BY PHILIP J CUNNINGHAM
Shortly before announcing he would step down, congratulatory banners went up in Prime Minister Abe's home province of Yamaguchi celebrating his milestone accomplishment of serving longer than any other Japanese prime minister. Although some saw the politicized banners as an inappropriate use of tax-payer money, it is telling that Abe Shinzo’s allies in Yamaguchi should want to remember him it this way.
Indeed, Abe’s political longevity itself, grudgingly achieved over the course of two lackluster terms, is one of his few uncontested successes.
In contrast, the man's preening ambition to reinvent Japan along revisionist lines and revive and beautify the militarism associated with his convicted war criminal grandfather Kishi Nobusuke has failed. Abe's egotistic desire to elide himself with the nation as the voice and embodiment of a mythic "beautiful Japan" is on a par with Trump's declaration that he is the "greatest president ever" (except perhaps for Lincoln?)
In contrast, the man's preening ambition to reinvent Japan along revisionist lines and revive and beautify the militarism associated with his convicted war criminal grandfather Kishi Nobusuke has failed. Abe's egotistic desire to elide himself with the nation as the voice and embodiment of a mythic "beautiful Japan" is on a par with Trump's declaration that he is the "greatest president ever" (except perhaps for Lincoln?)
In Japan, prime ministers have a reputation for fleeting, if not entirely flighty tenures. Ruling party bureaucrats, in conjunction with a handful of political blue-bloods, closely hold power in the traditional set-up. Since World War Two, Japan has fielded three dozen prime ministers, several lasting only a year. During the same period, China has seen just six leaders and the US elected 13 presidents.
For Abe to put his foot in the revolving door of representing Japan’s ruling party is indeed a signal accomplishment. While this “democratic” accomplishment disguises the fact that Japan has been under the dominant rule of a single party almost as long as China, Abe’s longevity played an important public relations function during a time period when international summitry reigned supreme and taming the media was a mark of power.
Respecting both the need for disclosure and to make a point about access, I was awarded an Abe Fellowship to conduct research in Japan and China in 2014 during the early part of Abe’s second tenure as Prime Minister. The Abe Foundation, which funds scholarly research through the auspices of the Social Science Research Council, is named after Abe’s father Shintaro, an LDP stalwart and former foreign minister. It is designed to function free of political influence, in theory at least, though it works close with the Japan Foundation and Abe Shinzo and colleagues have attended functions related to the foundation’s work.
Carrying a namecard which identified me as an Abe Fellow, perhaps unsurprisingly, did not open any doors for me in China where I studied how the media covered Japan. But it didn’t really open doors for me in Japan either. When I submitted a written request to interview Abe through the auspices of the foundation, I was turned down with polite apprehension. That’s not the way thing work in Japan, not under Abe, and I probably should have known better.
Abe, not unlike his self-proclaimed pal Donald Trump, was a keen observer of the media and saw it as a key to wielding power. Like Trump, he had people keeping score of how journalists covered him and treated them accordingly.
NHK, Asahi Shimbun and the Japan Times, all three of which I have done extensive work for, came under intense pressure to toe the Abe line after he came into to power. He was aided in struggle to win praise and subdue critics by his cronies in the ultra-conservative Nippon Kaigi organization, the platform of which seeks to reverse verdicts of the Tokyo Tribunal and get rid of the peace clause in Japan’s constitution.
The Asahi Shimbun was targeted by Abe’s ideologues, emerging defiant but somewhat muted, while the Japan Times, under new ownership with links to Abe’s ideological circle, caved in entirely. “The newly-born” Japan Times, as lauded by rightist commentator Sakurai Yoshiko, quickly adopted a sycophantic party line. Temple University’s Jeff Kingston, a respected columnist known as a critic of political revisionism was one among several dismissed without explanation. The newly-installed editorial team under the direction of Mizuno Hiroyasu also disputed pieces contributed by other critics of Abe, including this author, and went as far as altering coverage in an Orwellian way in keeping with the rightist policy of white-washing history with obfuscating euphemisms. Terms such as “forced laborers” and “sex slaves” referring to victims of the Imperial Army, were stricken from the Japan Times style-sheet.
It was no coincidence, as a leaked tape reveals, that the Japan Times “scored” an exclusive interviewwith the sitting prime minister as a reward for cleaning up shop and getting rid of erstwhile critics. NHK, a quasi-governmental national television station, also came under intense pressure to alter coverage deemed unfavorable to the interests of the ruling clique of the ruling party, both through the appointment of the inexperienced Abe loyalists, such as Momii Katsuto who became Chairman, and the ever-present implicit threat of funding cuts.
I believe my selection as an Abe Fellow was free of political influence, as the application procedure is outsourced to the SSRC in New York, but my access and ability to get things done in Japan was hampered by a body of freelance work covering Japan over a period of 25 years, including published critiques of rightist revisionism in manga, movies and other media.
Still, there is little joy in marking the end of the Abe era, despite its rightist politics, media power plays and hopelessly old school thinking, because the man stepping down is not alone in thinking that Japan can do no wrong. Of the handful of men most likely to replace him, most of them share the quasi-racial national chauvinism expressed in Abe’s book, “Towards a Beautiful Country: My Vision for Japan.”
Some of his right-hand men are even more unforgivingly right-wing than he and think Abe is too soft on China and Koreans on both sides of the DMZ.
It is to Abe’s credit (and a credit to his accumulation of power and prestige) that he was able to soften his party’s hardline stance on China. It’s a “Nixon-in-China” dynamic, by which only hard-core conservatives can get away with floating bold policy changes that would sink a liberal leader. Under Abe, any thaw with North Korea remained a non-starter, because he banked his political credibility on being a voice for Japanese abducted by the Pyongyang regime. But during his most recent tenure in office, the long-contentious, borderline explosive China relationship stabilized and showed signs of modest improvement, helped by the people-to-people honeymoon of the Chinese tourist boom in Japan.
Although Abe never ceased to break bread with racists and rightists in his LDP coalition, he prudently refrained from irking Beijing with deliberately provocative visits to Yasukuni Shrine and other acts that deigned to glorify the perfidy that was militaristic wartime Japan.
One odd and unexpected legacy of Abe’s latter years in power is his chummy relationship with Donald Trump. Eager to be on friendly terms with “the Don” he jumped the gun and visited Trump at Trump Tower between election and inauguration in 2016. He lavished attention on the US president during his visit to Japan, even if it meant eating hamburgers instead of more delicious Japanese food. He tagged along with Trump on the golf course, even though it caused him to tumble into a sand trap. Few leaders have worked so hard to stay on good terms with the erratic American president, and while it didn’t stop Trump from stabbing Japan in the back in policy terms, the personal relationship survived even after it no longer thrived.
Let's hope both men have ample time for hamburgers and golf come this November.
