Japan rising

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rolled the dice high in holding elections a year early in spite of the fact that his own personal popularity rating stood about 30 percent.

But it paid off, unlike British Prime Minister Theresa May’s bid to improve her Conservative Party’s position with early elections in June. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner won two-thirds of the seats in the lower house of the parliament, clearing the way for some constitutional changes he wants to make, including movement toward the remilitarization of Japan.

Probably the biggest issue in the Japanese elections was what should be done about North Korean rocket-rattling. (The economy is humming along.) Japan’s neighbors in Pyongyang have fired two intercontinental ballistic missiles across Japan into the sea in recent months. Given President Donald Trump’s erratic approach to that issue and others of interest to the Japanese, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, which Japan supported and Trump dumped, the Japanese are coming to have less confidence in the relationship it has shared with the United States since its surrender in 1945.

Abe’s move toward constitutionally sanctioned remilitarization is a logical Japanese response to both the North Korean threat and the American shift of posture.

Let’s hope that Washington is thinking this issue through as it determines its policy response to Abe’s strengthened mandate. Another visit by Abe to Mar-a-Lago probably won’t do it.