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Radical reformer

Book review of The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan

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Book cover of The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan
Shyam Saran
5 min read Last Updated : Nov 17 2020 | 2:10 AM IST
Tobias Harris has produced a very readable biography of Shinzo Abe. He has been prescient in anticipating the end phase of the Abe era, pointing to missteps in handling the Covid-19 pandemic and a general air of exhaustion in government. 

Mr Abe has demitted office after being Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. Longstanding health reasons were cited as the cause. His close and loyal aide, Yoshihide Suga, is now prime minister charged with carrying forward Mr Abe’s legacy. He was determined to exorcise the pacific and defensive sentiments of the post-war years in Japan, enable it to emerge as a “normal” country and take its place as a modern, prosperous and substantial great power.

His unusual and unprecedented accumulation of political power, his unabashed promotion of constitutional change that would permit Japan to jettison the ambiguous role of its so-called “Self Defence Forces” and build up and deploy substantial military forces appropriate to a great power and his pursuit of an influential and leadership role for his country through energetic personal diplomacy, all these marked him as indeed an iconoclastic leader willing to challenge both post-war taboos as well as deeply ingrained Japanese cultural and societal norms. It is this story of Shinzo Abe’s trajectory as Japan’s most influential leader in modern times that Mr Harris narrates through 18 chapters structured chronologically.

Mr Abe comes through as an ambitious and strong-willed politician. He became prime minister in 2006 but resigned a year later due to serious illness. No one expected him to revive his political career much less become prime minister again. And yet he did in 2012 and never looked back. We get a sense of how the young and impressionable Shinzo was deeply influenced by the ideas of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi who abhorred the status of Japan as a defeated and subordinate ally of the US. He inculcated in the young Shinzo a vision of Japan as an independent and substantial power in its own right, adhering to alliance with the US but on equal terms. While Mr Abe was able to enlarge the role of Japanese defence forces particularly in external missions, he was unable to achieve the revision of Article 9 of the Constitution, which commits Japan to forsaking conventional military forces and operating outside the homeland.

Mr Abe began his political career with little interest in economic matters. In his second term, he gave high priority to ending Japan’s decade of stagnation. The book has a useful account of the “3 arrow” strategy for economic revival, involving bold monetary policy, a flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy that would involve much more difficult structural reforms and break up of powerful vested interests. Mr Abe was certainly successful in reviving growth, though this remained anaemic at less than 2 per cent a year. He strove to make Japanese industry globally competitive, through tax and regulatory reforms and a renewed emphasis on innovation and technology. In an era of rising protectionism, he continued to champion globalisation and free trade. It is his leadership which enabled the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to survive a walk-out by the US. Japan has also been active in concluding negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) comprising the 10 Asean countries, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China and South Korea (unfortunately, India has decided to stay out of the RCEP).

The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan
Author: Tobias S Harris
Publisher: Hurst
Price: Rs 3,020
Pages: 392
It is with the third arrow of structural reforms that Mr Abe has been less successful. Japan confronts long-term challenges in its declining population, the rising burden of pensions and old age care and the relatively low participation of women in the economy. Mr Abe tried to deal with all these challenges with forward-looking policies on migrant labour, facilities for women such as child care and increasing their numbers in appointments, including at senior levels. But these have proved to be inadequate, leading to persistent constraint on growth.

It is in foreign policy that Mr Abe leaves behind a much more abiding legacy. This includes his vision of the “Confluence of the Two Oceans” first articulated in the Indian Parliament during his visit in August 2007 during his first term. This led to the articulation of the Indo-Pacific strategy in the second term with the notion of a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” The revival of the Quad as a concert of four democracies — India, US, Australia and Japan — in the Indo-Pacific also owes much to his assiduous advocacy.

Mr Abe was relatively successful in coping with the unpredictability of President Donald Trump but it is debatable whether his effort to establish a personal equation yielded significant benefit. China has been the great challenge for Japan and Mr Abe must be credited with achieving, at least for the time being, a relatively balanced mix of engagement and containment. However, the pandemic has shuffled the geopolitical cards in a manner that makes future power equations problematic as much for Japan as for other powers, including India.

Mr Abe had been a good partner for India and his personal chemistry with Narendra Modi has been a notable factor in cementing India-Japan relations. Mr Modi has been called India’s Abe and that reflects the personal as well as ideological affinities they enjoyed. Mr Harris’s biography of one of Japan’s most outstanding leaders shows why he will be missed in this country.

The reviewer is a former foreign secretary and senior fellow, CPR

Topics :RCEPJapanShinzo AbeYoshihide Suga

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