Stable, standardized politics legacy of Abe administration

The curtain has fallen on the administration of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and it has risen on the administration of his successor, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga. It is a moment that gives little impression of change, which is unusual in Japan’s modern history of government leadership transition.

It is partly because of the fact that Abe chose to step down while the novel coronavirus epidemic was far from over, missing his chance to open the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.

When new leaders took over from long- serving prime ministers in the past, many of them gave the impression that they were going to bring about sought-after sea changes, such as leadership rejuvenation or takeover.

When Ichiro Hatoyama succeeded Shigeru Yoshida as prime minister in 1954, for example, it was an outright takeover of power from a political foe. When Kakuei Tanaka assumed the post of prime minister in 1972 following Eisaku Sato, the changeover symbolized both leadership rejuvenation and a power takeover.

In 1987, outgoing Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone nominated Noboru Takeshita as his successor, a plan supported by all factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Yet Takeshita, six years younger than Nakasone, opted to pursue policies unique to his administration, which culminated in the introduction of the consumption tax.

In 2006, Abe, who was widely regarded as the de facto crown prince in his role as chief cabinet secretary in the administration of Junichiro Koizumi, took over the reins as prime minister for the first time. Nonetheless, Abe did not inherit Koizumi’s theatrical political style.

This time, after serving as the head of government for the second time, Abe handed over the reins to Suga. Suga moved from chief cabinet secretary directly to the helm of government, following the same path Abe did in 2006. Usually, cabinet secretaries quit with each outgoing administration after completing its termination process, as the faithful right-hand man to the departing prime minister to the last.

When delivering a speech as a candidate in the LDP presidential election, Suga repeatedly pledged to carry on Abe’s policies, replicating the familiar scene of himself speaking in regular press conferences as chief cabinet secretary. At the time, a consensus emerged among a majority of LDP members that the new leader should be the one willing to “brush up” the Abe administration’s policies — an idea the Japanese public has found it possible to support.

As a matter of fact, Abe’s exit has made clear that a standardized or “structural” way of running the government became embedded in the ruling camp during his second tenure as prime minister. Therefore, the inauguration of the Suga administration must be seen as a reflection of this new political dimension.

Abe’s second administration learned from the failure of his first, which prematurely attempted to press ahead with divisive policies, as well as the negative examples of more recent administrations of prime ministers from the Democratic Party of Japan, who were known for their indecisiveness in policy decision-making. As a result, the Abe administration exerted itself to advance economic, social welfare and national security policies under initiatives driven by politicians.

Indeed, the Abe administration kept appealing to the public with one policy catchphrase after another, including “Abenomics,” “regional revitalization,” “work style reforms” and so forth, to demonstrate a “we’re-at-work” image. It adopted a new system of having the Prime Minister’s Office take the initiative in promptly implementing both domestic and foreign policies. The Abe administration’s signature achievements include the inauguration of the National Security Council and the Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs.

Policy implementation initiated by the Prime Minister’s Office was expected to make the long-standing vertically structured bureaucracy cross-functional. In other words, bureaucrats from relevant ministries and agencies would jointly form ad hoc teams of experts on a theme-oriented basis to prepare effective policies.

However, this new framework tended to let agendas favored by the Prime Minister’s Office be hastily endorsed and advanced while others in which the office showed little interest were put off. The office has thus failed to take advantage of the wonderful human resources management the new Cabinet Bureau of Personnel Affairs could have realized. Consequently, personnel evaluation of high- ranking bureaucrats turned on the axis of whether they adhered to the priorities of the Prime Minister’s Office, making them overly sensitive to the intentions of the office.

Leading politicians and bureaucrats once respected “tacit knowledge.” When both sides felt that they had to implement a major policy, a “tacit understanding” emerged between them that required no verbal communication yet led to realization of the original goal. Now, this is a thing of the past.

The Suga administration is notable for the prominence of three veteran politicians who have cemented their power bases thanks to the Abe-initiated governance spearheaded by the Prime Minister’s Office. They are Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Taro Aso, who has been active at the heart of politics since the Koizumi administration; Toshihiro Nikai, whose influence within the LDP has become conspicuous since halfway through Abe’s second tenure; and Suga himself, who was the chief government spokesman throughout Abe’s second administration.

It should be noted that this leadership troika is keen to keep focusing on “current” issues with little consideration to the grooming of future leaders. Instead of leaving center stage and speaking from a broader perspective as elder statesmen, the three seem to be aiming to achieve life tenure at the forefront of politics.

The trio and Abe adhere to opportunism and realism. While in power, Abe referred to a number of policy agendas, rich in rightist ideology, but eventually stepped down without translating them into reality. One such case was his advocacy for revising the Constitution.

Abe required his party’s young Diet members to endeavor to secure election victory first and foremost without getting deeply involved in ideological feuds. His nearly eight years of leadership in his second tenure led to the absence of party members directly confronting his core ideology. Against this backdrop, it can be said that he succeeded in changing the way of thinking within the LDP.

The adherence to opportunism and realism has also given rise to “election-centrism” as a new commonsense doctrine among LDP politicians.

Abe showed that coasting to a landslide election triumph is a prerequisite for retaining a stable government. After he regained power in 2012, he led the LDP to a succession of victories in national elections, a development that made all LDP members indebted to him. None could afford to antagonize him.

In the event of scandals or issues involving the government or the LDP, the Abe administration let opposition parties and media outlets speak up as much as they liked, while waiting for an opportunity to fight back. When the ruling camp won a national election, the administration, saying it received a public thumbs-up, moved to write off the whole of each relevant scandal or issue.

For its part, after the DPJ fell out of power, it came to a standstill in the face of Abe’s “election- centric” maneuvering. The party wound up trapped in a repeated cycle of division and reunification.

As such, the aspiration of the socalled Heisei political reform, symbolized by the introduction of single-seat constituencies for House of Representative elections in 1996 (Heisei 8), was completely lost. Abe stayed in power for nearly eight years, with each day seeming much like the one before. The reform started with high expectations that it would lead to the emergence of a solid two-party system and make it possible for each party to take over power in a back- and- forth manner reminiscent of the board game Othello. No such change occurred.

When the DPJ came to power, the LDP felt so much sorrow and frustration as an opposition party that, upon its eventual return to power, it wished to clutch the reins perpetually. Then, the Abe administration enjoyed a streak of election wins, enabling itself to prolong its rule of the country.

The Abe administration’s legacy is the formulation of a stable ruling camp platform. This became possible as Abe learned from the DPJ’s negative example of persistent indecision amid perpetual debate. The LDP under Abe’s presidency transformed itself into a decisive ruling party. To that end, even when party members expressed disagreements or objections, the leadership brought such intraparty debates to a conclusion at a certain point to avert party division.

The advance of digitization has significantly altered social circumstances in Japan and abroad. The revolutionary evolution of telecommunications methods now makes speediness the measure of all things, including politics.

Japan had other long-serving prime ministers in the past, with earlier ones dealing determinedly with epochal political agendas. For example, Yoshida realized the signing of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, which ended the Allied Occupation of Japan and accelerated postwar economic reconstruction.

Sato successfully negotiated with the United States to return Okinawa Prefecture to Japanese rule in 1972. Nakasone sought to bring the postwar period to a final settlement. But recent prime ministers have found it increasingly difficult to pursue such momentous agendas. Koizumi, for example, managed to cling to power for a long time by resorting to an eye- catching theatrical political maneuvering style rather than laboring to refine one political agenda after another.

Abe, meanwhile, succeeded to some extent in stabilizing his leadership by contributing to the fast- changing international community through his frequent participation in summit diplomacy. As for domestic affairs, his administration dealt eagerly with one challenge after another in a whacka- mole manner. In fact, it remained particular about conveying a sense of speediness when delivering policy solutions.

This was why Abe’s approval ratings stayed relatively high among young people. Their expectations of politics were usually low. Therefore, as long as they thought the Abe administration was doing nothing to inhibit the paths they wanted to take, they would not become critical of it. What is more, few of them keenly wanted the opposition camp to come to power.

In Japan, the era of high economic growth, which enabled people in those days to foresee a clear path through life, ended long ago. Young people of today live in an era without a stable social structure. While they tend to feel quite satisfied when policies are beneficial to them, they otherwise show little interest in politics. This attitude toward politics exactly reflects the environment in which the Abe administration existed.

That said, once young people begin to think they want to leverage politics to change certain things, the Suga administration will be compelled to shift from the Abe-style politics of creating a “we’re-at-work” impression to politics of really “putting policies into action.”

Mikuriya is a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo specializing in Japanese political history and a fellow at the university’s Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology. He served as acting chair of the Advisory Council on Easing the Burden of the Official Duties and Public Activities of His Majesty the Emperor, which submitted a final report to the prime minister in April 2017.