"Japan had barely begun processing
the shock of the former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination by a gunman on July
8 before attention turned to whether his quest to remilitarize Japan, including
the revision of its pacifist Constitution, would survive him.
Japan’s longest-serving prime minister,
Mr. Abe was a towering presence at home and an influential statesman abroad. He
advocated a more globally engaged Japan, was a driving force in
the Quad alliance between the United States, Australia, India and Japan and is credited by some
with initiating the very idea of the wider Indo-Pacific region.
He also envisioned a more militarily
robust Japan, centered on his unfulfilled dream of revising its postwar
Constitution, which prohibits his country from maintaining an offensive armed
forces capability. His supporters have vowed to make these dreams — driven
largely by fear of a more powerful China — a reality.
Yet it’s time for Japan to bid
farewell not only to Mr. Abe but also to his nationalist rearmament agenda.
Japan’s political and economic resources should be focused not on revising the
Constitution and increasing defense spending but on maintaining peace through
diplomacy and shoring up an economy left shaky by years of Mr. Abe’s
trickle-down policies.
Critically, at a time when the
United States is focused on confronting China, a humbler, more pacifist Japan
could have an important role to play by re-engaging with Beijing to help
decrease tensions between China and the United States.
Mr. Abe was shot while campaigning on behalf
of his Liberal Democratic Party for parliamentary elections that were to be
held just two days later. He leaves behind a personal legacy far more
controversial and checkered than is warranted by the simplistic, fawning tributes that
followed his demise.
Detractors at home considered Mr.
Abe an arrogant bully who
silenced critics. Constitutional, parliamentary and media checks and balances were undermined during his tenure,
and he notoriously made false statements to Parliament 118 times over a political scandal.
He unnecessarily offended neighbors
like South Korea and China — where
anger still seethes over Japan’s brutal wartime aggression — with his historical revisionism.
His December 2013 visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in
Tokyo, which honors Japanese war dead, including war criminals from the World
War II era, even invited a rare rebuke from
the United States. He also backed school textbooks
that gloss over Japan’s World War II barbarity, including the forcing of
thousands of women around Asia to serve as sex slaves for Japanese troops.
But few aspects of Mr. Abe’s career
threatened to alter Japan’s national character and role in the region as much
as his crusade against Article 9, which
renounces war as a means of solving international disputes and limits Japan’s
military to a self-defense role. Mr. Abe unnerved millions of Japanese who see
no reason to depart from a commitment to peace that kept Japan out of any
direct involvement in war since 1945, allowing it to focus on becoming an
economic power.
Mr. Abe failed to change the article
despite two stints in power, from 2006 to ’07 and from 2012 to ’20. He settled
instead for a reinterpretation that allows Japan to help close allies
militarily under certain conditions
but has been criticized as unconstitutional.
Japan looks no closer to revising Article 9
today, especially with the L.D.P.’s right wing now deprived of its uncontested
standard-bearer. A commitment to peace runs deep in a country that was taken to
war by a military government, causing huge suffering in Asia and ending in
Japan’s total defeat and the distinction of being the only country attacked
with nuclear weapons.
An opinion survey in
late June by the broadcaster NHK found that only 5 percent of respondents named
revising the Constitution as their top electoral priority, while 43 percent
identified the economy. Public opinion on revising Article 9 is split, with 50
percent in favor and 48 percent against, according to a poll
in May, and 70 percent said momentum for a revision was not increasing.
The long-dominant L.D.P. and its
allies secured the two-thirds majority in
Parliament’s upper house required to initiate a national referendum on amending
the Constitution. But that was widely expected even before Mr. Abe’s murder,
and the ruling coalition’s gains stemmed in part from divisions within the
opposition rather than a pro-Abe groundswell. Even Mr. Abe never
seriously pushed for a referendum because of the political risks, despite
enjoying a two-thirds majority for some of his years in power.
Attention now turns to Prime
Minister Fumio Kishida, but it’s a measure of just how smothering Mr. Abe’s
presence was — he forbade open dissent among party leaders — that the Japanese
don’t really know what to expect from Mr. Kishida, who represents L.D.P.
moderates who have opposed constitutional revision. After the election, Mr.
Kishida promised greater defense spending and pledged renewed
attention on Article 9 but gave no hint that this was more than a courteous nod
to the departed Mr. Abe.
But there is no doubt that Mr.
Kishida’s hand is strengthened. Mr.
Abe left no clear right-wing successor, and his death throws the faction into
disarray, allowing Mr. Kishida an opportunity to assert more control over the
national agenda.
This should include building support for a departure from Abenomics,
policies launched during Mr. Abe’s second spell in power that were intended to
shake off two decades of economic stagnation through fiscal and monetary
stimulus, ramped-up government spending and deregulatory reforms. Corporate
profits rose, but public debt accumulated, bold structural reforms were never
seriously pursued, and wages remained stagnant. Then the pandemic hit. The yen is weakening, and inflation is on the
rise — and so are coronavirus infections.
Mr. Kishida has called for
prioritizing wage increases and narrowing the rich-poor gap. This will require
more social security funding, which will inevitably clash with the doubling of
defense spending in the next five years that Mr. Abe sought. With the economy a
greater concern to the public than security issues, Mr. Kishida can ill afford
to waste precious political capital on revising Article 9.
On dealing with China, Mr. Kishida
revealed little of his own diplomatic vision when he served as a foreign
minister of Mr. Abe’s, but his faction has traditionally engaged with China,
and he may now be better positioned to pursue a policy more focused on dialogue
with Beijing.
Mr. Abe’s tragic demise offers his
successors a chance to emerge from his shadow and turn the page on his
policies.
Stripping away the safeguards of
Article 9 and remilitarizing Japan would only further inflame tensions with
China and risk an arms race with potentially devastating consequences for Japan
and the region. On the contrary, a reaffirmed commitment to peace would allow
domestic resources to be focused on the economy and open the door for better
relations with Japan’s neighbors founded on peace through diplomacy.
It’s time to beat Mr. Abe’s swords
into plowshares.
Koichi Nakano (@knakano1970) is a political scientist at Sophia
University in Tokyo who researches the rightward shift in Japanese politics
that has occurred in recent decades."
