Shinzo Abe's First 100 Days: Sasaki Takeshi

Shinzo Abe’s Government: Its Visible Weaknesses, Perceptions of it and its Agenda Setting.

Presumably, the result of this is the logical development that is contained in “A Beautiful Country Japan”. Perhaps that is what Mr. Abe is thinking.

Whenever I listen to Mr. Abe speak he never uses the words “small government”. Rather, compared with Koizumi’s government, which basically thought of the government’s role in an extremely limited fashion, I feel that Mr. Abe views the role of the government in a more positive way.

In a certain sense, and from the perspective of those at Kasumigaseki too, Shinzo Abe’s government is not necessarily one that is against the current power of the government. Koizumi’s era wanted the government to play a more passive role. Therefore, the talk was all about making the government smaller. I don’t know whether Shinzo Abe’s government is trying to make the government smaller or not but the overall nuance seems to differ considerably from a course aiming to reduce it.

For that very reason, I think he dealt with the educational reform first. It was paramount to show the government was working hard in this area and that Mr. Abe was extremely devoted to the issue of the Basic Educational Law. I think the difference in tone between Shinzo Abe’s government and Koizumi’s government in this area of creating something new are very clearly cut.

However, the difficult thing with this is, once the policy has been made if you can’t handle questions of its appropriateness etc and various debates concerning the realization of the policies, which emerge, this will cause further confusion.

In many ways Koizumi “destroyed” the Liberal Democratic Party. That is a fact and now, it is possible that inside the party, there is a situation where many people feel lost and uncertain about what they should be doing. In the middle of this, there is Mr. Abe, who is trying to will his party on in a new direction, but if nobody follows him then there is a danger that Mr. Abe himself will be sucked in and buried in the middle of this prevailing atmosphere of directionless.

The Liberal Democratic Party has 300 seats in the Diet, so they won’t collapse that easily, but it is all the more worrying to have that many seats and yet be subject to a strange collapse. That is to say, in reality, although a government is in the process of collapse it can still manage to continue. However, governments that possess a large number of seats, tend to be more guarded. When the next election comes around、anxiety amongst party members increases.

So appealing to the citizens, who Genron NPO always emphasizes, and talking about promises that you will make, is easy, however, there are many politicians, who do not want to do this. If this is the case then for the time being the Liberal Democratic government will remain in power, and if “A” cabinet should collapse then talk will be of how “B” cabinet, will be able to do the job, regardless of the fact that it was built on the same basic foundation.

Whenever it is only the Prime Minister, who changes, then there is a possibility that the situation will only get worse. So if things do not go well for Mr. Abe, then I think there is no assurance that things will go well for his successor.

However, the government doesn’t want to break up. It can’t. It will survive. During that time international affairs will change and economic affairs will change and depending on luck, unexpected results will occur, but this will not necessarily prevent the debate from returning to the question, “What did Koizumi’s cabinet do?”

I think that there are weaknesses that accompany the fact that Shinzo Abe’s government is yet to undergo election. From the electorate’s perspective it seems, to a certain extent that Shinzo Abe is working from Koizumi’s manifesto. However, different people are in charge. The very nuance is also incorrect. One can make good use of a chance to make a fresh manifesto between the government and the people, to say that one would be able to bring such and such a policy into fruition. However, Shinzo Abe’s government has not been in a position to do this.

However, they have many seats in the Diet. Hence although it seems stable on the surface, there is a fear that on the inside their politics is becoming more and more vacuous. The government’s connection with the people is not clearly visible and so its rate of support has fallen. If the foundation of the government falls into disarray, then the remaining energy that is supporting the government will be just that little bit weaker. One gets the feeling that the fact that the government has not been elected by the people means, as a result, if the situation does not go well, then the meltdown of the present government will ensue.

Obviously, Shinzo Abe is in a situation where he does have a message to give to the nation. This is “A Beautiful Country, Japan” and “Constitutional Reform”. However, from the midst of the Liberal Democratic Party, there is talk that this will not be enough to win the election.

There is a difference of opinions on that point, however, there is an understanding that the government is losing touch with the people and so, to combat this, more committees are being established to deal with this.

As I mentioned earlier, there is concern that the relationship between the wide aim of “A Beautiful, Country Japan” and the policies to achieve this is either not clear or the relation is not being explained to the people.

It could be that there is perhaps a problem of perception regarding the gap between the philosophy of “A Beautiful County, Japan” and the issues that should be addressed at the moment. Perhaps the government is considering the present situation and therefore pursuing such and such policies, but people are getting the impression that it is just continuing along the same lines as the staunch policies of last year. It is also unclear whether, as a cabinet, they are debating based on their own real convictions and opinions or whether they are strangely trying to distance themselves from Koizumi’s course from last year, or again, whether they are not interested in that at all any more.

However, what I least understand is the core of the government’s message regarding the economy. To put it more clearly, compared with Koizumi’s Cabinet the present government is not clearly explaining how it will realize its policies.

Some say that policies are in motion in this area but I am not sure if that is really the case. Though they might say this, since the very beginning there have been no indications of how politicians are taking the realization of policies in this area into their own hands.

The government fails to explain this and what measures it will take to achieve this. Or may one judge from this that the government intends to cease what has been carried out thus far? It is impossible to judge what the government intends to do and whether this will connect with the core of the economic agenda. Politicians are offering explanations using hopeful arguments that, if they reply on macro-politics and manage to struggle through, then this will eventually bring motion into the economy. However, this sounds exceeding like an attitude of relying on other people to make things happen.

There are many ways we can connect this if we express the problem in terms of Japan’s issues with Asia. How will the government connect summit meetings with economic problems, will it handle issues in foreign relations? Or how will it combine the summit meetings with questions of security? To put it clearly having a system of summit meetings is not the aim, but rather, it is just a springboard. However, I am not sure that the government has started work with an aim whereby it will deal with such and such an issue and then end up with such and such a result.

The fact that the two heads of government had a summit meeting in Beijing and released a joint communiqué was an extremely important point in my opinion. However, after that, although there was a joint research group of scholars on history and there was talk of continuing relations between state heads, it is ultimately not visible what the government wants to do with China or what it intends to accomplish in this relationship. Once this is known and not before, only then can talk turn to self-assertion, however, the aims of this self-assertion have not been expressed.

Sino-Japan relations won’t take off from one minute to the next, but I think that within the structure of several stages of long term and mid term strategies, it is important that, more than last year, the contents of Japan’s self-assertion become more concrete and proposals concerning this are made. If these things do not materialize then diplomacy in Asia will become extremely fragile and if it worsens, I believe it could perhaps draw to a halt.

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