Abe's New Year Resolution

For the Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, there comes a moment of truth this year. His new year resolution must be winning the election of the House of Councillors early summer, because it will, he believes, lift him to the position of historical great figure. What is the meaning of victory? It is restoring Japan to be a country which can fight a war.

To avoid any political trouble, Abe is carefully showing him as a moderate leader. “The result of our victory in the election of the House of Representatives is not a proof of confidence to us,” he reiterates. And he insists on saying he’s focusing on revitalizing Japan’s economy, although he has not been an economic specialist.

Rather, Abe would be defined as a specialist of retribution. As a young boy, he was with his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, at the Prime Minister’s resident, when protesters against the revision of Japan-US security treaty surrounded the parliament building in 1960. That traumatic moment made him determined to prove that his grandfather was right. His political group’s defeat against Kakuei Tanaka’s faction, which made Abe serious about regaining power in LDP as a mainstreamer. And he had to run again for the LDP leader for his own purpose of showing that he was not a gutless man who had stepped down as Prime Minister because of a stomachache.

At least for his own reason, he needs to show himself as a kind of macho man. Accidentally or not, he has a number of political macho colleagues, who tend to lean to the right wing movement. Some of them uphold possessing nuclear weapons, and others are not reluctant to have military collision with China. Their motivation is not for stability in East Asia, but for restoring a sense of pride as an independent nation.

With the victory early summer, Abe projects to change the article nine of the constitution. Though it is said to be responsible for Japan-US security relationship, the basic motivation of the amendment is to make the constitution independent from the concept which, they argue, was intruded by US officials at the time of occupation. He also change official interpretation on collective self-defense rights. Government of Japan now recognize that it has that right, although it can not exercise. Abe tries to make that right usable.

On his and his colleagues mind, there seems to exist a war option. The problem is that there is no obvious target. Considering the tendency in Japan to take China as a potential threat, they don't even have any clear scenario of winning China. Idea supposed to have occupied their minds are: yes, this is the time that we enhance our defense against China, because DPJ administration undermined it; to get support from US, we need to show our willingness of suffering to defend our land; to maintain enough power to defend our land, we may need to reintroduce the draft system.

For them, the war is to regain Japan’s sovereignty. But they are not sure about who will fight it, and sure that they themselves will never be willing to fight it. It therefore is somebody’s war. So, the victory of LDP in last general election means reappearance of those naïve conservatives.