THE ＧＬＯＢＡＬＩＺＡＴＩＯＮ ＆ ＧＯVＥＲＮＡＮＣＥ ＰＲＯＪＥCＴ， ＨＯＫＫＡＩＤＯ ＵＮＩＶＥＲＳＩＴＹＷＯＲＫＩＮＧ ＰＡＰＥＲ ＳＥＲＩＥＳ

E－02

Political Fragility in Japan and the Resignation of Abe Shinzo:

Is Japanese Democracy Going Backwards?

Ｊｉｒｏ Ｙａｍａｇｕｃｈｉ, Hokkaido University＊Paper for the November issue of the journal Ronza, 2007.

＊Translation for Japan Focus by Maxim Shabalin, D.Phil. student in OrientalStudies, University of Oxford, Merton College.

Political Fragility in Japan and the Resignation of Abe Shinzo:
Is Japanese Democracy Going Backwards?
Yamaguchi Jiro
Translation by Maxim Shabalin
I was travelling in the UK in the first half of September and the news of Abe’s resignation
reached me in London. The local media too were reporting on this unexpected event in somedetail. Newspapers which would normally differ in their comments such as The FinancialTimes (“Abe posed as a samurai but was a weakling after all”) [1] or The Guardian (“Japandoes not have a leader befitting her national wealth”) agreed in criticising the absence ofleadership in Japanese politics.
To resign two days after the policy speech and immediately before parliamentaryinterpellations is to betray both the Diet and the people. It is an unprecedented scandal in thehistory of constitutional government. Some would defend Abe because of his being ill, but if
he was really ill then the matter is even more serious. It means that for several days or weeks
a person unable to exercise proper judgment remained in the Prime Minister’s seat, convened
a Diet session and went so far as to deliver a policy speech. It is as if the Japanese people had
embarked on a plane with a seriously ill pilot at the controls. This continuous confusion
demonstrates how little Abe, together with the LDP and the Cabinet leaders surrounding him,
thought of the nation and how lightly they took politics.
Seen from Europe, Japan is still an oriental enigma. From the 1990s, by a process of trial anderror, Japan undertook various systemic reforms aimed at realizing a global standard ofdemocracy. Under Koizumi it seemed to have realized a kind of politics that was easily
comprehensible, maintaining a long-term government under a popular leader enunciatingclear policies. However, since Koizumi’s resignation party politics has once again been castinto disarray and lacks sustainability.
The confusion in post-Koizumi Japanese politics stems from the failure to transcend Koizumi
politics either in terms of political method or of policy. In this essay I would like to consider
this state of confusion and try to elucidate the prospects.
1) Comparing Japan and the UK in terms of their adjustments following a period ofpersonalization of politics
One of the purposes of my visit to the UK was to research British politics post-Blair. As I wasdiscussing British politics post-Blair with local political scientists, the announcement of Abe
Shinzo’s resignation came just as I was about to consider the interesting comparison between
him and Gordon Brown. Both were successors to charismatic leaders who had sustained theirpower for a long time and both faced the problem of adjustment following the personalizationof politics.
By personalization of politics I mean the phenomenon of a leader emerging in the context ofrising dissatisfaction with representative democracy in which conventional parties andinstitutions are the units of political behaviour, who then rejects the old party institutions andgains popular support by addressing the people directly. Not bound by institutions, suchleaders try to secure support by directly relating to the unfettered ordinary citizen. Moreover,by communicating the popular will directly in the process of policy formation, without
negotiation between representatives, they strive for quick, dynamic policy change. Such was
the case with both Tony Blair and Koizumi Junichiro.
Both Brown and Abe, as successors, then face the question of how to follow or reject thistechnique. Their approaches are different. Brown is well aware of the fact that he is not ashowy politician. Consequently, he resolutely avoids such techniques as exposure to the media
and conspicuous performances and makes solidity his selling point. He is steadily
implementing policies different from those of his predecessor such as a gradual withdrawal
from Iraq and emphasis on social equality. In English, a politician’s performance andchoreography is called spin. This time, I managed to interview some of the brains responsible
for the Labour Party’s spin; and they said that the Brown government had changed politics
from a showy to a sober activity. In the final days of Blair’s government, the Labour Party’s
approval rating was much lower than that of the Conservative Party but Brown’s adoption ofthis posture caused him to gain unexpected levels of approval in the opinion polls. Comparedto Blair with his nice appearance and good speaking skills who would frequently become
arrogant and who embarked upon the mistaken path to war, Brown, who has a serious andfervent approach to policymaking, at the moment commands the sympathy of the English
people.
The greatest reason for Abe’s short-lived Prime Ministership seems to lie in the fact that he did
not fully realize his difference from the former Prime Minister Koizumi and his own
weaknesses. Not everyone can attract popular support by charisma. By intending to take overKoizumi’s presidential-type leadership, Abe increased the centripetal forces of the incumbent
ruling party and the Cabinet and tried to place himself in the forefront. By appointing aCabinet secretariat and setting up advisory councils, he aimed at top-down policy
development. Such a technique can be effective if accompanied by corresponding abilities,
but the vicious circle in Abe’s case was that the more he put himself forward, the more people
laughed at him. The weakness of the technique of the politics of reliance on approval ratings

was exposed.
2) Policy-level contradictions
In terms of policy, Abe’s LDP fell into two contradictions: between nationalism and universal
values, and between the liberty proclaimed by the strong and the equality that takes into
consideration the weak.
The first contradiction was exacerbated by Abe’s call for an escape from the postwar regimeand by his enhancing of statism and nationalism. On the one hand, Abe proclaimed a“value-based diplomacy” and emphasized the United States and India as partners sharing
freedom and democracy. On the other, he was a proponent of vulgar nationalism andinternationally he made such bizarre statements as: “In the case of ‘comfort women’ there
was no coercion in the narrow sense”. Such values as liberty, democracy, human rights are notcompatible with the egocentrism of the insistence on legitimizing for Japan alone a war whichis internationally recognized as aggressive. There is an inseparable connection between
liberty, democracy, human rights, and the interpretations of history by which past wars areunderstood. Nevertheless, Abe together with his entourage of politicians and experts, wereignorant about this point until it was too late. This ignorance led to Japan’s isolation frominternational society.
The second contradiction, concerning domestic socioeconomic policy, is one which LDP
politicians face on a daily basis. Under Koizumi, this contradiction was whitewashed with thevague symbol of structural reform. When Koizumi retired as prime minister, the effects of the“reform” became visible in local communities and individual lives and even people who
traditionally supported the LDP began to distrust LDP politics. At the Upper House elections inJuly, the LDP was chanting the slogan “Towards the realization of growth”; however, in theend this was just impossible. This is because the fruits of growth are monopolized by a handfulof those in the upper strata of society while the remaining majority are gradually
impoverished with the promotion of neoliberal structural reforms. The people have strongly
felt this.
Abe was torn by these two contradictions. Had he been a thorough and detached person like
Koizumi he would have stayed calm even in the face of contradictions, but Abe was in thisrespect weak. The overwhelming defeat in the Upper House election awakened him to thedepth of this contradiction, and his body and soul probably collapsed in the same manner.
3) The enfeeblement of the LDP produced by a strong leader
The LDP that chose as president and Prime Minister someone such as Abe, that it should nothave, has entirely lost its ability to govern. The politicians who elected and supported Abe as
Prime Minister must first and foremost be ashamed of their stupidity and apologize to thepeople. How did the LDP end up in such a disastrous condition?
Ironically, many Japanese political scientists had recently been pointing to the systemic
strengthening of the LDP, noting that the small constituency system and party subsidies had
strengthened the party’s centripetal force and its executive’s powers of control, and bothdevelopments together had enabled strong control within the LDP by the Prime Minister/Partypresident. Such a conclusion could certainly have been drawn from the actions of the Koizumi
government.
But just one year after Koizumi’s resignation, the LDP sank into unprecedented crisis.
Increasing the party’s centripetal force and creating the framework for strengthening thePrime Minister’s leadership is one thing; for the party and cabinet to maintain its vitality andauthority quite another. To be sure, Prime Minister Koizumi did utilize his power unusuallyeffectively for a Japanese Prime Minister and he succeeded at implementing policies. However,at the same time, within the LDP everyone remembered the sweet taste of electoral victorythat came from merely hanging on to such an exceptionally popular figure as Koizumi. The
unification and centralization that may be anticipated when politicians share policies
stemming from debate and mutual encouragement did not occur. Instead, what did spreadwithin the LDP was reliance on others, the search for a popular figure capable of winning anelection, and the show of centripetal unity together with the empty centralization ofauthority.
As many political scientists point out, a series of political system reforms can be said to haveunified and centralized the government and political parties and clarified the locus of power
and responsibility. However, at the same time, unification and centralization have had theeffect not only of stripping politicians of their skills and suitability but also exposed leaders to
the unswerving gaze of the people. Under such circumstances, politicians and political parties
bore an enhanced risk. Prime Minister Abe may constitute the first case of failure to cope withsuch risk.
When one looks at the LDP today, we can observe, on the one hand, the ongoing adjustments
to the political system aimed at centralizing and unifying power, and on the other, aconformity among politicians and a desire for easy electoral victory by belonging to theparty’s main faction. Despite the fact that the locus of power and responsibility was clarified,
the subjectivity to wield such power was not cultivated, and indeed one even got theimpression that such subjectivity declined. The people are not so indulgent as to forgive theLDP now just because it replaces a greenhorn Prime Minister with the veteran Fukuda Yasuo.
The task of cultivating and producing a leader who can exercise authority within a unified

party system and cabinet has only just begun, and of course, the biggest opposition party, theDPJ, also has yet to tackle this issue.
4) Post-Koizumi politics in JapanThe following scheme may be helpful to locate the present confusion in the evolution ofJapanese politics since the 1990s. Prime Minister Koizumi’s structural reforms emerged as aresponse to the breakdown of the postwar Japanese policy system that had long been
maintained by an alliance between the LDP and the bureaucracy centring on the oldTanaka/Takeshita faction, but which broke down under the impact of the forces ofglobalization, the bursting of the “bubble economy”, the ageing of society and the declining
birth rate. The postwar policy system combined evils such as endemic corruption, inefficiency
and waste, with a concern for equality and for the weak and the regions. Koizumi’s structuralreforms smashed the ‘vested rights’ of politicians and bureaucrats and promoted policy
efficiency; but they also had a serious impact on people and regions that had enjoyedprotection under the policies in place until then. Resistance to this continues to threaten theLDP. The opposition is gathering popular support by persistently questioning the harmful
effects of the structural reforms. Faced with the contradictory vectors of inheriting theKoizumi government’s success or correcting its evils, the LDP is irresolute. There is noclear-cut course for post-Koizumi politics.
In terms of finding a way out of this confusion, the UK’s experience is interesting in variousways.
First, in terms of political method it is necessary to return to the fundamental point thatpolitics is about getting things done. Charismatic leaders are not easily to be found. Rather, as
was the case with Koizumi, a unique personality can have the bad effect of driving away
serious debate and discussion. What is called for is to evaluate leadership in terms of theability to reflect seriously on issues and the existence of an ability to explain issues to thepublic.
Furthermore, in terms of policy, what is required is not the mobilization of public opinion by
the use of ambiguous symbols but discussion of the concrete issues facing the people,including the costs and consequences of such policies. The media focuses on the candidates inthe election for LDP party president as a bald, either-or choice between continuing withreform or reverting to the old LDP ways. But a return to the earlier policies of the bureaucrats
and LDP policy ‘tribes’ is already inconceivable. Moreover, reform does not have to be just
Koizumi-style neoliberalism. What is called for is concrete debate over problems faced by thepeople such as inequality, poverty, worries over social security and job insecurity, theirrecognition as policy issues, and the search for ways to resolve them.

In order to maintain power the LDP has up until now from time to time undergone somethingtantamount to change of government by changing the image of the leader or the basic tone ofpolicy. On this occasion, the strengthening of support for Fukuda among party veteransprobably has the same objective. This is an undesirable situation for the DPJ. Although an axisof confrontation between ‘neoliberalism promoted by Abe’ and ‘Ozawa’s social democracy’(DPJ Diet members may hate this expression, but Ozawa’s policy is social democracy) emergedat the Upper House election, Fukuda is like a boxer who just tries to hold his opponent in aclinch.
However, if any sanity remains in the LDP, the natural thing to do is to change policy. In thatevent, the competition between the two major parties will be not just a clash of slogans but
will have to evolve into concrete policy competition. In the UK, the Conservative Party hasabandoned Thatcherism and is confronting the Labour Party on similar issues concerning theprovision of medical care and education. It is no matter if policy differences are to someextent reducible to differences of degree. Concrete debate over differences in degree shouldbe able to clarify alternatives.
The hardest problem for the LDP is how to strike a compromise between the demands of thebusiness community, its biggest sponsor, while addressing social inequality. Fukuda also faces
many difficult questions such as how to change the system of policy formation centring on theCouncil on Economic and Fiscal Policy and the Ministry of Finance, and how to control young
party members pushing for structural reform. Likewise, the DPJ too has to clarify its stance on
the question of sources of revenue in order to raise the level of confidence and expectation
for its policies. There is no magic wand of solution to fiscal problems just by curtailing
wasteful expenditure.
Even if Fukuda wins an overwhelming victory in the party presidential election, hisgovernment cannot enjoy legitimacy. There are limits to the ability to keep shuffling
government around within the party, and the greatest duty of the next Prime Minister will beto offer the people themselves the opportunity of choice through an early dissolution andgeneral election.
[1] Translator’s note: The Financial Times article by David Pilling published September 12
contained the phrase: “This is not bushido. This is chicken.”This article appeared in the November issue of the journal Ronza. Yamaguchi Jiro is Professorof Public Administration at the Graduate School of Law, Hokkaido University. In 2002-2007 hedirected a comparative research project on “Transformations in Governance in the Age ofGlobalization”. After its completion Yamaguchi initiated a follow-up project on “Civil Social
Democracy”. The term “civil social democracy” is conceived as a key concept for overcoming
the “post-democratic” condition in developed countries. Yamaguchi has extensively
published on contemporary Japanese politics. An up-to-date list of his publications can befound at his personal homepage.
Translation for Japan Focus by Maxim Shabalin, D.Phil. student in Oriental Studies, Universityof Oxford, Merton College. Posted at Japan Focus on November 19, 2007.