Abe’s ‘ambiguity’

According to Katsuyuki Yakushiji, chief editor of the Japanese political magazine, Ronza, published by the Asahi Shimbun, political ambiguity is the stance new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe adopted once he assumed power.

He has chosen to be ambiguous, perhaps to calm down fears within Japan that his well-known advocacy of a tougher foreign policy might lead to renewed militarism, but also to keep his neighbors, the two Koreas and China, guessing as to what exactly he plans to do as Prime Minister.

Mr. Yakushiji says that, for the immediate future, Mr. Abe will likely maintain a realistic and pragmatic stance, deliberately eschewing domestic and international crises which could cost too much political capital.

Prime Minister Abe is in a bit of a political honeymoon at the moment, and the Japanese are at once hopeful and wary about this "mysterious" (political science professor Gerry Curtis’s description, in the current issue of Newsweek magazine) successor to "reformist" and undeniably popular Junichiro Koizumi.

Abe has said that his initial efforts will be on foreign policy. Thus, it was no surprise that his very first state visit was to China where he was given access to the three highest-ranking Chinese leaders, President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and top lawmaker Wu Bangguo. Koizumi went to China in 2001, but wasn’t invited back because of his repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan’s memorial to its war dead.

From China, Abe visited South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun in Seoul, for the first formal summit meeting between the two nations since 2005.

In both state visits, the agenda was dominated by the North Korean threat to test a nuclear device. In China, both countries made a firm statement against the tests, a position which was applauded in the West. It’s not clear, however, precisely how both intend to "isolate" or sanction North Korea, if the latter decides to go ahead with the tests.

But as with Beijing, Seoul’s issues with Tokyo go beyond North Korea, with which the South has urged restraint in light of its current policy of engagement. There is, for one, a territorial dispute over islets in the Sea of Japan, called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima in Japan. Seoul also vigorously protested the Koizumi visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, as well as school history textbooks which are claimed to have glossed over Japan’s militaristic past. From 1910 to 1945, Japan exercised colonial rule over Korea.

Still, Abe wants to "normalize" relations with South Korea and China, Japan’s largest trading partner. The visits to Beijing and Seoul, even before the obligatory trips to Washington, D.C. and European capitals, are seen as significant symbolic gestures.

According to Mr. Yakushiji, Abe also considers Asia as an important component of his international economic policy. He intends to sign more free trade agreements, such as the Philippine-Japan FTA recently signed at Helsinki. What else he does in Asia, and the priority Asia will occupy in his longish agenda, are probably part of the PM’s current "ambiguity."

In the circumstances, Mr. Abe’s decision on visits to the Yasukuni Shrine will probably be the real indication of his ideological make-up. Although he considers himself a "conservative," he does not think that conservatism in Japan today requires hawkish or ultra-rightist postures.

In his visit to Beijing, Mr. Abe refused to commit himself on whether or not he as Prime Minister would visit the Shrine, which has an attached facility, a memorial museum which critics claim glorifies and justifies past wars of Japan. But it’s important to remember that Yasukuni itself does not contain any remains of controversial war figures such as Hideki Tojo.

Before he became Prime Minister, Abe made several visits to Yasukuni. If he doesn’t make any more visits now that he is at the helm of government, it will be a clear signal to China and South Korea that he, and maybe all of Japan, recognizes the "errors" of the country’s militaristic past, and that he intends to remove the issue as a hindrance to normal diplomatic relations. This will obviously play well in Beijing and Seoul.

But will it also play well in Japan? Will Abe, who is a known "nationalist," a hardliner who has advocated fundamental changes in a US-imposed pacifist Constitution which commits Japan to a "defensive" security position, lose local support?

One thing former Prime Minister Koizumi proved was that popularity among the voters is necessary to get national consensus behind controversial policies. But to be popular, does one also have to espouse populist policies? Or is the courage and resoluteness of a leader willing to push unpopular policies more appreciated?

Yakushiji says that attitudes in Japan may be changing. He says that polls taken after both Koizumi and Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine showed that 60 percent of those polled were AGAINST the visit.

Nishimura Masao, former Industrial Bank of Japan head and half-brother of Shinzo Abe’s late father, former Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe, writes in Ronza magazine that the Shrine visits must stop, not because China and Korea object to them, but because Japanese themselves, "awakening to our war responsibility, should give priority to a realistic foreign policy."

It seems that realism, disguised as ambiguity, runs in the family. Shintaro Abe would have been PM if death had not prematurely claimed him. Shinzo’s maternal grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobosuke Kishi, was tried as a war criminal but acquitted. As PM though, Kishi earned renown for making numerous visits to Asia and Australia where he apologized for Japan’s war-time acts. His policy of reconciliation is credited with mending Japan’s post-war relations with former enemies, as well improving its own image with the United States.

Thus, political ambiguity, as one way of practicing pragmatism, conceivably works. The question is for how long. At some point, Shinzo Abe will have to stake his political future on clear choices, about Yasukuni, amendments to a pacifist, US-dictated Constitution, North Korea, even domestic economic policy (which he says won’t depart from Koizumi’s "reform" agenda).

When he does make hard but clear choices, the Japanese, and the world, will know the stuff this hugely-popular, young (at 52) leader is made of. Maybe some of the ambiguity and mystery will begin to rub off. In the end, clarity always trumps ambiguity.