Long shadow of Japan’s past

The visit of the Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe as the chief guest at the Republic Day celebration has been greeted with a uniformly good press and seen as reconfirming the growing importance of the India-Japan’s relationship. It follows close on the heels of the December visit of the Japanese emperor and empress. India seems to have arrived on the Japanese stage.
But where is Japan today? And what exactly is Abe doing? Before thinking about India’s relationship, it is necessary to understand the challenges that Japan faces and his agenda for meeting these challenges.
The Japanese are at yet another turning point in their national lives, grappling with serious issues that will affect them and their neighbourhood, and the global community at large. First, economic stagnation and an aging population have seriously weakened the economic and social fabric of the country. The challenge of China looms large, but also taking care of an aging population has meant opening the country’s doors to immigration. The increase in foreign residents and immigrants has brought more people with multi-cultural backgrounds into the universities, workplace and public life, creating both a greater openness as well as a backlash.
Abe began his second term with a promise to turn the economy around, what everyone was looking for, but his policies have not really delivered the expected results. Private consumption is declining and even though the yen has become cheaper, exports, in volume terms, are going south. The shutdown of nuclear power generation has meant that Japan now imports more fossil fuels so it has a trade deficit.  
Abe looks at the social turmoil and his answer is to go back to the past by increasing control of government over both the individual and corporations. He wants to restore so-called ‘traditional spiritual values’, promote the central place of the imperial house and create a new constitution built on the Japanese character.
The Abe cabinet has railroaded new legislation to protect national secrets that has been described as hastily drafted, sweeping in its scope and vague. This has been done under US pressure, which says it wants legislation that is compatible with its own. The law has been welcomed in the US but widely opposed in Japan. Civil servants who leak information can get up to 10 years for giving information and journalists up to five years for abetting them. It empowers bureaucrats to decide what should be kept out of the public domain and classify documents as secret for up to 60 years. Public opinion polls suggest that over 80 per cent oppose the law and there have been large demonstrations against it, and that too in a country where not many usually take to the streets.
The law is a step in a larger plan to realise the nationalist agenda of revising the constitution to allow Japanese troops to take part in combat operations overseas. Abe’s attempts to revise the constitution are aimed at what he calls “breaking out of the box” by changing Article 9 which renounces war. This will allow Japan to participate in collective defense as well as export arms. Abe draws his support from conservative groups, such as the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership. It is to appeal to this constituency that Abe officially visited  the Yasukuni shrine, where the war dead, and for Abe more importantly, those designated as war criminals by the Tokyo war crimes tribunal, are memorialised.
Abe’s policies with China really play to this constituency and prepare the ground for his agenda to revise the constitution. He is really not thinking of how to work to resolve tensions and create a more congenial atmosphere. Abe has roiled the waters over the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu (Japanese/Chinese names) islands. The status of the islands is a problem that has been handed down from the end of the war and admits no easy solution. Taiwan doesn’t support Japan, and neither does South Korea as it has its own disputes with Japan.
Japanese business however, cannot do without China. A majority still favours working there despite the boycotts and political problems, though some are looking to move to Southeast Asia. Abe, while ratcheting up the tension with China, which will allow him to export arms and militarise Japan, is looking at Japan’s capabilities in nuclear technology as an answer to the country’s economic problems. The economic sanctions against India that Japan imposed in 1998 have been forgotten, as India is now an important market for Japanese technology. Last year, Abe’s government signed a nuclear export agreement with Turkey, and is looking at other markets such as Vietnam. India could be a lucrative market of upwards of US $60 billion for Japanese industry.
It’s more than ironic that post-Fukushima, as the Japanese people struggle with the fallout of the ‘triple disaster’ and others look to an alternative source of energy — Abe’s patron, the former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, opposes him, and even his wife, Abe Akie, is against the export of nuclear energy — Abe is going full steam ahead.
Abe’s political programme is contentious both within his country and in the region. There is opposition from his traditional opponents, from within his own party, and from his ally the New Komei Party. Business and industry groups are not happy, and the intelligentsia is deeply dissatisfied. Abe may be trying to complete his father-in-law Kishi Nobusuke’s (Prime Minister from 1957-60) unfinished agenda. Kishi reversed many of the democratic reforms carried out by the US during the Allied occupation of Japan, but he failed to give the police the powers they had in pre-war Japan, and in revising the ‘peace’ constitution. Abe seeks to complete his legacy but where does this fit in with Indian objectives?
The author is Professor of Modern Japanese History, Institute of Chinese Studies