Asia's Week: Decisive Political Moment in Japan? Jul 19th 2013, 14:06
Any portrait of an all-powerful Shinzo Abe may be a caricature. (Photo: DonkeyHotey)
This weekend, eyes will be trained on Tokyo for results of the upper-house election that is forecast to cement Japanese PM Shinzo Abe's governing majority. Only a tremor in the Nikkei stock market on Friday has suggested any doubt that Abe, with or without a minority-party coalition, will have his way for three years after the vote removes the opposition Democrats from blocking power.
Many commentators find the appearance of a strongman appealing at least with regards to economic policy. Abe's inflationist policies have ignited a Japanese equities boom and given some lift to the real economy, perhaps by making exports easier through a cheaper yen but also by boosting psychology at home. He is said to be planning serious reforms to open up the economy and makes its capital and labor policies more conducive to growth, his so-called third arrow.
At the same time, his rhetoric and cabinet choices have signaled a hawkish and activist foreign policy stance, which also pleases some conservatives abroad but is an avowed worry of Chinese officials. Any stirring of Japan's military causes general unease, as was evident in recent international reporting such as behind the Wall Street Journal's paywall. Now, the Japanese rearmament story is not so new. Forbes magazine published an award-winning story about it in 2005. But the political return and rise of the nationalist Abe, together with increased military presences by Japan's latent adversaries China and North Korea, have given the topic a new urgency.
Putting aside who is right or wrong in disputes such as island territories known as Senkaku or Diaoyu, which may have gas resources attached to them, the gathering Japan-China standoff is indeed worrisome. Even among China hands who are not prone to get worked up over Beijing rhetoric, I find genuine concern about the Japan tiff. And with China entering increasingly rough economic times itself, the temptation will be ever present to use conflict with a widely-detested foe to quiet a restive domestic population.
Ironically, this may be one reason to discount the idea Abe will be all powerful after Sunday. As the WSJ nicely reported on Friday, his prospective coalition partners are pacifist, so hawkishness and particularly any changes in the Japanese constitution to formalize related powers would be a high hurdle. What's more, the article noted, Abe's own fellow members of the LDP party are likely to splinter from him on a number of economic issues.
So, even if the vote count goes mostly as expected, the political drama in Japan may only be moving on to a next stage. While the world can hope that this yields real economic gains, enough to complete Abe's Hail Mary pass to revive GDP before a huge national debt must be paid down, the attention may be more riveted on what follows on the military front. If that proves truly to be newsworthy, then we may be wishing instead for a return to the pre-Abe days of drift in Japan, when just about everyone else in Asia-Pacific was making hay over a blessed peace.
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