Abe Shinzo’s Scandals are Symptoms of Unparalleled Failure in Japanese Civil Society

Richard Lloyd Parry’s book Ghosts of the Tsunami is easily the best book written about Japan in the 21st century. He describes an outrageous spectacle that the nation witnessed after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. At an elementary school a half hour from the shore, children pleaded with their teachers to evacuate, and the teachers strangely refused, leading to the deaths of both children and teachers in the tsunami. The original tragedy is bewildering, but it was compounded by unbelievable insult in the months and years after the rubble was cleared. The surviving teachers, administrators, and bureaucrats, who were responsible for setting emergency directions for the school, put saving their own careers over making a proper apology to the survivors and the bereaved, and engaged in a half-assed, sophomoric conspiracy to cover up their own responsibility for the mass death.

This story may sound a little familiar to some Japanophiles, because it served as a loose inspiration for the anime film Your Name. What both Parry and the director of Your Name recognize is that Japan’s bureaucratic incapacity is not merely a matter of having the wrong people doing the jobs. It’s a systemic failure, a rot spreading throughout a culture that is increasingly unable to use its traditional self-policing mechanisms to root out corruption or incompetence. Parry writes:

Technically, nothing is missing; all the moving parts are there. Japan has an unambiguous written constitution, an independent judiciary, and a free press. There are multiple political parties; elections are uncontaminated by coercion or corruption. And yet there is a stagnancy and lack of conviction to Japan’s political life. In North America and Europe, there is no lack of odious and incompetent leaders; but there is a sense of creative friction and of evolution, of a political marketplace in which ideas and individuals less popular and effective yield, over time, to those that prove themselves fitter for purpose, and where politics — even if it has its wrong turns and dead ends — is at least in constant motion. In Japan, this is not the case …

One of Parry’s informants relates that “if you talk too much or do anything controversial, the authorities won’t help you. They won’t repair the road by your house. They won’t give the benefit of official services.” This may be have been a fine way to keep order in a medieval village, but in an industrial or post-industrial capitalist society — not so much.

Since Japan initiated its Westernization in 1868, its public order has been maintained by a myth that the chaos and anger of true democracy is unnecessary. Unlike America, where people have a wide variety of opinions on what government and police can accomplish, Japanese citizens have been for the most part persuaded that government is composed of centrist bureaucrats dully and quietly regulating society. In the brief times that this narrative failed, the West’s peaceful, “collectivist,” Zen image of “Japanese culture” went totally out the window: the 1880s and 1930s, when a good number of politicians got the samurai sword treatment in their homes; and the late 1960s, when Japanese far-left extremists helped invent the concept of suicide bombing.

Will the late 2010s be another such time of radical change? Will the bureaucrats and politicians be pressured by public opinion into signing new deals with China, Russia, and the Koreas and reorienting Japan’s place in the world? Or will Japan continue to backslide into becoming an elderly, powerless vassal state of America? This year, and the next two or three after it, will likely be crucial in resolving such questions.

In 2010 I moved to Japan expecting that it would soon be able to break free of America. I imagined that Japan, which has maintained a very respectable GDP and a leadership position in international treaties, had enough competence and diligence in its vast bureaucracy that it would be able to make its own way in East Asia. The news that has come out of Tokyo in the past few years is making me question whether this is really the case. This is a country that has lost its capacity for leadership at a systemic level.

The Champion Ass-Kisser

Think of neoliberal, post-1991 Japan as a damaged ship. Somehow it has weathered two and a half “lost decades,” taking on massive amounts of national debt, but not sinking quite yet. It stays the course of neoliberalism even as the route becomes more treacherous, simply out of fear of change. The crew is constantly volunteering new people to take on the role of captain of the ship, proposing new possibilities for bailing out all the little leaks in the system. But there’s one problem with all the “alternatives” proposed for Japan in the last few decades: resistance to American power seems impossible to contemplate.

The failed student uprising of 1968, which I have discussed in detail on the Clash! podcast, was the last time it was seriously suggested that there might be an alternative to reliance on America. While white America pissed its proverbial pants over Japanese economic power in the 1980s, Japan was itself downgrading anti-Americanism from an actual political position to a mere reactionary slogan, as in Ishihara Shintaro’s famous 1989 book The Japan That Can Say No. Ishihara eventually gained political power for himself as governor of Tokyo, where he overstepped his authority by purchasing the disputed Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands as municipal property. But this move will not allow Japan to say “no” to the US — by angering China, it rather locks Japan into a suicide pact with American military brass, who have no interest in going to war over the Senkakus anyway.

Well before the US presidential election that supposedly changed everything, Japan was being run by Abe Shinzo, a prime minister who, although competent, is altogether lacking in leadership qualities. In April 2016, Abe told the Wall Street Journal that “I cannot conceive of any situation within the foreseeable future when the US presence wouldn’t be necessary … No matter who will be the next president, the Japan-US alliance is the cornerstone of Japan’s diplomacy.” In hindsight this is remarkable: Abe was the only world leader to surrender unconditionally to Trump. He did not even offer even the slightest indication that an American president might be able to do something to his disliking.

In fact, ass-kissing Abe found a natural partner in President Trump, a man whose greatest joy in life is having his ass kissed by powerful people (and who perhaps pursued the presidency to just that end). A numerical majority of Japanese people supported Abe after 2012 because of their perception that there is no trustworthy alternative to the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). But this quickly bred discontent in the Trump years, not over anything Trump did, but because the country slowly came to realize that not only was there no alternative to the LDP, but the LDP itself only had a single political message to offer: stay the course with America wherever America is going.

Trump probably appreciated being wined and dined, and being gifted “Make Alliance Even Greater” hats and a $3800 golf club. Abe and his advisors got Trump’s number as far as ass-kissing was concerned. But they seemed unable to understand that for Trump, a “deal” that opens in this fashion is not the beginning of a loving friendship, but something extremely exploitable. Hence Trump followed up with tariffs on Japanese steel and a meeting with North Korea behind Japan’s back.

The LDP used to have a wide range of views from left-liberal to right and a number of diverse factions. Now the LDP is trying to rally its entire membership around an intensified and militarized American alliance. After 2012, when Abe was re-elected, conservative civil society, including religious groups, business interests, and think tanks all rallied around him. More than ever before, a single man embodied the impossibility of any alternative.

The Moritomo Mess

This is why, starting in 2017, the left-wing media began nipping at Abe’s heels over some dirty business his wife had dragged him into. Quite unlike the First Lady in the United States, in Japan the prime minister’s wife has generally had no public role and has been free to lead her own life. Abe Akie, described by AFP as a “a freewheeling, flamenco-dancing socialite,” used this freedom to its full extent, pursuing many hobbies around the country and revealing an idiosyncratic, spiritualist nationalism on Facebook posts that initially went unread by the nation’s media. In 2015, she exhorted critics of the handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster to “put themselves in radiation’s shoes.” Imagine if you were working as hard as you could to provide energy for human beings, argued Akie — then one little accident later, they all hate you and curse your name! Characteristic of Akie’s public conduct, it was quirky, creative, and a frivolous, ignorant misreading of a very serious situation that would outrage victims of the Fukushima disaster if they knew about it. The media quietly ignored her posts at the time.

Akie wandered to odd parts of the country. She became a fan of the Hitsuki Shinji, an ultranationalist spiritualist text said to describe a global demonic conspiracy against the chosen nation Japan, and hung out with various people associated with the text. Then in 2015, she got pulled into Moritomo Gakuen, an ultranationalist Osaka kindergarten where every morning the children recite prewar pledges of allegiance to the Emperor. The principal of Moritomo was exuberant to have the prime minister’s wife on his side and, according to text messages between her and his wife, suggested that she pool her connections and money with his to open a full elementary school. They could call it Abe Shinzo Memorial Elementary, he said.

In 2017, left-wing newspapers discovered that Moritomo mysteriously got an 86 percent discount on the land it purchased for this school from the Finance Ministry. Over the course of the year the papers and opposition parties doggedly pursued this issue. It was quickly discovered that Moritomo had failed to properly cover the supposed toxic waste below their proposed elementary school playground, that Abe Akie had been listed as the school’s “honorary principal,” and that she had allegedly presented the school principal with a $9000 gift from her husband, an incident which she denied. The school, which had already been built, quickly shut down without ever taking in a student.

Normally, when a scandal of this size hits the Japanese papers, an official or a politician resigns. This is the time-tested way that the system avoids the appearance of being a corrupt political machine. Of course, corruption may still be hidden away here or there, but when it comes to light in the press, it’s assumed that someone important will quickly take responsibility for the errors. Resigning one’s post is meant to publicly show that the system still works.

What made the Moritomo case an epic, months-long tale is that nobody stepped up. Rather than public being appeased by an official resignation to prove that the system works, the system was demonstrating colossal failure at the national level. It was patently obvious that the bureaucrats responsible for the land sale were refusing to resign because they had acted on orders from Abe. But Abe couldn’t resign; he has accumulated far more connections and right-wing base support than any other Japanese prime minister in the 21st century, and his faction of the LDP would not be able to sustain the hit of his resignation. He promised that he would resign if and it could be proven that he had anything to do with the crooked sale of government land to a place which was literally named “Abe Shinzo Memorial Elementary,” and which his wife had eagerly endorsed.

This boast of irresponsibility was a big fat win for the newspapers — anything to sell more papers, after all. And as the press continued to push the story, things became increasingly ugly. Left-wing and right-wing papers began running “scandal” articles attempting to dirty the name of politicians on opposing sides of the issue. Scurrilous books were published by far-right authors, claiming the entire case was defamation by traitorous lefties. Prime Minister Abe altered parliamentary procedure so that he would not have to answer questions about Moritomo. The school principal, realizing he had become the designated fall guy, attempted to return Abe Akio’s $9000, but she refused it. Instead he and his wife were arrested over the shady deal, and the court rather dubiously deemed them flight risks. Japan doesn’t guarantee a constitutional right to a speedy trial, so for roughly a year they were imprisoned without bail. For some reason this does not raise the hackles of the Japanese.

The Breaking Point

Instead, what really made the case explode and become completely unacceptable to the public was a deleted line in an official document, not discovered until 2018. Anyone who has ever done business with a Japanese company, or lived in Japan, will be familiar with the reverence and awe with which official documents are held. A company newsletter, or a notice that an office is going on holiday, cannot simply be printed and handed out; each copy must be verified and stamped, generally by at least six different department heads (this is not an exaggeration).

In 2017, the official decision on the Moritomo land sale, as verified and stamped by the Finance Ministry, had been provided to the press, showing nothing untoward. But in March 2018, reporters uncovered that this record had been falsified by the ministry, and that the original document had included remarks that Abe Akie had specifically requested the sale, and that she had “been moved to tears by the school’s education policy.” When this news hit the press, the entire country went ballistic.

The falsification of documents practically requires a ministry level resignation, if not an actual arrest and trial. Opinion polls show that virtually the entire country agrees on this, but in a misfortune worthy of Shakespeare, the Finance Ministry responsible for the falsification is headed by Aso Taro, leader of Abe’s rival faction in the LDP. Aso will not take the hit for Abe, and if Abe were to force him to resign, the LDP would dissolve into Godfather-style chaos. So there was only one way forward for Abe: he had to continue to insist that he had nothing to do with the land sale or the alteration, that the removal of his wife’s name proves nothing, and that his wife did not do anything untoward either. He continues to reiterate his promise that he will resign if it is shown that he did anything wrong. But the Finance Minister has also refused to resign over what is clearly Abe’s doing. So, impossibly, the falsification of documents has so far led to no consequences whatsoever — a bald insult of the Japanese public’s intelligence.

At long last, in April 2018, the public prosecutor of Osaka stepped up and began investigating the Finance Ministry as a criminal matter. On April 9, just a few days after a former department head named Sagawa Nobuhisa swore under oath that the falsification was a mistake by his sub-department within the Finance Ministry, the Osaka prosecutor discovered that Sagawa had perjured himself. As of June 2018, the LDP continues to insist that Sagawa alone was to blame, while the opposition hopes to prosecute him for perjury. Their investigation is ongoing.

Even as the right-wing press continues to root for him with a ferocity to match Breitbart or Fox News, various elders in the LDP have suggested that it might be time for Abe to step down. The problem, though, is that none of the candidates for his replacement have any more confidence from the Japanese public. There is an opposition, but it lacks a Corbyn-like outspoken and charismatic leader, and it is fiercely opposed by the right-wing base as being in bed with communists and “foreigners” (their dog-whistle term for Koreans). Within the LDP, there are simply more Abes in reserve: people loyal to him, who refused to speak out about the Moritomo scandal, and who would stay the course of neoliberalism.

Parry observes in Ghosts of the Tsunami that “the ideal village [in Japanese society] was a world in which conflict, and even disharmony, was immoral, a kind of violence.” He adds, “It is as if politics itself is a natural disaster of which the Japanese are helpless victims, an impersonal misfortune beyond the influence of common men, and which can only be helplessly accepted, and endured.” Even if the Japanese public is finding the freak of nature that is the Abe cabinet unendurable, it is unclear how any alternative leadership could fix the issue.

How many Baby Boomer liberals remain in the LDP who are willing to step up to pilot Japan’s sinking ship? Who wants to be the one that will go down with the ship when it finally sinks? The quiet search for a replacement for Abe has a faint resemblance to musical chairs. Maybe the next prime minister will not be the last from the LDP. Or maybe they will. It will depend on their personal character, but it will also depend on global currents beyond Japan’s control.