After his historic December 2012 return to power and the subsequent ‘snap’ election two years later, last week Japan’s prime minister Shinzo Abe reshuffled his cabinet, but only after inking the contentious Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement, the scope of which makes 1994’s Nafta look like a town twinning.
We can perhaps forgive Abe, of the country’s historically dominant rightwing Liberal Democratic party, for trying to cut some domestic swagger by reasserting credibility on the back of this, along with the reboot of his signature ‘Abenomics’ with a further set of ‘arrows’ to stimulate Japan’s flagging economy and stagnant living standards for a ‘dynamic society in which all are active’ (sound familiar?).
Before anyone calls Iain Duncan Smith’s distant Japanese relatives in triumph, however, perhaps now is not the time to mention Abe’s aspiration for a Davos-friendly ‘society in which all women shine’, considering the reduction of female cabinet numbers from four to three of 19 ministerial berths (with an average age of 60).
Progress readers may be wondering at this point: where is Japan’s centre-left in all this? To put it into stark relief, at the December 2014 lower house elections the Democratic Party of Japan polled 59 of a possible 242 seats of the main house of the Japanese Diet (parliament), barely ahead of the nationalist Japan Restoration party (think the United Kingdom Independence party).
Many consider the DPJ’s short stint as the main ruling party (which shattered the so-called ‘1955 System’ of the LDP’s postwar entrenched dominance) following the historic 2009 general election loss by the LDP, ostensibly defanged its potency as a challenger to the LDP, by dint of allowing it to fall flat on its face amid a constant succession of leadership failures and unedifying acrimony that even now would make many in Labour blanch from afar.
The uneasy alliance of nationalists and reformers in the Japan Restoration party (since rebadged as the Japan Innovation party) formed around the magnetic TV-friendly charisma of Osaka’s mayor Toru Hashimoto most has since seen the party split, with the reformers formerly belonging to the DPJ itself politely knocking at their door requesting possible readmittance as part of a wider realignment of opposition parties.
Despite being a hideously out-of-touch gerontocratic elite, for now the LDP look safely ensconced in Nagata-cho (Tokyo’s SW1), with Abe’s recent uncontested leadership victory seeing him through to 2017 amid weak polling for the DPJ.
Within a UK-Japan context that is not to say that we need consider everything written off. Between 2001-6, the Junichiro Koizumi premiership’s affectionate ties and fascination with New Labour abounded and the ‘Westminster system’ became the reach-for panacea for both main parties seeking to underscore their governing projects (Koizumi sadly later affected a somewhat eccentric street campaigning posture seeking to influence 2014’s Tokyo governor election over the issue of nuclear power).
On the back of this, Japan has witnessed a resurgent and energised young left presence in the form of the Students Emergency for a Liberal Democracy in response to the Abe administration’s provocative tearing-up of the postwar pacifist constitution. But Japan also faces a wider range of illustratory yet, on the face of it, insurmountable challenges around ageing, decent work and rural decline.
As progressive internationalists, Labour needs to consider where it can play its part in regional political cooperation and renewal around these. Next summer’s upper house elections and the electoral cooperation pacts fashioned between centre and left opposition parties will at least give some indication of what shape Japan’s own progressive internationalists are in.
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Andrew Stevens is a member of Labour Friends of Japan, which tweets @LabourJapan
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