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With Virtually Unbridled Power, Japan's PM Charting Constitutional Revision After July Election Victory

This article is more than 8 years old.

In my last post I referred to the Warring States period in Japanese history (called the Sengoku Period by historians to distinguish it from the centuries earlier and unrelated Warring States period in China) that ended with Tokugawa Ieyasu’s victory in the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara which ushered in the 265 year Edo Period under the Tokugawa shogunate.

It is whimsical, but it would not be too outlandish to say that the summer of 2016 could produce a Sekigahara-like victory for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, effectively wiping out the last remnants of opposition and constraints on his exercise of power, enabling him to achieve his long-held goal of rewriting Japan’s Constitution, and turning the page on Japan’s WWII defeat.

An election for the Diet upper House of Councilors is mandated within 30 days before the July 25 end of the session. Half of the 242 members of the body will be elected. Today Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party/New Komeito (LDP/NK) coalition has 134 seats in the body. In July 58 current LDP/NK seats will be contested, against 63 opposition seat up, of which 42 are held by the main opposition party, the Democratic Party (DPJ).

What seems at this point likely, if not inevitable, is that Abe—who will be relentless and ruthless in its pursuit throughout the next six months—will in July achieve his sought-after two-thirds super majority in the Diet upper house, removing what has historically been an insuperable obstacle to constitutional revision.

The question is whether Abe will—like Tokugawa Ieyasu—seek to strike the final, death blow to the opposition:  that is, dissolve the 480 member lower house, setting up a general election of both the upper and lower houses.  I think Abe will do so and his surrogates have begun dropping hints to this effect.

The last lower house election December 14, 2014 delivered Abe his sought-after two thirds super majority with a combined 325 seats (LDP 291; NK 35), against the opposition parties’ combined 155 seats.  Within the opposition the DPJ was hardly dominant with only 73 seats. The second largest block was the national version of Osaka mayor Hashimoto Toru’s Japan Innovation Party (Ishin no to) (formerly Japan Restoration Party).

In a previous post I noted that media hubbub that attended a surprise Abe invitation to Hashimoto to a private dinner in December. It does not take much imagination to guess that Abe is maneuvering to enlist Hashimoto and his party in an effective post-election “grand alliance” aimed squarely at achieving constitutional revision, a goal that Hashimoto is known to share.

Memory fails to produce a period and condition of weakness and vulnerability of the DPJ and all other opposition parties, with the possible exception of the Japan Communist Party, comparable to that which exists today. Strangely, it is not that there is no popular opposition to the LDP/NK political and economic agenda.  On the contrary, public opinion polls have consistently demonstrated that many of Abe’s policies—most importantly his national security and defense policies—are opposed by a majority of Japanese voters.

Most Japanese are resigned to the 2% increase to 10% in the consumption tax scheduled for April 2017, mistakenly believing it to be the necessary and sufficient price for maintaining Japan’s old age welfare system. And, while opposed by strong lobbies, mainstream media and consumer group support for the TPP trade agreement has won general, if grudging (due to perceived and actual U.S. strong arm negotiating tactics) acceptance.

But more generally Abe’s economic policies—so-called “Abenomics”—have not been particularly popular. Most culpably, the mad Keynesian program and regime of Bank of Japan governor Kuroda Haruhiko, by devaluing the Japanese yen, has been visiting hardship on Japanese consumers and essentially undermining living standards (while temporarily—and, as we have seen recently, reversibly--boosting stock prices), not to mention contributing to an increasingly dangerous systematic weakening in global financial markets.

How, then can Abe ensure his “death blow” victory in the June-July general election, capturing over two-thirds of both  Diet chambers, and--what must follow Diet passage of constitutional amendments—eventually win approval of a majority of all Japanese voters?  The answer seems to be in the “second arrow” of Abenomics:  increased government deficit spending on everything from U.S.-made weapons systems, to Olympic stadiums, to overseas infrastructure projects, to childcare centers and subsidies for having children.

Notwithstanding the scheduled slight increase in the consumption tax next year, the Abe government has shown negligible real interest in and has been mostly paying lip service to fiscal discipline, taking no actions that would begin to deal effectively with Japan’s massive and rising national debt.  William Pesek writing in Barron’s on January 9, cites an OECD forecast that Japan’s current 250% debt-to-GDP ratio would balloon to 400% by 2040 without reform and notes that “last year Tokyo’s debt hit a high of 1.057 quarillion yen (about $9 trillion).”

Pesek warns of a possible, surprise “Japanese debt crash” in 2016.  But the much more likely scenario is one of business-as-usual, purposeful election year profligacy as Abe pursues his cherished and now within sight lifetime ambition.  Am I not alone in feeling that the power monopoly that now characterizes Japan is really for worry.