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| Prime Minister Shinzo Abe |
By Andrew Oplas
Shinzo Abe’s constitutional reinterpretation has the potential to pay big dividends for the nation.
“People of Japan, be confident!” So said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a keynote speech to the Japanese parliament in February, an unusually emotional appeal for support of his bold constitutional revision and economic revitalization agenda.
Postwar Japanese prime ministers have rarely consolidated the political capital needed to engage in serious game-changing policy reform, but Abe’s December election triumph – the so-called victory without a mandate – presents a rare opportunity to cement lasting foreign policy and economic metamorphosis.
In pursuit of constitutional reinterpretation and revision, the prime minister follows a slow but determined course pioneered by other Liberal Democratic Party leaders dating as far back as Kakuei Tanaka, the “Shadow Shogun” of the 1970s, and including Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi. Abe broke through 70 years of foreign policy ambiguity and paralysis with a precedent-setting decision in July last year. The Cabinet announced its intent to broaden the legal scope of actions Japan may take under certain scenarios to strengthen collective self-defense, and more flexibly allow participation of Japanese forces in overseas collective security missions.
After December’s election, Abe is now pursuing an even bolder goal, nothing short of the revision of the “Peace Constitution,” a document drawn up by the Americans and Allied Forces in the unique context of 1945 following Japan’s defeat in World War II. This is a significant development for a nation that, ever since the Occupation, has had no intelligible foreign policy strategy apart from a dependence on U.S. military forces under a security agreement, and generous official development assistance to many countries in Asia, most of which suffered under Japanese tutelage during the Pacific War. Long constrained in its ability to respond to crisis contingencies, Japan’s leadership seeks a freer hand.
Read the full story at The Diplomat