Foreign Affairs
How Able Is Abe?
Richard Katz and Peter Ennis
Summary: Shinzo Abe has had a tough act to follow since succeeding the charismatic Junichiro Koizumi as Japan's prime minister. Abe has already shown himself to be adept in the field of foreign affairs, and Tokyo's influence is likely to increase with him at the helm. But it remains uncertain whether he can keep the momentum going on the reforms needed to stave off economic stagnation.
Richard Katz and Peter Ennis are Co-editors of "The Oriental Economist Report, " a monthly newsletter on Japan, and the semiweekly "TOE Alert." Katz is also the author of "Japanese Phoenix: The Long Road to Economic Revival."
A SOFTER TOUCH FOR JAPAN
When Junichiro Koizumi retired as Japan's prime minister last September, he left big shoes to fill. Although major reforms to Japan's economy had begun years prior to his election in 2001, Koizumi greatly advanced the process -- in part through specific achievements, but more important by catalyzing public demand for change and by giving reform an aura of inevitability. Now Shinzo Abe, his handpicked successor, will have to live up to the expectations Koizumi created.
At first glance, Abe seems a study in contradiction. He is Japan's first prime minister to be born after World War II, yet he draws inspiration from his late grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, a wartime leader imprisoned for three years after Japan's surrender. Although Abe is often misperceived as an ultranationalist, he has worked hard since taking office to repair frayed ties with China and South Korea, making concessions that his less nationalist predecessor had refused to make. By confounding expectations, Abe has raised some big questions at home and abroad. First among them: In what ways, exactly, will he act like Koizumi, and how will he be different?
Consider the similarities first. Like Koizumi, Abe reflects and embraces Japan's ongoing metamorphosis. Both men recognize the passing of the old Japan of the 1970s and 1980s, which was characterized by passivity in foreign affairs and a highly regulated corporatist economy that protected inefficient firms and industries. That Japan was a casualty of the bursting of the asset bubble in 1990, the lengthy economic stagnation and banking crisis that ensued, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the emergence of a more assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.
Like Koizumi, Abe understands that Japan's increasingly urban and educated population needs and expects ongoing economic reform. When Koizumi repeatedly warned that there could be no growth without structural reform and sought to marginalize recalcitrant factions of his own ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Abe, in a variety of posts concluding with chief cabinet secretary, stood with him. The two men are also united by a shared understanding that changes in global geopolitics require Japan to modify its relationship with the United States by becoming a more active partner. Tactics aside, both Koizumi and Abe accept that close ties with Washington are critical to dealing with the North Korean nuclear threat.
Underlying the similarities, however, are differences in personality and policy priorities. Koizumi as prime minister was a charismatic, iron-willed maverick and a loner; Abe is a staid and collegial pragmatist who, at the relatively young age of 52, may have a harder time imposing his will on the bureaucracy and the LDP. As prime minister, Koizumi focused on political and economic reform; he defined the latter narrowly, mostly as reducing the state's role in the economy. Abe, on the other hand, seems intent on emphasizing foreign policy and conservative domestic social issues, such as giving Japanese youths a more "patriotic" education.
Koizumi's main political tactic was to successfully portray politics as a conflict between good guys (reformers) and ...