Serious Erosion of Supports

As has been predicted, supporting rate of Shinzo Abe administration steeply declined a few days after his Liberal Democratic Party passed eleven security bills in the House of Representatives. It was a clear reflection of the fact that an overwhelming number of people in Japan were against those bills or unilateral legislative procedure promoted by LDP. Abe’s political basis was significantly eroded by his insistence on his personal political agenda.

The poll operated by Kyodo News Agency showed major decline in supporting rate of Abe Cabinet. It got down by 9.7 percentage points, from 47.4% in last month to 37.7% of this time. 51.6% of answerers did not support Abe Cabinet, marking the first turnover between “support” and “not support” for the first time since December 2013 when Abe administration embarked on.

Main reason was apparently forcible legislative procedure by leading LDP and Komeito over the security bills. 73.3% of the responder recognized taking votes without attendance of the opposite parties as “not good,” while only 21.4% thought it to be “good.” Protesters against passing the bills in this session of the Diet increased by 5.1 percentage points, marking as high as 68.2%, while supporters reduced to 24.6%. Opposite against the bills marked 61.5%, overtaking 27.5% of the supporters.

It is obvious that Abe did not make every effort to achieve broad consensus. 82.9 % of the answerers did not think that Abe had explained about the bills enough. Even 56.6% found the bills to be violating the Constitution of Japan. People who discredited their Prime Minister increased by 7.6 percentage points, reaching to 27.9%. It is fair to say that Abe significantly lost his popularity with inadequate handling of the security bills.

After passing the bills in the House of Representatives, the movement against Abe administration is prevalent in everywhere in Japan. Responding to the calls by liberal writers or journalists, civil groups made demonstration in cities and towns, raising panels reading “Never Forgive Abe Politics.” Abe’s decisions made by logic of Tokyo, including forcible construction of new military base in Okinawa or resumption of nuclear power plants, face fundamental protest from Hokkaido to Okinawa.

LDP lawmakers are making countermeasures against the campaign with simple reasoning of insecurity around Japan. Supporters for the presentation wrongly believes that United States will wage a war against China to defend Japan, when China made an aggression to a small islands, or rocks, without Japanese resident in the ocean far south of mainland Japan. The poll showed that Japanese people were getting to know the misperception of Abe administration.