Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: Five Years and Counting

When he returned to Japan’s premiership in December 2012, Shinzo Abe seemed a new man. He looked physically fit and was confident in articulating his goals for Japan. In the fall of 2012, Japan was on edge as tensions rose with China over the Senkaku Islands; Japan was also still grappling with its recovery from the devastation of the 2011 “triple disaster.” Three difficult years of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) governments had exacerbated anxiety within Japan about the country’s future. Prime Minister Abe’s new government was seen as a welcome return to stability and competence.

Initially, it was Abe’s economic agenda that won over most voters, but Japan’s security challenges were also worrisome. In 2012, a new and less predictable leader emerged in North Korea and a new president was elected in South Korea who put historical legacy issues at the forefront of her agenda. China sent government ships to the waters surrounding the Senkakus, openly challenging administrative control over the islands in the East China Sea.

A considerable amount of Abe’s energy was spent on sustaining a strong political foundation. Having been cast out of office once, Abe and his party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), were determined to build a political foundation that would ensure their tenure in office was uninterrupted by political turmoil. Indeed, Abe’s political fate was so thoroughly linked to the fate of the party, and vice versa, that no one within the LDP openly challenged the prime minister’s choice of priorities.

Shinzo Abe’s leadership has brought significant change to Japan. His program of economic revitalization, his sweeping security policy reforms, and his ability to sustain the political support necessary to focus on addressing Japan’s myriad policy challenges have distinguished Abe’s five years in office.

Abenomics First

Abe used his five years out of office after resigning as prime minister in 2007 to become well versed in Japan’s economic challenges, with the understanding that overcoming them required a sea change in Japanese attitudes toward their future. Abe put forward his economic revitalization plan in January 2013, and it included fiscal stimulus, aggressive monetary easing, and a longer-term plan of structural reforms that would enhance Japan’s competitiveness. Quickly dubbed “Abenomics,” this became the prime minister’s signature policy initiative.

Polling on the 2012 election suggested that the Japanese people agreed with Abe’s priorities. In a Yomiuri Shimbun poll taken after the election, 74 percent of respondents said they expected the LDP government to restore the economy, while 43 percent expected politics to stabilize.

Initially, investment in Japan soared as the stock market expanded. The Bank of Japan led the way with an unprecedented program of monetary easing. Structural reforms were many, and ranged from reforming the agricultural sector, to introducing a push for greater participation by women in the workforce, to revamping corporate governance and changing Japanese work culture.

Five years later, Japan is indeed back on a trajectory of sustained positive economic growth. In June 2017, the International Monetary Fund noted that the Japanese economy had performed better than expected, with upticks in both private consumption and investment. Unemployment was at record lows, and business and consumer confidence were growing. Yet there is more to be done to ensure these gains continue. Household wages have yet to rise significantly, and inflation remains low. Abe will need to continue to press for labor market reform, easing the gap between the full-time and part-time labor force and ensuring greater labor mobility.

A Full Menu of Security Reforms

Where Abe has made an even more significant impact is in the security policy realm. From early in his term in office, the prime minister targeted an array of policy hurdles that have plagued defense planners. Starting with the drafting of a new National Security Strategy in December 2013, the Abe cabinet has methodically set out to improve Japan’s ability to implement national defenses.

The list of reforms continued to include lifting restraints on military planning as well as on defining new government initiatives. The Abe cabinet drafted a new government secrecy law, removed restraints on defense technology transfers, drafted a new national space policy that allowed both civilian and military use of space, and invested greater resources in developing a cybersecurity capability. Successive Abe cabinets also raised defense spending, albeit in small doses, and ultimately tackled the steep challenge of reinterpreting the constitution.

Article 9 of Japan’s constitution had been interpreted by past governments to prohibit the right of collective self-defense, or the right of Japan’s Self-Defense Force (SDF) to use force alongside and on behalf of other countries. This interpretation, however, increasingly limited the SDF’s ability to perform their missions alongside U.S. forces, coalition forces, and in UN Peacekeeping Operations. As the SDF was assigned to missions with other militaries, this limitation got in the way of its ability to cooperate. A critical mission for Japan’s security, ballistic missile defense, also raised questions about whether this interpretation still suited Japan’s security needs.

Lifting restrictions on military policy was not without controversy, however. The Abe cabinet decision in 2014 to reinterpret the right of collective self-defense stimulated a broader protest movement within Japan. In 2015, as the government presented implementing legislation to the Diet, Japanese took to the streets in protest. A new student protest movement, SEALDs, was organized across university campuses. Young and old, protesters carried signs condemning “Abe’s War Bills,” and calling for the defense of Article 9.

Abe’s new security legislation was sure to pass the Diet, given the ruling coalition’s two-thirds majority. Even if the upper house rejected the bills, the lower house could override it, and the security laws would pass. Yet the debate within the Diet suffered as expert witnesses called by the LDP challenged the government’s claim that the right of collective self-defense was constitutional. Public opinion was also divided. While many Japanese worried about their defenses, the overwhelming majority thought that the Abe cabinet needed to take more time to explain the need for these new laws and how future governments would define when the SDF would use force alongside other militaries.

Party Unity and Policy Coalitions

As seen in the example of security reforms, ensuring the LDP’s legislative majority was a critical component for Abe’s success. The yearly change in prime ministers since Junichiro Koizumi left office in 2006 made it nearly impossible to craft and implement national reforms. While many wanted to blame this revolving door on the DPJ, the LDP – and indeed Abe himself – struggled to offer steady leadership as the party succumbed to infighting. The DPJ could do no better, quarreling incessantly among themselves. The DPJ suffered the added burden while in power of facing the deep policy experience of the LDP, then in opposition. Even with their electoral success, consecutive DPJ cabinets were eviscerated in policy debates in the Diet.

Forging unity within the LDP was not simple, however. Indeed, the rules for LDP presidential elections had been changed in 2000 because party members saw the factional disputes of the Diet members as undermining the party’s national appeal. Koizumi had been elected party head under these new rules in 2001. In the party leadership elections of September 2012, Abe and Shigeru Ishiba, a former minister of defense, ran neck and neck. Ishiba attracted the bulk of local party members and the highest number of votes, but neither candidate achieved the requisite majority of votes in the first round of voting, so a second round of voting ensued. This second round restricted voting to national Diet members, giving Abe the edge as some LDP leaders questioned Ishiba’s loyalty to the party. Regional LDP party members and national legislators still disagreed on the best choice for party leader.

Following this competitive leadership election, the LDP victory in the lower house election of 2012 brought everyone together to build a stable government. The first Abe cabinet reflected this unified effort. Ishiba accepted the post of LDP secretary general, signaling his willingness to support party unity under Abe’s leadership. Moreover, with Yoshihide Suga as his chief cabinet secretary, Abe had the perfect partner for consolidating political power within the party and across the government. The upper house election in 2013 produced yet another victory for the LDP and its coalition partner, the Komeito Party. A year later, with Japan’s opposition parties in disarray and his economic program in midstream, Abe decided to postpone a contentious hike in Japan’s consumption tax, and called a snap election to ensure popular support for this decision. Voter turnout was far lower than in 2012, but the LDP held onto its two-thirds majority in the lower house, ensuring a legislative supermajority. Thus, with considerable political momentum, Abe tackled his controversial security legislation in 2015. Komeito had reservations about reinterpreting Article 9 to include the right of collective self-defense, but entered into formal talks with the LDP to define the scope of this new expansion of SDF missions.

Outside of the ruling coalition, the Abe cabinet sought policy support from other parties for most of his major initiatives. By 2015, the legislative balance in Japan’s Diet had changed since Abe was last in power. There were allies to be had on economic and security policy that had not been in the mix in the mid-2000s. The DPJ had members who agreed on the need for stronger security measures and who supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), one of Abe’s first endorsements as prime minister. The smaller regionally based Ishin Party also shared the Abe cabinet’s goals of structural reforms for the economy, and in some measure too they were ready for a debate on constitutional revision.

Abe ran into his own political difficulties in 2017, however, shaking the foundations of support for his leadership and reducing public approval for his government. Two separate scandals erupted, both having to do with educational reforms. In the first, the media made a connection between Abe and a rightist kindergarten in Toyonaka (near Osaka), run by the rather dubious Kagoike couple. Abe’s wife had been the school’s honorary principal, and the owner claimed to have received a donation from her. The second scandal seemed to be directly tied to Abe. This involved a veterinary school run by one of Abe’s close friends, Kake Kotaro. A bureaucrat from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology confirmed the authenticity of leaked documents suggesting that preferential treatment for the Kake Gakuen came at the request of the prime minister’s office. As opposition party critics clamored for hearings in the Diet, Abe’s support rating dropped precipitously over the summer from 49 percent to 36 percent, according to polling by the Yomiuri Shimbun.

Tokyo metropolitan elections also suggested that the LDP was in trouble. After the LDP had failed to support Yuriko Koike in the gubernatorial election of 2016, she won a resounding victory as an independent. Once in office, Governor Koike began to build her own political party, the Tomin First party. In the difficult summer of 2017, Koike’s new party swept the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly elections, dealing the LDP a historic setback in Japan’s capital city. This was yet another political blow to an Abe cabinet that was reeling from scandals, and the prime minister was forced to reshuffle his cabinet in an effort to restore public confidence. The resulting third Abe cabinet included a number of LDP leaders who had taken issue with Abe’s policies, including some who had contended for party leadership in the past.

Abe’s new cabinet reflected the breadth of opinion within the LDP, diluting the prime minister’s dominance of the party. But on September 25, Abe surprised many by announcing yet another snap election, asking the Japanese people to endorse his leadership on North Korea and on the improvement of social welfare for the Japanese people. The election campaign was dramatic – less because of Abe and more because of the split in the opposition Democratic Party (the party that succeeded the DPJ). Koike took the occasion to announce the formation of her new national party, the Party of Hope, which included many of the more conservative members of the former DPJ. With these defections, another DPJ leader, Edano Yukio, followed suit by announcing a new party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, representing the moderate liberals of the old DPJ. In the October 22 election, Koike’s new party was dealt a considerable blow, winning only 50 seats, but Edano’s party emerged as the second largest party in the Diet, with 55 seats. Abe, however, won the day with a resounding LDP-Komeito coalition victory of 313 seats, once more gaining a supermajority that many had thought was unsustainable.

What Lies Ahead

The prime minister’s ambitions to change Japan from within continue to surface even as he seeks to cope with a rapidly changing Asia. In the coming years, Abe will likely be focused on three goals.

First, Abe’s ambition to amend Japan’s constitution remains, although he has stepped back from putting a deadline on the process. As prime minister, Abe has made no secret of his long-standing goal of revision, a goal that is part shrugging off the past and part restoring it. He has repeatedly stated in the Diet that the document was written hastily by Americans with no expertise, and early in 2017, before his political troubles, he clarified that he wanted Article 9 to include a reference to the constitutionality of Japan’s SDF.  As a result of the 2017 lower house election, approximately 75 percent of legislators are now in favor of some sort of revision, but the devil is in the details. Abe may yet be able to claim that he presided over the revision of the 1947 document, but it is unclear what exactly that revision will look like.

Second, Abe will be challenged to sustain a close partnership with U.S. President Donald Trump. His early success in building a working relationship with the unpredictable president has served Japan well. The North Korean crisis has bolstered the opportunity for close alliance coordination, and Abe and Trump seem to agree that the best course of action is a strong set of sanctions to force Kim Jong-un back to the negotiating table. During Trump’s recent visit to Tokyo, he all but endorsed the Japanese government’s desire to upgrade their missile defenses and to introduce greater offensive capabilities in order to deter Pyongyang’s aggression. Yet the U.S.-Japan relationship will be tested by the Trump administration’s focus on reducing the U.S. trade deficit and the increasing emphasis on a more punitive approach to global trade. Abe was stunned by Trump’s decision to withdraw from the TPP, but now that NAFTA negotiations seem to be in trouble, Japanese businesses invested in the United States are increasingly wary of the coming economic tensions between Washington and Tokyo. Little appetite for a bilateral trade deal with the United States is evident in the Abe cabinet.

Finally, Abe looks ahead with great anticipation to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In his appeal to the International Olympic Committee, he drew on his own personal setbacks as well as on the trauma Japanese felt in the face of the Great East Japan Earthquake. Abe has framed Tokyo’s Olympics as an opportunity to demonstrate his country’s resilience, and to showcase the revitalized Japanese economy that he has created. Japan’s technological prowess will be on display, as will its ability to once again offer the world a glimpse of Japan’s potential, much as it did in 1964 when the Japanese revealed their tremendous recovery from the war and their economic promise. This framing of 2020 Olympics is Abe’s personal touch, and he has been unreserved in his enthusiasm for the games. It is a costly dream, however, as the initial $3 billion price tag is now rumored to have doubled or even tripled. Nonetheless, it is Abe’s Japanese dream, an optimistic sense of Japan’s potential for transformation that he carried to Rio in the guise of Super Mario.