Adjustment of Twisted Parliament

This sweeping victory has a lot of choices on where to go. Being seriously wanting to get majorities in both Houses, Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, at last obtained the freehand of lawmaking in the National Diet, as a result of the election of the House of Councillors on Sunday. Although he insists on the revitalizing Japan’s economy, his true resolution has to be the constitutional amendment. Given three years of his term, Abe tries to pave the way to reach his personal agenda.

While the top priority in policy implementation is making people realize the positive effect of his economic policy, or Abenomics, Abe’s own interest is cast on the Amendment of Constitution. He keeps mixed feeling in the victory, which did not achieved two-thirds majority in the Upper House required for taking initiative of the amendment. It is possible that Liberal Democratic Party includes New Komeito, adding to Japan Restoration Party and Your Party, to have two-thirds. However, New Komeito is not so active in promoting the amendment, and Abe cannot have a clear vision of getting simple majority in popular vote, which is ultimately required.

So, he rather looks to the reinterpretation of collective self-defense right. Insisting the necessity of maintaining Japan-US alliance, he assails that a Japanese ship needs to respond to an attack on a US ship, by freeing Japanese self-defense force from the restriction of the Article 9 of the Constitution. By emphasizing it as an enhancement of the Japan-US security cooperation, Abe tries to persuade US that the reinterpretation has benefit in the bilateral relationship.

However, those agenda have negative elements in terms of the relationship with neighbor nations of Japan. China and South Korea showed negative response to Abe’s victory, because they worry about aggressive attitude in reinterpretation of the post-war history. Considering the possible resentment from the neighbors, it would be unlikely for Abe to visit Yasukuni Shrine on August 15^th, the War-end Memorial Day, although he has regretted not to have visited it in his first term in 2007.

After all, there are a few projects for Abe to tackle positively. One of them is improving the situation of Japan’s economy. His growth policies need to be shaped up for spreading wealth to every corner of Japan’s economy. Whether or not the economic recovery will be successful determines Abe’s success next three years. Against his expectation, there will actually be a few chances to promote his ambitious agenda in security and constitutional issues.