Just a few weeks ago, the Bush administration seemed convinced that it could rely on a newly assertive Japan to contain China’s rise and help prosecute the global fight against terrorism. Then last weekend, Japan’s voters just said “No.” The stinging electoral rebuke to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party does more than usher in a new era of drift and unpredictability in Japanese politics.
Abe’s drubbing should also dispel some dangerous misperceptions about today’s Japan.
1. Japan is a strong, rising power, ready to assert new influence across Asia.
Even before the Bush administration came to power in 2001, many members of its kitchen Cabinet were arguing that an assertive new Japan was ready to become the United States’ chief surrogate in checking Chinese expansion. Japan would no longer be a “free rider,” they said, in contrast with its behavior in the 1991 Gulf War, when Tokyo merely wrote a $9 billon check to help protect its oil supply.
Sure enough, after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi dispatched peacekeeping soldiers to southern Iraq. Koizumi’s hand-picked successor, Abe, went further still, pledging to revise the constitution to eliminate the clause renouncing Japan’s willingness to wage war. He also promised to work ever more closely with the Pentagon on missile defense and logistical support for US combat troops, and he toed a more strident line against North Korea.
But Abe’s eagerness to draw closer to Washington and rewrite the constitution clashed with the will of the people. While most Japanese citizens tell pollsters that they believe the post-World War II constitution (written by US occupation forces in 1946) ought to be updated, a majority of voters older than 60 say that the constitution’s pacifist Article 9 remains the most important legacy from the debacle of World War II.
So while US military planners want Tokyo to seize more responsibility as the US military is stretched thin, Japan now seems likelier to back away.
A counterterrorism measure that permits ships from the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force to refuel US naval convoys is up for renewal this fall and may not pass.
2. Japan has shed its economic blues.
More than 15 years after its bubble economy burst, Japan may be groping its way back toward sustainable growth. But despite the stunning export success of carmakers such as Toyota and electronics firms such as Canon, the nation’s domestic consumption remains anemic.
In fact, anxious voters rebelled against the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in part because they believed Abe had put economic reforms on the back burner.
Today, most Japanese seek economic renewal, not military revival. The nation’s giant banks still generate tiny profits, consumer prices continue to fall, domestic demand remains feeble, and real interest rates are nearly zero. The yen is weaker than even the US dollar, and that’s saying something. The nation’s fiscal deficit tops 170 percent of gross domestic product, while the population is shrinking because women won’t marry and bear children. That translates into a nation that will soon make South Florida look like a youth hostel. In fact, as a result of Abe’s stumbles, Japan can no longer even be counted on to support a bilateral free trade agreement with the United States or help revive the Doha round of global trade talks; the weak domestic economy forces politicians to pander to local concerns.
3. Japan has reconciled with its neighbors.
Not quite.
Just a decade ago, economists and political theorists assumed Japan would become the central hub of “the Asian Century.” But that assumed Japan and its neighbors could finally address the issues still festering from World War II.
Japan has failed to emerge as Asia’s main power, in no small part because it has yet to transcend the “history question.”
Unlike his predecessor, Abe did not raise hackles in China or Korea by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which houses the graves of several Japanese war criminals. But Japanese textbooks still do not adequately teach new generations such wartime horrors as the 1937 Nanking Massacre, the occupation of Korea or the forced recruitment of women to “service” Imperial soldiers.
in Japan, even some members of Abe’s own party think Japan has already done too much apologizing. That doesn’t bode well for a stable Asia.
4. Japan will help the United States solve the North Korean nuclear problem.
Abe’s weakness makes this tough.
The old game plan ran as follows: Washington and Pyongyang finally negotiate a deal that trades North Korea’s nuclear weapons and technology for diplomatic recognition and a pledge not to wage war, then Tokyo writes the large check that helps isolated, bedraggled North Korea leap into the 21st century. But Abe and the Bush administration no longer see eye to eye here. While Washington recognizes that the Iraq debacle heightens the need to cut a deal with Kim Jong Il, many Japanese leaders think Washington is eager to abandon Tokyo’s quest for a fuller accounting of the civilians abducted by North Korean agents decades ago.
5. Japan’s government, like its corporate powerhouses, has a long-term strategy.
Honda and Toyota actively think about how they’ll survive the next century, but Japan itself hasn’t figured out where it wants to go.
— Michael Zielenziger, a visiting scholar at Berkeley, is the author of “Shutting Out the Sun: How Japan Created Its Own Lost Generation.”
