TOKYO — Forgive other heads of state for gazing at Shinzo Abe with envy. Consider: At the end of May, Japan’s prime minister faced a new controversy over allegations that he pressured government bureaucrats to approve a new school run by a friend. Earlier in the year, Abe was accused of involvement in a heavily discounted land sale to a nationalistic school. Meanwhile, polls show a majority of Japanese are skeptical about the prime minister’s economic policies for the country, where growth has been sluggish for years.
And yet even as evidence grows over Abe’s possible role in using his clout to award favorable deals to friends — charges he steadfastly denies — public support for the prime minister remains steadfast. By the end of May, Abe became Japan’s third-longest serving leader in the post-World War II era.
As a result, Japan is seen as something increasingly rare among wealthy democracies: a haven of stability. Public upheavals may roil other countries — witness the nationalist politics in Europe, the corruption charges that toppled South Korea’s ex-president Park Geun-hye and the ongoing probe over alleged ties between Russia and campaign figures for U.S. President Donald Trump, an investigation that has bogged down the White House domestic agenda. Not so in Japan, where approval ratings for Abe remain high.
Why the support, particularly in a country with a recent history of revolving-door governments? The answer, analysts say, is in a Japanese public that has decided it prefers stability over change.
“The public’s inclination to support the status quo is quite strong,” says Masao Matsumoto, professor at Saitama University, who studies public opinion in Japan. The scandals Abe faces would be devastating in other political contexts, but not under the current political environment. “People look to the status quo approvingly because politics has been stable.”
Until the right-leaning 62-year-old Abe took the top job in December 2012, Japan had witnessed a merry-go-round of prime ministers, one each year since 2006. But today, more than four years into his latest term in office, Abe’s staying power sets him apart from past prime ministers. With no rivals in sight within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, some experts say Abe is likely to become the premier with the longest tenure.
“What’s unique about him in the polls is that his support rate has been extremely stable,” says Matsumoto, the professor at Saitama University. “He stays comfortably above 50 percent and no major ups and downs.”
Analysts say Abe’s leadership style is a departure from a long line of reactive Japanese prime ministers. “In terms of enhancing Japan’s visibility and attempting to cement Japan’s ties with the U.S., he has done an outstanding job,” says Shigeki Morinobu, professor at Chuo University and former senior Ministry of Finance official.
That assertive style was on display in February, when Abe was the first world leader to meet Trump following the American taking office. Meeting initially in Washington, D.C. — an occasion that triggered social media postings over a handshake that seemingly would not end — Abe then followed up with a weekend “golf summit” at Trump’s Palm Beach resort. The Japanese public approved. Polls by Kyodo News and public broadcaster NHK showed strong approval for the summit, which touched on security and economic issues.
Japan’s government has historically been run by bureaucrats, not by elected officials, whose jobs resembled coordinators for vested interests and to run errands for local constituents. In the past two decades, however, incremental overhauls of the government, such as the prime minister naming the top government bureaucrats, have empowered the premier to craft policy initiatives from the top down.
Today, civil servants are at the prime minister’s service, partly because personnel decisions for top bureaucrats are made by the prime minister and the offices that he leads, says Morinobu of Chuo University.
Abe is clearly the leader and is not controlled by aides sent in by powerful departments such as the Ministry of Finance or Ministry of Economy and Trade, once the power centers that manipulated the prime minister, says Martin Koelling, a German journalist based in Japan for 17 years.
“Abe is a leader with ideas and game plans,” Koelling says. “He would tell Japanese companies to increase wages and to hire more women. He goes out there and gets Japan’s voices heard in the world.”
An active Japanese prime minister, however, with apologist views on Japan’s military past may increase the anxiety of neighboring China and South Korea. Both China and South Korea already have land disputes with Japan.
“His troubling views on history aside, it is clear that he has an obsessive hostility against China that cannot be explained away in a rational way,” says Victor Teo, assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong, who studies the China-Japan relationship.
Abe’s conservatism runs in his family. He counts former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi and former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe as his grandfather and father, respectively. He successfully ran for Parliament after his father’s sudden death in 1993. He was groomed by LDP stalwarts and was promoted to secretary-general — the No. 2 position in the party — only 10 years after gaining a seat in the national legislature, an ascent considered quick in Japanese politics.
His first tenure as prime minister in 2006 ended just one year after taking office after extensive errors with pension records for many Japanese approaching retirement came to light. He resigned when his own health deteriorated at the same time. Abe regained the position at the end of 2012 when the public lost confidence with the then-ruling opposition Democratic Party, which was criticized for its response to the 2011 earthquake and Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Abe faces major policy challenges at home. His pet economic initiative that bears his name — “Abenomics” — is considered a failure by many. The ultra-loose monetary stance by the central bank coupled with massive fiscal spending was supposed to be followed by structural reforms to boost the economy.
Abe and his LDP colleagues, however, are afraid to administer tough measures, such as implementing tax and social security reforms to adjust the economy for an aging society, says Morinobu of Chuo University. “They are concerned about short-term voter complaints and disenchantment.”
For now, the public is ignoring Abe’s failure to deliver on the economic side, partly because “there is no alternative to him,” says Matsumoto of Saitama University. And according to people close to the prime minister, there is something larger at work that motivates Abe.
“Essentially, he thinks being the prime minister is a calling,” says Hakubun Shimomura, a senior governing party official and a close confidant of Abe’s. “There is a sense of unfinished business: His father died on his way (to becoming a premier) and his grandfather did not get to do it.”
Shimomura, a former education minister and now deputy LDP secretary general, refers to one of the enduring conservative agendas: revising the Article 9 in the Japanese constitution (drafted by U.S. following WWII) that outlaws war as a means to settle disputes. Abe and his party recently announced intentions to revise the constitution that explicitly state the country’s Self-Defense Force, or SDF, is a legitimate organization.
Legal scholars have argued that the country’s constitution forbids the SDF, and critics says any revision could be a slippery slope toward eventual militarism. At a time where North Korea is actively pursuing its nuclear program and China is staking out claims in the South China Sea, domestic critics and nearby countries worry Abe’s constitutional revisions could make the region more dangerous.
“That’s lying there as an unfinished task which is not just about his family, but he sees that as being aligned with the national goal and ideal.”
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