US hails Japan’s Abe for ambitions that divide Japan

President Barack Obama rolled out the red carpet this week for Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe who touted an “alliance of hope” with the US to foster stronger military and trade ties in Asia and beyond.

After the fanfare fades and Abe returns to Tokyo on Sunday, the question remains whether he will be able to sell his plans to boost defense and open Japanese markets to a public facing a stuttering economy and suspicious of military engagement.
“Abe is trying to push through policies that aren’t popular,” said Shihoko Goto, senior Northeast Asia associate at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center’s Asia program. “The Japanese are very supportive of the pacifist constitution and he’s going to have to have that debate on whether Japan should play a more robust role in defense.”
Abe bookended his visit to the American capital with the adoption of new defense guidelines to expand his nation’s military role, and a speech to a joint session of Congress -- the first by a Japanese Prime Minister -- in which he urged American lawmakers to seal the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12- nation trade deal that will link economies worth 40 per cent of the global economy.

‘By Summer’

Japan is “resolved to take yet more responsibility for the peace and stability in the world,” Abe said. “Let the two of us, America and Japan join our hands and do our best to make the world a better, a much better place to live.”
The 60-year-old leader also pledged to push through parliament “by this coming summer” new laws to put his reinterpretation of the constitution into action.
Opposition Democratic Party of Japan leader Katsuya Okada criticised Abe for setting a deadline for legislation before it has been debated in Parliament.
“It’s unprecedented to make such a promise abroad, let alone in Congress, when the bills have not yet even been submitted,” Okada said Thursday in an e-mailed statement, in which he accused Abe of ignoring the Japanese people and Parliament.
Amid territorial tensions with an increasingly assertive China, Abe is hemmed in by the current constitution that was imposed by the US after World War II that limits the military’s role as purely defensive. The legislation would allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to respond if the US comes under attack.

Divided Public

In a poll conducted by Kyodo News a month ago, 45 per cent of respondents said they were opposed to the bills changing Japan’s defense stance, while nearly 41 per cent were in favor.
Tobias Harris of Teneo Intelligence said Abe will struggle to get these security reforms through, unless he is able to overturn public opinion that has been “preset for a long time.”
“Abe wants Japan to be a first-tier great power, playing the great game in Asia and beyond, balancing Chinese power and countering its influence and doing that even through military means,” Harris added. “I just don’t think the Japanese have an appetite for their country being in the game in the way that Abe wants Japan to be.”

‘Sweeping Reforms’

Abe described the TPP as a keystone of the relationship, speaking of “sweeping reforms” in Japan’s agriculture sector to address US concern about the industry’s decades-long reluctance to open its markets.
While the powerful agricultural sector has long backed the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, Abe has taken on the nation’s largest farm lobby -- an opponent of TPP -- and submitted a bill to Parliament to weaken its power. The move led to the resignation earlier this month of the group’s chairman.
“The unpopularity of the TPP is going to be a challenge,” Goto said. “But Abe wants Japan to be a leader, and that will have to be another discussion Abe has when he returns home.”
The trade pact is part of Abe’s plan to to breath new life into the world’s third-largest economy after more than a decade of deflationary drift. Even so, retail sales are sluggish, industrial production has fallen for six months and inflation still trails the Bank of Japan’s 2 per cent target.
Abe and Obama signaled that they have inched closer to an agreement on the TPP, Matthew Goodman, Center for Strategic and International Studies senior adviser for Asian economics, said on a conference call with reporters. While negotiators are still to agree on areas such as automotive parts and rice, Goodman said the momentum will help reach a final agreement.

Courtesy: Bloomberg News