoming. There are many factors that impede gender equality and immigration, but Abe could have used his power to push for more. His half-measures represent urgent, unfinished business for his successors.

In terms of diplomacy, Abe has done more than all of his predecessors combined in fulfilling the Pentagon’s wishlist. He focused on strengthening ties to the US and shoring up the alliance with his so-called “proactive pacifism.” He agreed to new US-Japan Defense Guidelines in 2015 and then instigated the largest protests in Japan since the turbulent 1960s when he rammed enabling legislation through the Diet. The public fears that Abe has signed up for more than they are comfortable with, and that his collective self-defence (CSD) legislation is unconstitutional. Essentially there is widespread anxiety that sometime, somewhere Japan will be dragged into conflict at Washington’s behest even if has little to do with defending Japan.

In early 2020, the constraints imposed by limited public support came to the fore as Tokyo fended off Washington’s request to join a US-led coalition of allied navies escorting oil tankers following a series of attacks near Iran, including a Japanese-owned vessel. Instead, Japan dispatched one ship to the somewhat distant but less dangerous Gulf of Oman on an intelligence gathering mission. Abe’s half-hearted response walked the tightrope of not alienating President Trump, Iran, or Japanese public opinion, a risk-averse approach that is a reality check for those eager for Japan to embrace a more robust security doctrine.

Abe did not join the coalition naval patrols because he feared a public backlash and at the time still entertained hopes for constitutional revision. No doubt Washington’s security wonks are disappointed that Japan is not doing more burden sharing and is too skittish to be its deputy sheriff in Asia, but pacifism remains embedded in the national identity. Even hawkish Japanese politicians are aware they are walking on thin ice when they dispatch troops overseas.

The nostrum of shared values is often invoked as the foundation of the alliance, but at least in Okinawa, this means sidelining public sentiments and ignoring the democratic voice of islanders expressed in several elections. Abe has remained steadfast in supporting the construction of an offshore military base in Henoko to facilitate the relocation of the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, despite overwhelming opposition among Okinawans to this plan. The Futenma location in a densely populated city is dangerous, but islanders fear that constructing the Henoko base will have devastating environmental consequences and resent that their prefecture hosts most of the US military facilities and personnel.

By ignoring Okinawan voices and deferring to Washington, has Abe really strengthened the basis of the alliance? Similarly, if Japanese leaders can’t fulfil commitments undertaken in the 2015 US-Japan Defense Guidelines due to a squeamish public, isn’t there a risk of stoking recriminations in Washington that undermine bilateral ties? The government couldn’t even find a town willing to host an Aegis ashore missile defence system because locals saw this as more of a target than a shield, a perception Okinawans share about US bases. Japan lives in a much more dangerous neighbourhood than when the peace constitution was enacted in 1947. China and North Korea pose a threat, but there is a strong disconnect between the views of alliance managers and the public.

Much is made of Abe’s successful fawning over Trump, but this hasn’t prevented Trump from abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, slapping sanctions on Japan and demanding a quadrupling of host country support for US bases to $8 billion. Trump knows he has Japan over the barrel on security and is taking advantage of its vulnerability, adding to the scar tissue of gathering resentment over his highhanded bullying.

Paradoxically, Abe’s legacy is meagre, a case of power without purpose, but he dominated the political landscape and just by providing stable political leadership, he gained significant stature at home and abroad. It appears that Chief Cabinet spokesman Suga Yoshihide has been anointed to serve out Abe’s term until September 2021, representing policy continuity at a time when Japan could use some fresh thinking about its various challenges. In terms of foreign policy, Suga is not so closely associated with Abe’s Russia policy or commitment to resolving the abductions of Japanese nationals by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s, and these issues may slip down the agenda. Suga is not so reviled by the South Korean public, so there may be opportunities to overcome the divisive past. Although he has been a very effective lieutenant, he will lack the stature of Abe to hit the reset button on foreign policy priorities. He is a nose-to-the-grindstone manager of details rather than someone who can convey a vision, safe hands without inspiration. Precisely at a time when Japan needs a resolute leader, there is a nagging suspicion that Japan is headed for weaker leadership and policy drift.

Jeff Kingston is the Director of Asian Studies at Temple University Japan. He is author and editor of a dozen books, including Press Freedom in Japan (Routledge 2017), Japan (Polity 2019) and the Politics of Religion, Nationalism and Identity in Asia (Rowman & Littlefield 2019). He edited a two-part collection of essays titled “The Tokyo Olympics Past and Present” earlier this year for the Asia Pacific Journal Japan Focus, which can be viewed at https://apjjf.org/2020/4/APJ.html and https://apjjf.org/2020/5/APJ.html.

Shinzo Abe's Economic Legacy

By Richard Katz,  Senior Fellow, Carnegie Council For Ethics in International Affairs, APP Member

Tokyo Business Today, September 1, 2020

No matter what one thinks of Shinzo Abe and his policies, it is sad to see him forced off the stage because of this illness. Hopefully, doctors can find a way to treat it.

Aside from his longevity as Prime Minister, Abe will be judged first and foremost on his Abenomics. It was the claims of Abenomics that led the public to support him and acquiesce to other things they didn’t like. Unfortunately, the reality never lived up to the advertising.

Let’s look at Abe’s own measure of his success. He vowed to bring Japan to 2% real annual growth on a steady basis. He never came close. At the beginning, it appeared as if the economy was taking off. But that was misleading.

The economy had just gone through six years of a slump brought on by the global financial crisis by the time the LDP triumphed in the election of December 2012. GDP was down 1.4% from where it had been in the first quarter of 2007 prior to the global meltdown.

It was operating so far below full capacity use of labor and capital stock, that it was due for a spurt of relatively high growth to get back to full capacity. This came in the first five quarters of Abe’s tenure, from 2012-IV to 2014-I. GDP rose a total of 3.8%.

Then, Abe hiked the consumption tax and did so again in October 2019. Both hikes triggered mild recessions. Had Japan been fundamentally healthy, those would have been minor interruptions. But Abenomics had done nothing to elevate Japan’s potential growth rate on any long-term.

Consequently, in the six years from 2014-I to 2020-I (before COVID effects hit), GDP grew a total of just 1.8%. So, in those six years, GDP grew less than the 2% Abe claimed he would achieve each year.

Then there is harm to people’s living standards. Price-adjusted personal consumption in 2020-I—again before COVID’s economic harm set in--was 0.5% lower than it had been when Abe took office.

Never before during the lost decades had Japan suffered a consumption downturn for as long a period. This came, not because people are unwilling to spend, but because tax hikes and real wage cuts reduced their income. During Abe’s eight years, real wages per worker fell 3.5%.

How about the famous three arrows?

The only arrow Abe took seriously was the first: monetary stimulus guided by Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s Peter Pan theory: “the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” Abe and Kuroda, however, acted as if the obverse were true: if you just believe you can fly, then you can.

They believed that the main obstacle to growth was lack of confidence and deflation and, consequently, conquering deflation would revive growth. In reality, despite Kuroda’s claim he could hit 2% inflation in a mere two years, he never came close. This has caused a rethink among those monetary economists who believed that a central bank could achieve whatever inflation rate it wanted if it just tried hard enough.

From April 2015 (Kuroda’s original target date for hitting 2%) through June 2020, so-called “core core” inflation (excluding food, energy and consumption taxes), averaged a negligible 0.2%. Rhetoric aside, the BOJ has more or less dropped that 2% goal. To be sure, 0.2% inflation is better than the -0.6% deflation rate seen during 1999-2012. But that has done little or nothing to stimulate growth. The fact is that deflation is not the cause of Japan’s problems, but a symptom.

As for fiscal policy: Abe applied both the gas pedal and brake, often at the same time. His tax hikes took spending money away from people. On the other hand, government spending accounted for a huge 42% of all GDP growth during his whole reign and a stunning 80% during 2014-I to 2020-I.

Despite Abe’s (unfulfilled) pledge to reach a balance in the primary budget (the whole budget except for interest payments) by 2020, Abe was forced to keep on running big deficits lest the economy suffer no growth whatsoever.

The third arrow—productivity-enhancing structural reforms—was mostly promises and boasts, with very little action. It was less a policy than a sales pitch to foreign investors.

A next big test of Abenomics will come when we see how resilient the economy will be in the face of the global economic impact COVID.

Shinzo Abe Is Ill. But Is That the Only Reason He’s Quitting

Maybe he can’t face the Japanese people’s calls for accountability.

By Koichi Nakano, professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo.

New York Times, Aug. 30, 2020

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s announcement on Friday that he would resign because of poor health was a rather abrupt end for a supposedly strong leader. Mr. Abe has ruled Japan, most recently, for a record seven years and eight months: He is the country’s longest-serving prime minister.

The decision was a surprise — and yet it wasn’t.

A chronic illness was also the reason Mr. Abe cited when he suddenly resigned from his first stint as prime minister in 2007.

The matter of his health had surfaced again a couple of weeks ago when, after he underwent a medical checkup, a former minister and close associate of Mr. Abe’s publicly expressed concern that the prime minister was overworked and might have to be “forced” to get a few days’ rest.

That seemed strange because Mr. Abe certainly hadn’t appeared to be working too hard. In fact, most Japanese people had grown critical about his not doing enough to manage the pandemic and its economic impact.

Mr. Abe was largely absent from public view after the coronavirus broke out in Japan early this year, popping up occasionally only to announce ill-conceived policies: His plan to distribute two washable cloth masks — so-called Abenomasks — to every household was quickly derided as futile and inefficient.

At the same time, he was still mired in various scandals from the past several years — and still failing to provide convincing accounts of his behavior.

Both the Moritomo Gakuen and Kake Gakuen scandals prompted allegations that Mr. Abe had granted special favors to ideological companions or his friends. The Moritomo Gakuen case, about a heavily discounted land deal, involved a cover-up by Finance Ministry officials, including the doctoring of public documents. Mr. Abe continues to deny any involvement (or any by his wife), but he has apologized on behalf of the government for the document tampering.

Controversy had also been growing around the cherry-blossom-viewing party the prime minister hosts every year: an official government event paid for by taxpayer money that has kept getting more and more lavish, and increasingly has seemed designed to reward Mr. Abe’s and his party’s loyal supporters. When the opposition started asking questions about the 2019 event, the Cabinet Office shredded documents listing that year’s attendees, in violation of government rules.

After that, coronavirus or not, the scandals and the cronyism continued.

In January, the prime minister bent or reinterpreted — call that what you will — a law so that a favorite prosecutor could stay in the job past the mandatory age of retirement. Then he tried to have the law formally amended — a move that looked like an attempt to retroactively validate what he had already improperly done. But after the prosecutor was forced to resign over illegal gambling, Mr. Abe had to retract the plan.

In June, the justice minister and a close aide of Mr. Abe, Katsuyuki Kawai, and his wife, Anri, a member of the upper house of Parliament from Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, were arrested and charged with vote buying during the election for that chamber last year. The Kawais received 150 million yen (more than $1.4 million) from the L.D.P., over which Mr. Abe presides. (The prime minister denies any involvement. The Kawais have pleaded not guilty to the charges.)

In short: Mr. Abe has had a lot of explaining to do — to Parliament, the media, the public. And yet he has done as little of that as possible.

Mr. Abe closed the ordinary session of Parliament, known as the Diet, on June 17. On July 31, the opposition called for an extraordinary session as soon as possible. Although such requests are a right guaranteed by the Constitution, Mr. Abe rejected it: It was the third time he has done so.

Before Mr. Abe’s resignation announcement on Friday, his last proper news conference had been on June 18 — even though a prime minister’s news conferences with Japanese media are notoriously staged and meek affairs.

No wonder that by then public support for Mr. Abe had already dropped to its lowest levels since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

Japan has been relatively successful in managing the spread of the virus and limiting the death toll, but the government isn’t getting much credit for that. In one opinion poll from mid-August, about 60 percent of respondents said they had a negative view of the Abe administration’s response to the pandemic.

Mr. Abe returned to power in December 2012 vowing to “take back Japan” — a promise to rebuild the Japanese economy with his signature “Abenomics” and “normalize,” as he put it, Japan’s defense policy through rearmament and by reinforcing ties with the United States.

While analysts debate his record — a stock market boosted, but stagnant wages and record government debt; a controversial and unsuccessful bid to revise the Constitution’s pacifist clauses; close ties with President Trump — the L.D.P. is looking for a successor.

Since Mr. Abe is abruptly resigning amid crises and controversies, the L.D.P. is more likely to search for a new leader by consulting a relatively small group of the party’s Diet members and representatives in local chapters than by organizing a full-fledged race with the participation of rank-and-file party members.

If so, the prospects of Shigeru Ishiba, a popular and persistent critic of Mr. Abe’s ways, would seem rather limited.

Mr. Abe had been said to have a soft spot for the docile, if uninspiring, Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, but he may now be supporting Yoshihide Suga, his chief cabinet secretary, who is more ruthless, secretive and authoritarian and might have a better chance of defeating Mr. Ishiba.

Whatever Mr. Abe’s eventual legacy, whoever his immediate replacement, one thing already stands out: Japan’s longest-serving leader is leaving office by skedaddling from scandals and evading calls for accountability from the people he is supposed to serve.

ABE RUNNING AWAY

Abe without makeup

Japan’s Longest-Serving PM, Shinzo Abe, Quits in Bid to ‘Escape’ Potential Prosecution

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in his second time at bat lasted longer than anyone before him but he leaves office unable to stomach the job with the public unable to stomach him.

BY Jake Adelstein, Daily Beast, Aug. 28, 2020.

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, decided to resign Friday ostensibly because of his health, but also because he fears the unpleasant and unhealthy conditions of a Japanese prison.

At a press conference, he cited his painful stomach condition ulcerative colitis as the reason for stepping down, but he leaves at a time when his ratings are plummeting and he is under at least one criminal investigation, with the public clamoring for the reopening of other cas

Abe is not resigning; he is escaping. 

He is under investigation by the Japanese prosecutors for violations of election laws, similar to those his former handpicked justice minister is now being tried for in the lower courts of Tokyo. Testimony in that case may implicate Abe in the political scandal as well.

Abe’s efforts to shield himself from investigation by Japan’s authorities have fallen apart.

A high-ranking member of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), of which Abe also serves as president, told The Daily Beast on conditions of anonymity, “If Abe had been able to stack the prosecutor’s office with his choice—he’d still be clinging to power. His choice for the next head of the National Police Agency, Itaru Nakamura, was sidelined this month and Abe fears being arrested by either the prosecutors or the police. Resignation now allows him to escape a lot of scrutiny.” Nakamura was the high-ranking police chief that ended the rape investigation of Abe’s unofficial biographer.

A source in the Ministry of Justice told The Daily Beast, “It’s a done deal. Abe resigns taking ‘social punishment’ and several criminal investigations into his conduct are going to be closed.” Former special prosecutor Nobuo Gohara says, “It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that he resigns the same week a criminal trial has started in which Abe’s involvement will become a central issue.”

The Tweet of Defeat
This year, Abe’s approval ratings sank as low as 27 percent in opinion polls. You’ll see many things cited in the Japanese press in the coming days about what caused Abe’s grip on power and popular support to fail. There have certainly been many gaffes this year. He ignored the growing threat of the novel coronavirus due to his obsessive desire to hold the Olympic Games, which meant that Tokyo had to appear safe. His plan to distribute two face masks to every household, when masks were in short supply, was an expensive disaster. The masks were too small, dirty, and they were slow to be delivered. They were ridiculed as “Abe No Mask,” which sounds much like “Abenomics” when said in Japanese. Abenomics was the PM’s much-touted fiscal policy that involved the imaginary “arrows” of monetary easing and financial reforms, but the overhaul never came and the policy was a total failure.

Abe claimed that Japan’s “if you don’t test, you don’t know” coronavirus policy had worked fantastically, until it failed and the infection rates began shooting up again. This was accelerated by his obstinate push for the implementation of a weirdly named promotional campaign,“Go to Travel,” which ended up translating for many people to “Go to Quarantine” as the pandemic resurged.

What has derailed his popularity isn’t his poor handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but an ill-timed attempt to consolidate his power in the midst of it. #SayonaraAbe (in Japanese) was trending on Twitter months ago.

The end of the Abe era began with a single tweet that started his downward spiral in May. There is some irony in a prime minister who invested so much energy controlling Japan’s mainstream media being taken down by social media.

On the evening of May 9,  there was a tweet by a 35-year-old female office worker that sparked an inferno of public dissent. The resulting tweetstorm was fueled by Japan’s usually apolitical celebrities and former prosecutors. Even LDP members expressed dissent.

The content of the tweet seems rather prosaic. “I protest the proposed changes in the Public Prosecutor Office Laws.” There were 8 million tweets with the hashtag “I protest the proposed revision of the Public Prosecutors Office Law,” by May 14. 

Here’s the backstory. 

Abe has slowly exerted his control over government agencies, public broadcaster NHK, and even the media. In 2014, he created a Cabinet Personnel Bureau that gave the cabinet control over the appointment of hundreds of top-level bureaucrats. Ambitious government workers paid attention, and have since worked hard not to offend him and gain favor. He has incentivized them to cover up scandals without being directly asked. He has wined and dined the press to curry favor, and bullied them relentlessly when displeased. Japan’s press-freedom ranking was No. 22 when he took office; it now ranks 66th. 

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Abe and the ruling LDP lobbied for changes in the constitution that would give the cabinet absolute authority in an emergency. The attempt failed but even conservative magazine PRESIDENT called it in an opportunistic and despicable grab for power. When he tried to put the public prosecutor’s office under his thumb this summer, he was going too far.

Fatally Wounded 

The move against the prosecutors began on Jan. 31, when the Abe cabinet decided to delay the retirement of Japan’s second most powerful prosecutor, Hiromu Kurokawa. Kurokawa was reportedly very close to Abe and cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga. The press referred to him as “the guardian deity of the Abe cabinet.”  

The majority of prosecutors are required by law to retire at 63; Kurokawa was allowed to stay on. Abe claimed this was not a problem because his cabinet had “reinterpreted the law” to make it possible. The opposition, legal scholars, and the public vehemently disagreed.

The administration stood its ground but later proposed an amendment to the Public Prosecutor Laws. This was seen as a retroactive attempt to justify keeping Kurokawa in office, and clearing the way for replacing the top prosecutor in Japan. 

Former Prosecutor-General Kunihiro Matsuo and other ex-prosecutors wrote a protest letter to the Ministry of Justice stating explicitly that they believed the revisions were an attempt by the Abe administration to have prosecutors act in accordance with their will. The letter quoted John Locke: “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” 

Abe defended the bill in parliament, “There will be no instances of [prosecutorial] personnel affairs being determined arbitrarily,” he said. Only 16 percent of the public believed him.

Typically, Abe would ramrod the bill into law anyway, as he has done with other unpopular legislation. 

By May 18, his approval ratings had plummeted to 34 percent. The same day, the LDP agreed to temporarily table the legislation. 

That evening, more than 600 lawyers submitted legal briefs to the Tokyo prosecutors office accusing Abe of misusing public funds to hold cherry blossom viewing parties for his constituents, a scandal that became known as “Cherryblossom-gate.” 

Bad luck followed Abe’s bad decisions. The weekly magazine Bunshun reported that Kurokawa had routinely played mahjong with reporters, gambling on the games in clear contravention of Japanese law. Kurokawa was given an admonishment and allowed to resign. 

After nearly a decade in power, Abe has become haughty, declaring in parliament last year “I am the nation.” He has been winning for a long time, but no one’s luck lasts forever. The legislative attempt to subvert the prosecutors may have been, to paraphrase the title of an epic war film, a bill too far. It was later abandoned entirely. 

Already on Trial? 

The current investigation of “Cherryblossom-gate” is not the only problem facing Abe. 

He is being dragged into the high-profile trial of a close friend and supporter. This June, Katsuyuki Kawai, 57, a House of Representative member and his wife, Anri Kawai, 46, a member of the House of Councilors, were indicted on suspicion of handing out millions of yen in cash to politicians and supporters in Hiroshima Prefecture. This was allegedly in return for their efforts to secure votes in the Upper House elections held in July 2019. Abe appointed Katsuyuki minister of justice in September 2019; Katsuyuki resigned on Oct. 31. 

Their trial began this week.

The LDP headquarters provided nearly $1.5 million (150 million yen) or more in campaign funds to Anri Kawai, and some of that money may have been used in bribing local politicians to help round up votes. If Abe himself, as president of the LDP, approved the whopping funding for Anri, he will move into the spotlight.

Former Special Prosecutor Nobuo Gohara told The Daily Beast, “It seems clear from the opening statements by the prosecutors in the case of Kawai, that they will show Prime Minister Abe’s involvement in this case. For a former minister of justice, hand-picked by Abe to be involved in bribing other politicians—outrageous. Even if Abe can avoid criminal responsibility, he has a moral responsibility in the matter.”

Gohara sees Abe’s inability to stomach his position as part of the stress of not knowing when or if he will be implicated in the current trial. 

There is a third fire burning under Abe’s feet, one known as the Moritomo-gakuen case. In 2017, it became clear that government land valued at nearly $8 million had been sold to a right-wing school operator for $1 million, reportedly at the urging of the prime minister and his wife, Akie. The school was going to be named Abe Elementary. When the scandal came to light, bureaucrats in the ministry of finance altered and destroyed documents to cover up Abe’s involvement. One government official, Toshio Akagi, refused to play along and killed himself in protest in March 2018. He left behind incriminating documents that his widow revealed this year. Over 70 percent of the Japanese public now wants a reopening of the investigation into the Morikake case. 

He didn’t learn

Abe virtually vanished for a month this summer, avoiding all press conferences and parliamentary discussions. He can now avoid discussing the scandals surrounding him very easily. He has seemingly timed his publicized visits to the hospital this week in a way to make sure that questions about his involvement in corruption cases were not asked. By visiting Keio Hospital on Aug. 24, the day before the Kawai trial, attention was shifted from his role in the case, to whether or not he was going to be able to continue as prime minister. 

Abe’s great escape is not as dramatic as the flight of former Nissan Chairman Carlos Ghosn, but it’s a valiant effort. 

Abe was Japan’s longest reigning prime minister in its constitutional history, but never has so little been accomplished in such a long period of time. If he leaves any legacy at all, it is a number of bills passed into law that were so unpopular they now lie like landmines and may blow up Japan’s brittle democracy someday. Those laws include: a draconian conspiracy law that seems right out of the sci-fi film Minority Report; a repressive and Orwellian state secrets law that will muffle the press and whistleblowers; and the Peace Preservation Act, which allows ostensibly pacifist Japan to wage war.

This was his second term in office after a disastrous stint from 2006 to 2007. He was able to resurface due to the support of the right-wing Shinto cult Nippon Kaigi, which will continue to yield great power in parliament long after Abe. 

They say those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it. Perhaps the root of Abe’s folly is that he is a well-known historical revisionist, the grandson of a war criminal, who has never been able to admit to the atrocities committed by Japan in World War II; many of his political appointees and allies admired Hitler. He’s been so busy trying to deny the past that it seems Abe can’t even learn from his own history. His life is a re-run.

He leaves office much the same way he did when he stepped down in 2007: unable to handle the job while mired in scandals involving his cronies; unpopular, considered incompetent, and irrelevant. 

He will not be missed. 

Monday in Washington June 25, 2018

THE NEW DYNAMICS OF GLOBAL ENERGY: A CONVERSATION WITH IEA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR FATIH BIROL. 6/25, 2:00-3:30pm. Sponsor: Brookings. Speaker: Fatih Birol, Executive Director, International Energy Agency. Moderator: David G. Victor, Co-Chair, Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative.

THE CLASH OF GENERATIONS? INTERGENERATIONAL CHANGE AND AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY VIEWS. 6/25, 11:00am-12:30pm. Sponsor: CATO. Speakers: Dina Smeltz, Senior Fellow, Chicago Council on Global Affairs; Will Ruger, Vice President of Research and Policy, Charles Koch Institute; Trevor Thrall, Senior Fellow, Cato Institute and Associate Professor, Scholar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University.

JAPAN’S ENERGY CONUNDRUM. 6/25, Noon-2:00pm. Sponsor: Sasakawa. Speakers: Admiral Dennis Blair, Chairman and Distinguished Senior Fellow, Sasakawa; Tom Cutler, Energy Consultant; Jane Nakano, Senior Fellow, Energy and Security Program, CSIS; Dr. Michael Smitka, Professor of Economics, Washington and Lee University; Nobuo Tanaka, Chairman, Sasakawa; Dr. Phyllis Genther Yoshida, Senior Fellow for Energy and Technology, Sasakawa; Moderator: Dr. Kent Calder, Director of Asia Programs, Director of Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, SAIS, Johns Hopkins.

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A DISCUSSION ON THE NEXT STEPS IN THE ROHINGYA CRISIS. 6/25, Noon-1:30pm. Sponsor: Atlantic Council. Speakers: Ambassador Farooq Sobhan, President and CEO, Bangladesh Enterprise Institute. Moderator: Dr. Bharath Gopalaswamy, Director, South Asia Center Atlantic Council.

ACROSS THE TAIWAN STRAIT: FROM COOPERATION TO CONFRONTATION?– REFLECTING ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF ALAN D. ROMBERG. 6/25, Noon-1:30pm. Sponsor: Stimson Center. Speakers; Thomas Christensen, Professor, Princeton University; former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2006-2008); Steve Goldstein, Associate, Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies and Director of the Taiwan Workshop, Harvard University; Yuki Tatsumi, Co-Director, East Asia Program (moderator).

MYSTERY OF MOTHER RUSSIA. 6/25, 4:00-5:30am. Sponsor: International Center for Terrorism Studies at Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, Inter-University Center for Legal Studies at International Law Institute, Center for National Security Law at University of Virginia School of Law. Speakers: Author Marvin Kalb, The Year I Was Peter the Great, Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus, Harvard Kennedy School, Senior advisor, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, Nonresident fellow, Brookings; Don Wallace Jr., Chairman, International Law Institute; Moderator: Yonah Alexander, Director, Inter-University Center for Terrorism Studies, Senior Fellow, Potomac Institute for Policy Studies.

Monday in Washington, September 18, 2017

TAIWAN'S ENVIRONMENTAL LEADERSHIP. 9/18, 8:30-10:00am. Sponsor: China Studies, CSIS. Speakers: Lee, Ying-yuan, Minister of Environmental Protection, Taiwan; Jane Nishida, Acting Assistant Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; David Ribeiro, Senior Researcher, American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy; Moderator: Scott Kennedy, Deputy Director, China Studies, CSIS. 

USTR LIGHTHIZER ON U.S. TRADE POLICY PRIORITIES. 9/18, 11:00-11:45am. Sponsor: CSIS. Speaker: Robert Lighthizer, USTR. Location: CSIS, 1616 Rhode Island Ave., NW. Contact:

MOVING FORWARD WITH ABENOMICS. 9/18, 1:30-2:30pm. Sponsor: Hudson. Speaker: Toshimitsu Motegi, Minister, State for Economic and Fiscal Policy, Japan. Moderator: Kenneth R. Weinstein, President and CEO, Hudson.

COMPETITION POLICY FROM A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE: A CONSERSATION WITH EU COMMISSIONER FOR COMPETITION MARGRETHE VESTAGER. 9/18, 1:30- 2:30pm. Sponsor: AEI. Speaker: Margrethe Vestager, European Commission; Moderator: Jeffrey Eisenach, Visiting Scholar, AEI, Director, NERA Economic Consulting.

POPULISM AND THE ECONOMICS OF GLOBALIZATION. 9/18, 2:00pm. Sponsor: Inter-American Development Bank (IADB). Speaker: Dani Rodrik, Professor, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

WEIGHING BAD OPTIONS: REFLECTIONS ON PAST DIPLOMACY WITH NORTH KOREA AND ALLIANCE OPTIONS TODAY. 9/18, 2:00-3:30pm. Sponsors: U.S.-Japan Research Institute (USJI); Carnegie. Speakers: Christopher Hill, Ambassador, Denver University; Mitoji Yabunaka, Professor, Ritsumeikan University; Keiji Nakatsuji, Operating Advisor, USJI; Doug H. Paal, Vice President, Carnegie; Moderator: James Schoff, Senior Fellow, Asia Program, Carnegie.

THE IMPACT OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION ON US-TAIWAN RELATIONS. 9/18, 2:00-3:30pm. Sponsor: Stimson Center. Speakers: Dr. Hung-jen Wang, Assistant Professor of Political Science at National Cheng Kung University.

AMID TRANSITION AND CONFLICT, 70 YEARS OF U.S.-BURMA TIES. 9/18, 3:00-4:30pm. Sponsor: U.S. Institute of Peace (USIP). Speakers: U Aung, Ambassador of Burma to the United States; W. Patrick Murphy, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Southeast Asia, Department of State.

CHINA’S ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC AMBITIONS. 9/18, 4:00-5:00pm. Sponsors: Kissinger Institute at Wilson Center, Polar Initiative. Speaker: Anne Marie Brady, Fellow, Kissinger Institute. Discussant: Michael Sfraga, Director, Polar Initiative. Moderator: Robert Daly, Director, Kissinger Institute.

THE GLOBALIZATION OF VENALITY: KLEPTOCRACY'S CORROSIVE IMPACT ON DEMOCRACY. 9/18, 4:00-5:30pm. Sponsor: National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Speakers: Oliver Bullough, Author, Let Our Fame Be Great and Last Man in Russia; Brett Carter, Professor, University of Southern California; Daniel Fried, Distinguished Fellow, Future Europe Initiative and Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, Atlantic Council; Cynthia Gabriel, Founder, Centre to Combat Corruption and Cronyism; Moderator: Christopher Walker, Vice President, Studies and Analysis, NED. 

Can Abe revise Japan’s peace constitution? Unlikely

And it might not be on the agenda

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BY Ben Ascione is a PhD candidate at the Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University. He is Japan and Korea editor at East Asia Forum and a research associate of the Japan Center for International Exchange in Tokyo and APP member

First appeared in the East Asia Forum, 24 July 2016

Since the 10 July upper house election in Japan there has been widespread speculation that the government will move to formally revise the country’s constitution including the Article 9 ‘peace clause’. This now appears possible since the Abe-led Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), along with its junior coalition partner Komeito and sympathetic micro-sized right-leaning opposition parties, controls the two-thirds majorities in both houses needed to take constitutional amendments to a referendum.

Never in the years since Japan’s postwar constitution was enacted in 1947 has it been formally amended. Even though the government has the requisite number of seats, forging an agreement with Komeito and persuading the broader voting public that constitutional revision is desirable will be no easy task.

While voters want the government to focus on revitalising the economy, there is absolutely no question that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe carries ambitions to revise Article 9. He was vocal about this during his first stint as prime minister in 2006–07. His book Towards a Beautiful Country characterises Japanese security policy as irresponsible pacifism. Research by Asia Policy Point shows that Abe and about half his cabinet members are affiliated with the Diet Members’ League to Promote Research on the Constitution, Sousei Nippon (Japan Rebirth) and Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), all of which give high priority to rescinding Article 9. Abe’s relationship with his grandfather — Nobusuke Kishi, a former prime minister, war criminal suspect and munitions minister under the wartime cabinet of Hideki Tojo — is also said to drive his convictions.

Komeito (meaning clean governance party) holds the balance of power and the LDP will have to reach an agreement with it to move forward on any constitutional amendment. Despite Komeito’s status as the junior partner, the LDP cannot afford to lose it. LDP leverage over Komeito is limited by an electoral cooperation arrangement, which sees Komeito voters supply between 5 and 20 per cent of the votes LDP candidates receives in single-seat districts in both houses in exchange for influence as a ruling party. Many LDP politicians’ seats would be under serious threat if this deal came unstuck.

Komeito was a political offshoot of the Nichiren Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai (literally value creation study association). Its founders, Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda, were arrested by the wartime military government for speaking out against the abuse of the educational process for militarist purposes. Makiguchi died in jail a martyr. This history imbues Komeito with pacifist values.

Soka Gakkai members, with their distinctive combination of Buddhism, modern humanism and electioneering savvy, have been willing to extend support to Komeito and qualify their absolute pacifist stance, as Levi McLaughlin has explained. Komeito supported the LDP in passing the 1992 Peacekeeping Operations Law after negotiating principles which limit the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ (SDF) activities on UN missions to ceasefire areas rather than active conflict zones and curtail SDF use of weapons to the minimum necessary to protect the lives of SDF personnel. Komeito also supported the LDP in order to permit the dispatch of the SDF to the Indian Ocean to refuel US ships on route to Afghanistan under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law and to Iraq in 2003 to carry out humanitarian operations such as building schools and water purification.

Most recently Komeito supported the Abe cabinet’s reinterpretation of Article 9 to permit limited forms of collective self-defence in July 2014 and the security-related bills last year that enabled this cabinet decision. Komeito’s rhetoric stalled the LDP and squeezed it for concessions by emphasising the need for long and wide debates rooted in concrete proposals and the need to bring the people along with these changes.

This allowed it to shift the focus of the conditions under which collective self-defence — a concept which is primarily focused on threats against targets other than one’s own country — so it could only be exercised in response to attacks that threaten the survival of Japan and the Japanese people’s constitutional right to ‘life, liberty and pursuit of happiness’. This focus on attacks threatening Japan contrasts sharply with the report in May 2014 by Abe’s hand-picked advisory group, which recommended a less restrained conception of the exercise of collective self-defence, before Komeito influence came to bear.

Komeito justified its stance to its support base by emphasising that it is a serious party and coalition partner willing to make compromises to exercise power and to continue to act as a brake on the LDP’s policy excesses. It maintained that the compromises made were better than the alternative of working from opposition. In a nutshell, Komeito brands itself as ‘the opposition within the government’.

Yet all of Komeito’s support for LDP security policies thus far has been justified within the framework of Article 9. A common rebuttal of critics who accuse Komeito of betraying its pacifist principles is that it has simply updated its pacifism to contemporary circumstances and in practical ways.

If Article 9 were to be amended, one option Komeito could possibly get behind would be to revise the second paragraph, which forbids the maintenance of ‘land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential’ in order to affirm explicitly the constitutionality of the SDF, while maintaining the first paragraph under which the Japanese people renounce ‘the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes’.

But a revision that seriously alters the spirit of Article 9 or outright rescinds it would surely be a no-go for Komeito that would seriously undermine its loyal support base.

Any LDP-Komeito agreement on constitutional revision will also need the support of the voting public to pass a national referendum, something that the LDP deliberately avoided talking about during the campaign period. Given strong public opposition, the government may focus on Abenomics economic policy for now and return to constitutional issues later in Abe’s remaining two years.

What are Shinzo Abe’s real three arrows?

looking old and worn and so 19th C

They are constitutional revision, security autonomy and Emperor worship. 

BY JEFF KINGSTON, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan.

SPECIAL TO THE JAPAN TIMES, JUL 2, 2016

In his campaign for the upcoming Upper House elections, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pussyfooting around his plans to revise the Constitution. He is keeping his cards close to his chest because polls have shown that voters oppose constitutional change. Instead, Abe is calling on voters to keep the faith with Abenomics, despite widespread consensus that it has been a dismal flop and has failed to revive the Japanese economy or improve household welfare.

The cat is well and truly out of the bag regarding this failure — on June 27, NHK announced that only 6 percent of voters polled think Abenomics is working well while only 26 percent favor constitutional revisions, and only 11 percent think it a priority. Even two-thirds of newbie voters aged 18-19 know Abenomics is a no-hoper according to a Kyodo poll taken in June. It gets worse: 70 percent of women voters in this cohort don’t expect much from Abenomics, taking the shine off his “womenomics” grandstanding. The good news for Abe is that these young voters are only marginally more interested in the elections than other voters, with just 56 percent expressing an intention to vote. So much for an enthusiastic response from the newly enfranchised!

Apparently Abe’s campaign strategy is based on trying to keep the voter-participation rate low, and on that score he has a good track record, driving it down to just over 50 percent in the last election in 2014. The reason he doesn’t want to upset the applecart of apathy is that low turnout gives the Liberal Democratic Party an advantage: His core constituencies turn out to vote and will do so again in large numbers now that they smell blood, in the form of the prospects of a two-thirds majority in both houses and the possibility of constitutional revision. The fact that almost half of all eligible voters don’t vote means that Abe’s LDP has been winning elections with less than 25 percent of the potential vote.

So this explains why Abe is focusing on his discredited Abenomics program, the “three arrows” of radical monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms. Who cares that representatives of leading industrial nations trashed it when they visited for the G-7 summit in May? They pointed out that the program really involves only one arrow: massive monetary easing. These leaders and virtually every sentient observer know that Abenomics is sputtering and is focused on monetary policy alone. A June Kyodo poll of all Upper House candidates running in the July 10 elections, including LDP candidates, reveals that 64.7 percent believe that Abenomics has not delivered, having failed to improve the economy. Business leaders are even more downbeat. If the LDP’s own candidates andmost voters are skeptical about Abenomics, why run a campaign on it?

The reason is that Abe needs to deflect attention away from the LDP’s plans to revise the Constitution. But those plans are hidden in plain sight and deserve more attention because the more the public knows about them, the more they might realize that thumbing their collective noses at the elections will hand Abe a historic opportunity to achieve his long-standing goal of overturning the postwar order. Voter disinterest is precisely what Abe is praying for so that he can rid the Constitution of pesky Western values such as civil liberties. He seeks to empower the state vis-a-vis citizens and eliminate the war-renouncing Article 9 that he and his supporters see as emasculating Japan, keeping the nation subordinate to the U.S.

Those who want to revise Article 9 are not all ultra-nationalist security hawks eager to make Japan the Great Britain of Asia. Many other pro-revision advocates point out the yawning gap between the apparent prohibitions on maintaining armed forces and the existence of Japan’s well-equipped armed forces — the country now has a larger navy than the U.K. Some argue that this breach discredits the Constitution and that Abe’s reinterpretation, which would allow for Japan to engage in collective self-defense, further subverts it. So, some argue, if Article 9 is essentially already being ignored and the threat of conflict in Asia has become more real, why do a majority of Japanese oppose revision?

Japanese pacifism draws on the trauma of World War II and the deep scars it left on the nation — memories that have been passed down through families, displayed at museums, taught at schools, shown in documentaries and commemorated at annual rites such as those in Okinawa, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Citizens worry that the “Abe Doctrine” will endanger the country, and that beefing up the alliance with the U.S. may lead Japan into a war at Washington’s behest, rather than safeguarding the country’s national security.

Japan is basically a one-party system, and there is little reason to believe that the Diet would act as resolutely as the British Parliament did a few years back in scuttling Prime Minister David Cameron’s plan to provide military support to the U.S. in Syria. Under Abe, the premiership has only grown in power, and his national security council and new secrecy and security legislation have strengthened his hand in a system where checks and balances are already weak. Japanese citizens are wary of entrusting Abe or any leader with too much discretionary power, but it is a fait accompli that they can do little about in elections, given the imbalance of power between the LDP and other parties.

Hence, Article 9 is seen by many to have residual symbolic power, manifesting pacifist sentiments as a collective norm. Across Japan, this idealism is also represented by the multitudes of demonstrators who gathered outside the Diet last summer to denounce Abe’s security legislation. Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs) organized popular protests against the secrecy and security legislation and has been involved in coordinating opposition parties for the Upper House elections. They decry the intensifying crisis in constitutional government and the LDP’s bait-and-switch campaign strategy aimed at bamboozling voters.

If the LDP wins big, Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), the nation’s largest and most influential right-wing organization, will lobby Abe’s Cabinet to deliver on their shared vision. The consonance of interest between Abe and Japan Conference is clear in that a majority of his Cabinet ministers are members. It has clout in the Diet where 39 percent of all legislators — 281 in total — are members. This will enable it to press ahead with their real goals: constitutional revision, security autonomy and Emperor worship. These are the three arrows that Abe really cares about.

Abenomics and the Slowdown of Japan's Economy

Going into the July 10 Upper House elections, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has emphasized the success of his economic plan called "Abenomics." It consists of what he called “three arrows”: 1) bold monetary relaxation; 2) flexible application of fiscal stimulus; and 3) a growth strategy to spark private investment.  It is a clever public relations meme.

Launching the Upper House elections campaign on June 22, 2016, Abe spoke to a crowd in Kumamoto, a southern city struck by earthquakes and landslides in April.  He said, "This is an election to decide whether we will forge ahead strongly with economic policies, make Japan grow, the regions proper and everyone feel the benefits -- or return to a dark and stagnant era...Japan's economic is making steady progress and producing results.”  The Prime Minister cited Japan’s increasing tax revenue and tight labour market as evidence.

Public opinion, the media and major world economic institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, and OECD all question Abe's positive cast on Abenomics. According to the two recent polls conducted by the Kyodo News, over 60 percent of the Japanese public and the youth have lost confidence in the government's economic reform. In a nationwide telephone survey conducted on June 12th and 13th, “62.2 percent expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the ‘Abenomics’ policy mix, while 28.0 percent said the measures would improve the economy.” In an Internet survey result published on June 19th by the Kyodo News of 1,535 respondents from age 18-19, “62.5 percent expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the ‘Abenomics’ policy mix,” while 37.5 percent expected the measures to help improve the economy.

In May and June, the IMF, OECD, and the World Bank published reports examining the three arrows of Abenomics. They all forecast slower economic growth. The World Bank projected GDP growth at 0.7 percent in 2016 and 0.4 percent in 2017.” The IMF said that Japan would be the world's only shrinking advanced economy, projecting GDP growth of "0.5 percent in 2016 and –0.1 percent in 2017.” They note that consumption in Japan fell in “fiscal 2015, logging its second straight annual fall for the first time since comparable data began in fiscal 1994.” Price-adjusted real wages dropped for the fourth consecutive year in 2015. The average proportion of consumption spending in disposable income fell to 72.8 percent in January-March this year.

The World Bank assesses two arrows in Abenomics: monetary easing and fiscal stimulus in Global Economic Prospects: Divergences and Risks (174 pgs, June 7, 2016). It notes that negative interest rates, in contrast, “induced low inflation expectations and currency appreciation, raising concerns about the effectiveness of monetary policy.” On the fiscal side, “a supplementary budget with additional stimulus measures is expected to provide some support in 2016…but the rise of consumption tax to 10 percent, a 2 percent increase will balance out some of the growth effects.”

The IMF also reaches the conclusion that increasing the consumption tax in 2017 will affect growth in Japan, in World Economic Outlook, Too Slow for Too Long (230 pgs, April 12,2016). Commenting on the “third Arrow” of structural reform, the IMF suggests “the Japanese government to implement strategies to raise productivity, which are vital for tackling medium-term risks and raising potential output.” Income policies are needed to “bolster wage-price dynamics and increase monetary policy effectiveness.” Structural reforms should focus on “boosting the supply of labour (including of women), reforming labour markets to remove duality, further deregulating product and services markets, and supporting investment through corporate governance reform.”

Besides giving similar remarks on Abenomics, the OECD also doubts the positive results that mentioned by Abe. In the OECD Economic Outlook (316 pgs, June 1, 2016). The contraction of the labour market has only “a limited impact on nominal wage growth.” At the same time, low inflation expectations signal “inefficiency of the fiscal stimulus.”

In a June 22 editorial, "Abenomics and the Upper House election," the Japan Times questioned the success of Abenomics. The recovery that marked the first year of his new administration was short-lived. The nation’s gross domestic product, “which grew 2 percent in real terms in fiscal 2013, shrank 0.9 percent in fiscal 2014 and grew a sluggish 0.8 percent in fiscal 2015.” The underlying weakness in consumer spending — “particularly since the April 2014 consumption tax hike to 8 percent — dragged down growth, as the cost of living mostly rose faster than wage hikes” — which Abe boasts have been the sharpest since the turn of the century. And the reversal of the yen’s downtrend in recent months — “with the currency hitting 103-to-the-dollar range last week for the first time since August 2014 — threatens to pare the earnings of export-led major firms that had been inflated by the weak currency.” But the writer concludes:

Neither trumpeting Abenomics as if it’s a cure-all or denouncing it as a failure will be constructive. The Upper House election should let voters hand down their judgment.

By Research Intern Ms. Nora Qiu

The failing of Abenomics

Abenomics’ failure and the curse of ‘Japanization’

By Jeff Kingston, director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan and APP member

THE JAPAN TIMES, JUNE 11, 2016

The word “Japanization” refers to Japan’s prolonged stagnation — a malady that was on everyone’s mind at the recent G-7 summit. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made the right call in postponing the planned tax hike, but the feeble opposition can be forgiven for pouncing on his abrupt volte-face, which is a tacit admission that Abenomics is a colossal failure in terms of overcoming Japanization. There really is no way to sugarcoat the bad news about the negligible impact of Abe’s eponymous “three arrows” of monetary easing, fiscal spending and will-o’-the wisp structural reforms.

This year’s anemic first-quarter economic results showed that Japan only narrowly averted a technical recession. This might explain Abe’s dubious excuse for why recovery has been chimerical, i.e., “The world economy ate my homework,” as he tries to duck responsibility for not delivering the revival he promised in 2012.

Only Abe-philes insist that the jury is still out on Abenomics. A Kyodo poll in May found that two-thirds of the public is disappointed in the program’s paltry results. It’s a better response than that reported by NHK in its series of polls over the past year that showed 75-80 percent have not benefited from Abenomics. The economy remains moribund, wages and household income are stagnant, deflationary pressures remain strong and structural reforms are thin on the ground. Despite the Bank of Japan’s best efforts to stoke inflation, that too remains unrealized.

Instead of being a virtuous circle of rising corporate profits, wages and domestic consumption, Abenomics is sputtering. Abe’s advisers used to explain that the main reason for low consumption was the deflationary expectations of consumers, causing them to postpone spending, but now it’s clear that the slack demand is not only a psychological problem.

People’s consumption has not risen because household income is stagnant and perceptions of risk have increased. Wages have not risen and job growth is concentrated in nonregular jobs where pay on average is 40 percent lower than it is for full-time jobs.

The rapid growth of the “precariat” (precarious proletariat) working nonregular jobs — now about 40 percent of the entire workforce — is also contributing to deflation. The precariat doesn’t spend much because it doesn’t earn much. Just over 10 million of them are defined as the working poor, who earn less than ¥2 million a year. This structural shift in the labor paradigm is accentuating inequalities and subsidizing the core workforce of full-timers who enjoy job security, seniority wages and bonuses.

Abenomics is known as “welfare for the wealthy” because it boosts the fortunes of the rich and neglects the vulnerable. Japan suffers from growing welfare rolls and increasing single-parent poverty, with about 15 percent of children raised in relative poverty. So there are good reasons to hope Abe hasn’t hornswoggled the public, but sadly that seems to be the case.

Recently I caught up with William Pesek, executive editor of Barron’s Asia and author of Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan’s Lost Decades (2015). The book is a timely and astute analysis of why other nations are at risk of stagnating, and what policies they need to adopt to avoid Japanization.

Pesek realized from the outset that Abenomics is a hustle, more about politics than economic revival. He stands out from the many cheerleaders who took all of Abe’s pronouncements about the economy at face value while averting their eyes from all the missed targets and lackluster results.

“I still believe strongly that Japanization is a global risk,” Pesek warns, “and that countries as economically disparate as the U.S., China and India are hurtling down their own lost-decade-like paths.

“Abe’s catchy marketing campaign wowed a media establishment accustomed to predictable methods of reform and half-hearted efforts to achieve them,” says Pesek. “Abe brought the circus to town.”

Problematically, however, “There’s only one arrow to Abenomics: monetary easing. Raising sales taxes sent arrow two into the ground long ago. And if you really believe arrow three exists, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.”

Pesek’s pessimism is now widely shared. A Reuters poll conducted in May found that 70 percent of firms polled see no easing of deflation, up from 48 percent in January, and 79 percent expect further deflationary pressure this year and next.

Pesek thinks the competitive devaluation of the yen has been counterproductive. It will set Japan back in the long run, he says, “because executives have fewer incentives to innovate, restructure and raise their games.”

And “womenomics”? “To those who say ‘Abe has championed female empowerment,’ I say ‘Nikkei 225.’ Not one of these companies is run by a Japanese woman.” Pesek adds, “Let’s really empower women with quotas for parliamentary seats and corporate boards, and free and plentiful child care options.”

In Pesek’s view, Abe is “a cautionary tale of a leader who has majorities in both houses of parliament, a mandate from a public hungry for change, a specific revival plan with broad support and high-approval ratings, and did nothing with it to raise living standards or Japan’s global clout.”

What should Japan do? Forget the Trans-Pacific Partnership, says Pesek, which is really a “corporate land grab with little hope of raising wages or creating jobs.” Instead, he suggests the implementation of a tax holiday for startup companies that “includes a pass from the labyrinthine red-tape matrix. Forget talk of special-enterprise zones and make the entire economy one.” He believes the government should also “pony up several hundred million dollars to jump-start the venture-capital boom that passed Japan by.” He also sees great potential in renewable energy, suggesting more aggressive tax and regulatory incentives.

“This nation is a proud pioneer in energy innovation and efficiency, and opportunities abound as China, India and Indonesia literally choke on rapid growth. There’s something truly poetic about the only nation devastated by nuclear weapons finding alternatives not just for the reactors Japanese came to fear after 3/11 and Fukushima, but fossil fuels in general.”

Alas, Abe has prioritized “transforming national security, revving up nuclear reactors and silencing the media. Goosing the Nikkei stock average has been to distract attention from his unpopular right-wing agenda.”

Pesek believes Abenomics is “nothing but a sugar high for investors and trading houses,” and one that “failed to boost productivity and competitiveness.

“If Abe spent as much time orchestrating his economic upgrades as Obama’s itinerary, Japan might not be hurtling toward another recession,” Pesek laments. “His mandate is Japan’s economy, not stage-managing the past.”