By: Andrew Zhang
Last Sunday, the Liberal Democrats, the dominating party in Japanese
politics, won a 2/3 supermajority in both the Upper and Lower Houses. This power
will be used to attempt to finally complete one of the goals of the recently passed
former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe: remilitarization.
Remilitarization, the act of re-arming a country or region that has been
disarmed, has always been a controversial topic in modern Japanese politics. It first
came to be as a clause in the Japanese constitution after pressure from American
occupying forces, and for almost a century, has stayed there with little change.
But there are still many problems to address before the Liberal Democrats
can get to their end goal of remilitarizing. Currently, inflation rates are high, the
Japanese Yen is withering, COVID-19 infection rates are rising, and prices are going
up due to the war in Ukraine. In the long term, the population is aging, while birth
rates are dwindling. Coupled with the stigma around nuclear weapons in Japan,
remilitarization may as well be a short-lived political ambition, similar to the
Mexican-American Border Wall.
Many experts are more neutral on the topic. “Kishida could get things done
if there are things that he wants to get done. He has some popularity and he’s going
to have a majority, but as we know, there are so many economic headwinds for
everyone in the world — dealing with inflation and an emerging markets debt crisis
and the war in Ukraine — and maybe that would damage any leader at some point.”
said Nick Kapur, a historian of modern Japan at Rutgers University.
Right now, he must look towards the needs of his constituents. Most who
voted for the Liberal Democrats were simply everyday citizens who cared about
taking care of their family. “I’m interested in prices, wages, daily life, medical
services and childcare,” said Risako Sakaguchi, 29, who cast her votes for Liberal
Democratic candidates at a polling station in Saitama, a suburb of Tokyo.
Others were focused on better wages. “I’m interested in the economy. Wages
should be raised, otherwise, virtually, our living standard is declining.” said Ayumi
Sekizawa, 31, who works for a real estate company in Tokyo and had voted for the
Liberal Democrats this election because of Shinzo Abe’s death, but also because he
voted for them every year due to his belief that there weren’t any other good
parties.
But not many of the voters wanted remilitarization. Shinzo Abe’s reign also
had a Liberal Democrat supermajority within the Japanese parliament, but tensions
in the coalition of parties that made up that supermajority, coupled with a lack of
support from the public, prevented the Liberal Democrats from allowing
remilitarization.
Even foreign experts are seeing the issue in focusing on remilitarization.
“Given that attention being spent on constitutional revision is attention not being
paid to other stuff, there is going to be a penalty for it, especially when people are
so concerned about household issues.” said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the
Center for American Progress who oversees work on Asia.
The Liberal Democrats couldn’t get all of those seats in the Japanese
government alone, of course. They worked with allied parties, such as the Komeito,
who have a different stance on Japan as a whole, but still work with the Liberal
Democrats to gain as much power as they can. As such, this kind of coalition can
easily get disturbed, as they don’t really rely on similar political stances to form
bonds.
Instead, the coalition relies more on power trades. The parties have, in some
areas of Japan, been telling their voters to vote for the other party. The Liberal
Democratic party gets more seats that would sway in their favor, while the smaller
parties would be able to voice their opinions more powerfully.
Even through all of this criticism, the Liberal Democrats are fixated on
remilitarization. “I have the responsibility to take over the ideas of former Prime
Minister Abe,” the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, told a crowd west of
Tokyo on Saturday, the day after Mr. Abe’s killing, as he campaigned for their
party’s candidates for the Upper House of Parliament.
Links to Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/10/world/asia/japan-election-abe.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/28/world/asia/japan-liberal-democratic-partyelection.html