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On August 28, 2020, the Prime Minister of Japan, Shinzo Abe, announced that he would resign after a record tenure of almost eight years. Abe had already served as prime minister between 2006 and 2007. In his first term, he had barely been able to advance anything, and the media described him as “a complete failure.” His second term was undoubtedly long and provided political stability, but even in the many years since 2012, the Prime Minister has barely achieved any of his goals. More recently, the government had been severely criticized for its inadequate management of the coronavirus crisis. Abe had carefully ignored the second wave of coronavirus in July / August and stayed away from publicity. Government approval ratings in polls sometimes fell to 32 percent.
But most of all, Abe was unable to achieve his own long-term goals. In 2012, shortly before taking office, he published a book entitled ‘Shaping a beautiful country’ (Utsukushii kuni e). Similar to Donald Trump’s description of the United States after Barack Obama’s presidency, Abe viewed Japan as a disaster, which he attributed in large part to the former ruling Democratic Party of Japan, but in part also to the reforms of the occupation era after World War II. In his opinion, the reforms of the victorious powers were too harsh and led to the destruction of Japanese traditions.
Abe, following the motto ‘Overcome the post-war regime’, repeatedly demanded the cancellation of the reforms that took place between 1945 and 1952. During his first term he had initiated and successfully carried out a revision of the law of Education. of 1947, which tries to transmit more national pride in the schools of Japan. Over and over again, Abe stressed the revision of the constitution – from 1946 unchanged – and explained this revision as “his life’s work.”
A failed constitutional review
However, although the government coalition has consistently held a two-thirds majority in parliament since 2012, the precondition for starting the constitution review process, there has been no progress in this regard so far. Discussions in the parliament committee show that there is not even unity in the government coalition on the “what” and “how” of a review. Polls show that a clear majority of the population is against the amendments proposed by Abe and his party.
On the contrary, the number of scandals in which Abe himself, his wife, members of his cabinet or politicians in his Liberal Democratic Party were involved is possibly record-breaking.
In 2013 and 2014, Abe initiated amendments to the law, which are equally important as a change in the constitution and were brutally pushed without taking into account the lack of consensus in society. The state secrets protection law passed in 2013 annulled the information disclosure law (1999/2001). Security laws passed in 2014 allowed Japan more freedom on military missions outside of Japan’s sovereign territory. In this way, article 9 of the constitution was annulled, the paragraph in which ‘the Japanese people forever abandon war as a sovereign right of the nation and abandon the threat or exercise of violence as a means to resolve international disputes. ‘.
Since the revision of the constitution is hardly seen as a political priority by the people, Abe focused on economic policy from the beginning of his second term. With an economic and fiscal policy, which he quite immodestly titled Abenomics, wanted to combat inflation and stagnation.
A failed economic policy
As, however, both phenomena, in the case of Japan, hardly had anything to do with each other, Abenomics it was considered to have failed even before the coronavirus. Both the 2% inflation target and the announced 3% economic growth are a long way off. Even in the fourth quarter of 2019, and also in earlier phases, Japan showed negative growth rates or zero growth. But above all, income remains stagnant.
While there was some growth under the rule of the Democratic Party of Japan from 2009 to 2012, the average income between 2012 and 2020 has hardly changed; the announced drip effects did not materialize. Therefore, social inequality is much more marked today than at the beginning of the Abe era. Abe’s Womenomics The policy of promoting women at work led to the growth of working women. However, most were part-time jobs. There are rarely women in key positions; Japan remains at the bottom of the Gender Gap Index.
On the contrary, the number of scandals in which Abe himself, his wife, members of his cabinet, or politicians from his Liberal Democratic Party were involved is likely to break records. These scandals range from nepotism over accounting irregularities related to party donations to massive corruption. Some of these scandals almost spell the end for Abe.
In 2017, for example, Abe and his wife Akie were suspected of being involved in giving preferential treatment to a kindergarten operator, to whom state property had been sold at a ‘preferential price’. Abe’s wife was the honorary president of the kindergarten, and Prime Minister Abe denied the allegations.
As of now, it is still unclear who will replace Abe. The most promising candidate is Suga, a longtime government spokesman.
When North Korea flew a test rocket over Japanese territory in July 2017, Abe invoked national unity and called for new elections, in which the Liberal Democratic Party was able to win a clear majority again, due to a divided opposition. But new scandals emerged in the following years. The announcement of his resignation is probably related to the fact that currently three members of parliament, of whom Abe supported at least two actively in his electoral campaign, are in pretrial detention and accused of bribery.
Failed olympic games
At a press conference, Abe announced that he would resign for health reasons. For a few weeks, the media reported that the prime minister was repeatedly out of office, while more frequently going to the hospital. However, he made sure not to miss the opportunity to postpone his resignation long enough to go down in history as the country’s prime minister with the longest term.
However, he had to miss out on welcoming the world to the Tokyo Olympics. Bringing them to Tokyo was largely seen as the work of Abe, who was present at the Tokyo presentation at the IOC as the organizer and delivered a confident speech. The cancellation of the Olympics must have accelerated his decision, especially since it is unclear whether they can take place in the summer of 2021 (his tenure would have allowed him to stand as host).
As of now, it is still unclear who will replace Abe. The most promising candidate is Suga, a longtime government spokesman. Naturally, nothing would change much under him; after all, it was Suga who had to sell cabinet politics for many years to the press and the people. Former Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida, a moderate politician, is also said to have a chance. Clearly, he could do different things to Abe as he doesn’t have his anti-intellectual and Trump traits. The most different candidate from Abe would be Shigeru Ishiba, who already in 2012 was defeated by Abe in the elections for the party’s president. Ishiba is loved by the rank and file of the Liberal Democratic Party, but got only a few votes from members of parliament in 2012. This scenario could be repeated in the party president’s election scheduled for the first half of September.
