Abe Shinzo dossier
So one rightwinger takes over from another in Japan - big deal you might say. Well, maybe and maybe not. Actually just what kind of a difference Abe might mean for the East Asian geopolitical landscape, Japanese domestic political economy and the left/social movements in Korea and Japan is something I’m curious about. Hence I thought that I might try to gather together here over the next few weeks some interesting reading materials on the new Japanese PM and what he stands for.
1. Basic materials
First something entirely trivial: Abe Shinzo’s homepage which attracted attention at Digg for its use of what seems to be Unix command line gobbledigook on the front page (see above), not to mention the fact that Japan’s youngest prime-minister-in-waiting for god knows how long sits smiling behind the ultimate token of youthful hipsterism, a shiny Mac Powerbook. Actually, there is also a link there to his English profile, although the Wikipedia page on him is probably considerably more useful in this respect.
2. Japan’s shift to the right
An excellent piece from the dependable Hisane Masaki in the Asia Times looking at Abe Shinzo himself, the general shift to the right in Japan, and focusing particularly on Abe’s declared ambition of revising Japan’s ‘Peace Constitution’ so that the Japanese army can take a more proactive role in overseas operations (among other things). In a similar vein is this article from Julian Ryall for Al Jazeera. One thing that seems to come out in both of these articles is that Abe is considerably to the right of Koizumi and perhaps also less of a pragmatist. I suppose there is a chance that this will also make him less of a successful politician.
3. The economic and geopolitical background
Another in a line of great articles on Asian politics in New Left Review is this one from Taggart Murphy on ‘East Asia’s Dollars‘ and once again dear readers it’s a freebie so go ahead and read it. It focuses particularly on Japan’s role in supporting the US economy with its dollars and looks at the reasons why it continues to be so tied to the US.
4. The view from Korea
A worthwhile piece originally from the Hankyoreh in which Lee Jong-won puts Abe into the “ideological and military right” as opposed to the economic right or the realist right.
5. What will Abe do?
Right on cue Hisane Masaki provides an updated version of the analysis piece linked above on Abe and the possible direction he will take now he is in power. Clearly, when you look at this first paragraph summary, even a child could see that some of his stated goals are in a full 180 degree contradiction with one another:
Japan’s new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has set forth an imposing agenda, which includes repairing strained relations with China and South Korea, revising parts of the constitution, reforming education, winning for his country a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, and closing the income gap while maintaining 3% economic growth.
More soon…
I am also very worried that Abe has become the new PM.
Hisane Masaki’s piece is well written but I wish he had commented on Abe’s empty slogan “Beautiful Nation Japan” ( His book which became a bestseller is published with the same title).
Here is a quote from Kyodo news.
>In his speech, he repeated the catchphrase “beautiful >country” eight times and used terms such as “new >Japan,” “new era,” “new nation-building,” and “the 21st >century” a total of 12 times.
http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/385789
Abe seems to be proud of his background but he should be ashamed of being hereditary politicians(seshu giin) and a grand son of a war criminal. Mind you the only entrance exam he ever took in life was when he entered Seikei Primary School,which is ofcourse a school that only rich kids can go to, and after that he didn’t need to worry about his studies. I think he is just a rich kid who is trying to exclude anything that seems to him “unbeautiful”(e.g. homeless people, handicapped people, “bad bad” North Koreans etc)
Comment by Yonja — October 5, 2006 @ 12:12 pm
Thanks for the info. I haven’t yet located a good article in English giving biographical background for Abe, so it’s interesting to hear your thoughts about his ’silver spoon’ upbringing.
The thing that seems so depressing to me about Japan at the moment is that there appears to be no effective force to counteract the right. It seems as if they can do what they like now. At least in Korea, if a new rightwing government comes into power next year (as seems likely), the social movements, civil society groups, unions, the left etc will be there to stand up to them.
Comment by kotaji — October 5, 2006 @ 11:02 pm
>there appears to be no effective force to counteract the right.
Yes, this is true. The leader of the Democratic party (largest opposition party) Ozawa Ichiro, was a rightist himself but seems to have changed his position since he joined the Democratic Party.Anyway he was in the hospital for these few days and I am more worried about his health than his political actions.
To add a little more information on Abe’s biography, after graduating from university, Abe went to the U.S for two years. His mother has written in her book that he learned at the University of California and the University of South California. He was at the University of South California from Spring of 1978 to fall of the same year as a “special admit” (specially admitted student?) and took a course in political science but no one knows whether he got any credits for that.
Comment by Yonja — October 6, 2006 @ 4:18 am
Excuse me but may I ask your opinion on something that has been bothering me for a while? (when you have time!)
A musical about the North Korean prison camp is touring the U.S.
http://www.yodukprison.com/
http://www.yodukstory.com/
I am not sure if you (Mr. Kotaji?) are an American or not but if you are, what do you think about such performances being shown in the U.S?
Comment by Yonja — October 6, 2006 @ 4:42 am
Hi Yonja. About me: I’m British and I study Korean history in London (you can see my profile at Frog in a Well). I don’t whether that really qualifies me to answer your question, but let me give you my thoughts anyway.
I have to say that I feel a little ambiguous about this whole thing. I think it is certainly a good thing for people to know more about what is going on in North Korea - and by that I mean everything that goes on there, the ‘ordinary life’ of normal people trying to get by as well as the horrific things that happen in prison camps and so on.
So in principle I don’t have any problem with this being shown in the US and informing more people about North Korea. However, I also think it can’t be separated entirely from the US government strategy of attempting to weaken and ultimately bring down the North Korean regime using non-governmental (primarily Christian) organisations. Now, I’m not going to say that these organisations are bad or that some of the work they are doing isn’t actually good, I just think that they are mixed up in the shady world of CIA money, proxy imperialism and regime change crazies. It’s been clear for a while that due to its weak position at the moment (due mainly to Iraq) the US has had to adopt a more subtle strategy on North Korea - funding Christian refugee organisations and human rights groups to weaken the legitimacy of the DPRK regime and encourage a flood of North Koreans to leave the country. Personally I find this cynical use of the all too real problems of the North Korean people to be very unpleasant and that makes me feel more than a little uneasy about this kind of play being lauded by the US right.
Comment by kotaji — October 8, 2006 @ 11:06 pm