Abe Eyes His Final Term as Japan’s Prime Minister

Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will select its next leader on September 20.  Although Shigeru Ishiba, the former LDP secretary-general and defense minister, is running against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Abe is expected to enjoy a landslide victory and start his third and final term as LDP president and prime minister. If Abe wants to secure his legacy before his term ends in 2021, the 36 months following the LDP presidential election will be a critical time.

Abe has already signaled how he may want to use his remaining political capital (at least some of it) as a prime minister during his last years: constitutional revision. In a press conference on July 20, Abe reaffirmed his willingness to “accelerate” the drafting of the constitutional revision proposal and introduce it in the Diet for debate at the earliest possible time. Later, in a public event in his home prefecture of Yamaguchi on August 12, Abe indicated that he was planning on submitting the revised constitution draft, which would include a revision to its Article 9 to grant constitutionality to the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), in the Diet session this fall. This is no surprise. Abe has consistently demonstrated his desire for constitutional revision since he became Japan’s  prime minister for the first time in 2006. If he were successful in this endeavor, it would be the biggest achievement not only for Abe himself, but in all of postwar Japanese politics.   

However, Abe may not have the capacity to realize this long-held dream. First and foremost, the public is not behind him. Even though his cabinet’s approval rating has recovered somewhat from the spring, the latest poll released by Nippon Hoso Kyokai (NHK), Japan’s public broadcaster, shows that his cabinet’s approval and disapproval ratings are tied at 41 percent. The same poll also shows that, when asked about issues that the public wants to see prioritized in debates before the upcoming LDP presidential election, 27 percent identified economic and financial issues, with an additional 20 percent pointing to the vitalization of localities. Between these two policy issues, 47 percent of the respondents consider domestic economic issues as their priority. Meanwhile, a mere 6 percent identified constitutional revision as their priority. This is a clear indication that should Abe try to push constitutional revision immediately after his re-election as LDP president, the public would see him as not interested in the issues that they care about. With the Upper House election approaching in 2019, it may not be to Abe and the LDP’s advantage to approach another election season while being viewed as a ruling party with a major disconnect from the public and the issues they care about.

Furthermore, a number of policy challenges await Abe as he begins his last three years in power. In fact, foreign policy challenges alone could fill his plate. For instance, Abe needs to figure out how Japan can prevent being isolated in multinational efforts for the denuclearization of North Korea. With Tokyo’s bilateral relationship with Seoul bumpy since the inauguration of the Moon administration and Japan-China relations still on the recovery path, Tokyo’s effort to stay engaged diplomatically has been extremely difficult. Added to that, Japan increasingly questions whether it can rely on the United States – the current administration, in particular – to take due consideration of Japan’s concerns vis-à-vis North Korea. With that in mind, Abe needs to find a path for Japan to engage with North Korea, hopefully without modifying Tokyo’s current hardline stance toward Pyongyang.

Russia is a challenge as well. Despite Abe’s numerous attempts to extend an olive branch toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, including inviting him to Abe’s hometown and agreeing to various joint economic activities with Russia in the Northern Territories, Abe has not been successful in making notable progress with Russia on the sovereignty dispute over the four islands of the Territories, known in Russia as the South Kurils. In fact, Russia has not only steadily solidified its effective administration of the islands, but also continued to take provocative measures such as conducting military exercises there. As recently as June this year, the Russian ambassador to Japan even insisted in a speech that Japan should “respect the Russian public sentiment on this issue,” implying that Japan should soften its demands that Russia return all four islands to Japanese sovereignty. Abe needs to figure out ways to break the current stalemate.

Finally, Japan’s relationship with the United States has been far from stable. Although bilateral defense relations have been steady, trade issues have entered a tense period, particularly after the Trump administration unilaterally announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and began to push Japan to open negotiations for a bilateral free trade agreement. Despite the time and energy Abe has invested in developing a close personal relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, Abe’s supposedly close relationship with Trump did not save Japan from being hit with heavy tariffs on steel and aluminum. The unpredictability of the Trump administration will continue to pressure Abe to carefully navigate bilateral issues, particularly on trade.     

The above issues are only a few examples of the foreign policy challenges that Abe will have during his last 36 months as Japan’s prime minister. Domestically, the three-pronged approach of Abenomics for the revitalization of the Japanese economy has not brought Japan out of deflation, suppressing Japan’s real GDP growth. Despite Abe’s pledge in 2016 that his government would turn the primary balance of the government fiscal balance to black by 2020, the government has failed to achieve this goal – in fact, the balance has gotten worse. This has raised questions about the real effectiveness of Abe’s economic revitalization policies, which are largely dependent on economic growth. Planned improvements in the government fiscal situation, likewise, are dependent on an expected increase in tax revenue. Both of these factors are closely linked to the real income growth of individual consumers. 

Abe’s other major policy initiatives, launched with much fanfare – such as “the society in which women can shine” and “the society where the entire 100 million people can live to their fullest potential” – have not yet yielded results that would translate into a sense of improvement in people’s lives. While the 2020 Tokyo Olympics may bring a short-term boost to the economy, it is uncertain how much of that boost would be sustainable.

Furthermore, looking beyond the end of Abe’s term, Japan faces formidable long-term challenges as a country. According to data from the Statistics Bureau of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the Japanese population has been in decline since 2010. Its aging is also accelerating. The same government statistics predict that 30 percent of the Japanese population will be over 65 years old in seven years, and by 2085, nearly 40 percent of the population will be older than 65. In order to support such a rapidly aging population, Japan needs to convert its welfare and other social safety net structures from their current form, which is designed with the assumption of population growth, into an alternative model that is sustainable with a shrinking and aging population. All this with the government debt deepening. According to the Ministry of Finance, the government’s long-term debt ratio will reach 196 percent of GDP, with no feasible solution to improve the current fiscal situation.

As Abe enters his final years as prime minister, these are the short-term as well as long-term challenges that he needs to navigate through. As much as he may wish for constitutional revision to be his lasting legacy, the circumstances may not allow that to happen. Worse, depending on his policy choices, Abe could go down in history as the prime minister who, despite nine years of stable government, left the country worse off than when he began, by leaving all the difficult issues for his successors to settle.