Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reacts during a news conference at the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo on December 13. Kishida said he would tackle a major funding scandal within his party “like a ball of fire”. Photo: AFP
Opinion
Macroscope
by Anthony Rowley
Macroscope
by Anthony Rowley
Japan an island of stability in the Asia-Pacific? Think again
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his party are flailing in response to a fundraising scandal, shaking Japan’s image as an island of stability
Japan’s political structure has clearly not matured and stabilised in the post-war period to the same extent that its institutional and economic structure has
Japan is an island of political and economic stability in an Asia-Pacific region full of geostrategic threats and ideological tensions. This is at least the perception cultivated by Japan and some of its allies, but is it still valid?
How does this view square with the spectacle of prosecutors descending en masse recently on the offices of key factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – supposedly a pillar of Japan’s stability – over a political funding scandal?
How does it square with the fact that current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida could soon be forced to step down by his party, just a couple of years after taking office, in the face of withering attacks from the Japanese media over his handling of government affairs?
The 99-member Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyukai faction, the largest in parliament, which former prime minister Shinzo Abe had led, along with the 40-member faction led by former LDP secretary general Toshihiro Nikai, is at the centre of a political funding scandal that is also reaching into other party factions and into the heart of the Kishida administration.
The scandal involves under-reported revenue from political fundraisers. LDP factions usually set targets for members selling tickets to these events, and in some instances, surplus revenue from ticket sales went to those who surpassed their targets but was not properly declared to the tax authorities. Over a five-year period, these kickbacks reportedly have totalled around 500 million yen (US$3.5 million) for Abe faction members and 100 million yen for Nikai faction members.
It seems more accurate to portray Japan now as a nation which has been shaken to its core by internecine political warfare and which will require fundamental reforms if the image of stability is to be preserved or regained.
Officials from the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office enter a building to search the office of Shisuikai, a faction of the Liberal Democratic Party, in Tokyo on Decmeber 19. Japanese prosecutors raided offices of the ruling party over a funding scandal that forced Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to replace four ministers last week. Photo: AFP
The implications and potential repercussions are many and complex. What impact will they have, for example, on the world’s third-largest economy and its status as a leading trading and investor nation, on the yen and, not least, on the Tokyo stock market?
The twist in the situation – which is of obvious concern to Japan’s Western allies as well as those in Asia who view Japan as a bulwark against what they see as an increasingly assertive China – is that the scandal comes at a time when the Japanese economy appears to be entering a period of renewed strength and stability. That could be at risk now.
Kishida has been forced to fire a raft of key cabinet members, including several he had drawn from the ranks of the former Abe faction within the ruling LDP. This has created a major political crisis which seems likely to continue and grow more intense as Japan enters the new year.
Like most things to do with Japanese politics, the true origins of the situation are difficult to discern. Central government politics is enigmatic at the best of times, while the machinations of the Japanese bureaucracy are often opaque and official prosecutors can act like they are a law unto themselves.
If Japan’s apparent stability is no longer underpinned by a stable polity but rests instead on shifting political sands then the country might, through the eyes of some at least, come to be viewed as an unpredictable and unreliable partner. There are those in Japan who are opposed to what they see as being the nation’s liberal drift and who would like to see a more autocratic form of government. They also favour constitutional revision that would allow Japan greater military freedoms.
Coincidentally or otherwise, the controversy has seen veteran politician Ichiro Ozawa enter the fray. He is attempting to forge an alliance of opposition political parties that is capable of taking on the LDP in a general election – which must be held by 2025 at the latest – and creating a genuine two-party democracy in Japan.
Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the opposition People’s Life First party, smiles as he attends a welcome reception for members of a Japan-US international exchange project in Tokyo on November 12, 2012. Photo: AFP
Known as the “shadow shogun”, Ozawa thought he had achieved that ambition in 1993 when he created what seemed like a workable two-party system by cementing alliances among opposing factions, thereby ending the LDP’s post-war monopoly on power. His newly formed party lost power a year later, however, when an LDP desperate to regain control entered a coalition with the Japan Socialist Party. But Ozawa’s assertion that what is in effect single-party democracy tends towards corruption is looking more valid now and a new political force could emerge.
If Kishida should step down amid dismal ratings in newspaper-conducted popularity polls, and if his successor is chosen from the ranks of the LDP, the most likely candidate could be former LDP secretary general Shigeru Ishiba. A former defence minister, Ishiba is popular among voters and the party could be in serious need of popular support.
Other outcomes are possible, but it’s clear that Japan’s political structure has not matured and stabilised in the post-war period to the same extent that its institutional and economic structure has. This is evidenced by repeated bouts of political turbulence, among which the latest could be the most severe.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and something will be drawn in to fill it in Japan. Whether it is good or bad is the key question for the new year, and a great deal hangs on the outcome – for Japan and for the world.
Anthony Rowley is a veteran journalist specialising in Asian economic and financial affairs
