What Does Japan's Snap Election Tomorrow Mean? More Than You Probably Know If You Read The American Media

If you're a regular DWT reader, you already know we're not big fans of fascists like Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, going all the way back to when he was palling around with George W. Bush when the latter was President. Tomorrow, sullen Japanese voters go to the polls, probably to reelect the unpopular and failed Abe to another term. Abenomics, his right-wing economic agenda-- pretty much the Paul Ryan budget-- has been a complete bust for Japan-- except for Big Business and the very wealthy. Like I said, pretty much the Paul Ryan budget.

Public opinion polls conducted ahead of Sunday's general election nevertheless indicate that Mr Abe is on course for a resounding victory and a mandate to continue with his economic reforms.

The polls indicate that 34.1 per cent of the public will vote for the ruling LDP, with the main opposition, the Democratic Party of Japan, a long way back with 11.7 per cent. Support rates for the other eight parties that have put forward candidates are all in single figures, underlining the fractured and fractious nature of Mr Abe's political rivals.

The high number of voters who have no preferred party is indicative, however, of the widespread antipathy among the Japanese public for both the government and the opposition.

"Mr Abe is effectively going to win by default," said Jun Okumura, a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute for Global Affairs.

"I suspect there will be a very low turnout on election day but that Mr Abe will emerge victorious, which he will take as a mandate to continue with these economic policies," he added.

...Analysts say that the prime minister is aware that his public support rate is eroding, albeit gradually, and he called the election two years earlier than he needed purely because he is unlikely to ever again be as popular as he is today. And he has effectively framed the debate as offering Japanese people the choice between backing his economic policies or sacking him.

And if the election was simply a question of economics, he would be on far more nervous about the outcome on Sunday night. Given that the opposition parties are such a shambles, lacking leadership, meaningful policies and direction, it means that Mr Abe has little in the way of a rival for his position.

Although U.S. media-- when it bothers covering the election at all-- treats it as mundane political horserace, context is available from non-U.S. media. The English-language Japan Times, for example, published an OpEd Saturday on how Abe has undermined democracy, something you'll never find in the NY Times or Washington Post. It sounds like Abe and his fascist supporters are getting ready for something particularly nasty:

On Dec. 10, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s new special secrets law took effect despite overwhelming public opposition.

The new law gives bureaucrats enormous powers to withhold information produced in the course of their public duties that they deem a secret-- entirely at their own discretion-- and with no effective oversight mechanism to question or overturn such designations. The law also grants the government powers to imprison whistle-blowers, and prohibits disclosure of classified material even if its intention is to protect the public interest. This Draconian law also gives the government power to imprison journalists merely for soliciting information that is classified a secret.

...There are good reasons why 80 percent of the public opposes this bill. Would the investigations into the causes of the Fukushima nuclear accident and the collusive relations between coopted regulators and the utilities that compromised reactor safety have been made public under the new law?

Actually, to be fair, the Wall Street Journal actually did cover the Abe phenom competently, in a story by Yuka Hayashi that explains how Abe's family history (bound up in brutal, savage Japanese fascism) still haunts Japanese politics. Abe's grandfather, Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, wanted to build up Japan's military after World War II. He failed but his grandson is fulfilling his vision today.

Kishi was accused-- though never indicted-- of war crimes for helping to build imperial Japan’s war machine in the 1930s and 1940s.

He helped lead Japan’s occupation of Chinese Manchuria, a region of northeast China rich in coal and fertile farmland where Mr. Kishi oversaw a system that used conscripted Chinese labor and Chinese natural resources to feed Japan’s growth, historians say.

Later, as prime minister in the 1950s, he sought to rewrite the U.S.-imposed postwar Japanese constitution that renounced militarism—a step that Mr. Abe also would like to take.

Mr. Abe’s push to revive his grandfather’s policies and ambitions has worried some Japanese voters, especially because of the negative reaction of the Chinese government, whose relationship with Japan has soured in recent years.

“A lot of what they say is the same. They both want constitutional revision and they both want rearmament of Japan,” said Takashi Ito, a Tokyo University emeritus history professor and a prominent expert on Mr. Kishi.

...After Japan’s defeat in 1945, Mr. Kishi was arrested by the U.S.-led occupation on suspicion of being a Class-A war criminal. The Tokyo war tribunal accused him of playing “a leading part in the preparation and enforcement” of Manchukuo’s economic model, which it said was “designed to enable Japan to carry on an aggressive war.”

He spent three years in Tokyo’s Sugamo Prison, reading Crime and Punishment, writing poems for his wife and sewing his own underwear, according to his journal.

In December 1948, wartime military leader Hideki Tojo was hanged in Sugamo Prison along with six others.

But Mr. Kishi, a senior member of Gen. Tojo’s cabinet, was never indicted and was freed. With the Cold War starting, the U.S. wanted Japan to get back on its feet quickly and to rearm to an extent. Technocrats like Mr. Kishi were considered indispensable, historians say.

...In his first stint as prime minister in 2006, Mr. Abe pursued his grandfather’s goal of revising the constitution. He also made his appreciation for his grandfather better-known.

During a visit to India in 2007, he included a stop to meet the son of an Indian judge who served on the Tokyo war tribunal and who had argued that Japan’s wartime leaders weren’t guilty. Mr. Kishi had praised the judge, Radhabinod Pal, for his “sense of justice” and “courage” in his prison journal.

A few months later, Mr. Abe resigned, with some voters wary of his steps to reopen Japan’s constitution.

In his second stint as prime minister, Mr. Abe has focused more heavily on economic policies, with mixed success. His Abenomics program has helped boost corporate profits and share prices.

His poll ratings have slipped considerably, however, as Japan has fallen into recession after an April tax increase.

By calling elections now, aides say, Mr. Abe hopes to lock in more time in office. It will also give him another chance to realize his grandfather’s aim of a more powerful Japan playing a bigger role in world politics.

In July, Mr. Abe’s cabinet approved a reinterpretation of the constitution to allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of allies such as the U.S. even if Japan itself isn’t attacked. Mr. Abe has signaled he wants to go further in the years ahead.

So, despite a quadruple-dip recession and utterly incompetent handling of the economy, there's almost no chance Abe will be turned out of office tomorrow. Voters sense that if they do turn him and his trickle down nonsense out, their pensions will go up in smoke fast and for sure (rather than maybe and less immediately), as Abe's ability to manipulate stock prices ends. The Japanese people are screwwed no matter what they do. They should have paid closer attention when they elected Abe in the first second place. This will be the third-- and far from the charm. Tokyo's municipal government said turnout in the city was lower than the last election 2 years ago, with 26% of voters showing by midafternoon, compared with nearly 32% as of that time in the previous lower house election in 2012. The final nationwide turnout in that election was a record-low 59.3 million people. By the press is already reporting a "landslide" win for Abe.



Abe's Big Win: Power But No Mandate

The Guardian reports a big win for Abe and his fascists in terms of seats in the Diet, but not any enthusiasm from the voters, who showed what they thought of them by staying away from the polls.

Japanese media exit polls forecast that Abe’s LDP and its junior coalition partner, Komeito, would retain their two-thirds majority in the lower house, enabling them to push legislation through both houses with ease.

Private broadcaster TV Asahi said the ruling parties had together won 333 of the 475 seats, while TBS put the figure at 328. They needed at least 317 seats to retain their “super majority”-- giving them the power to override bills rejected by the upper house and pass them into law.

But the vote was hardly a ringing endorsement of Abe’s policies, despite forecasts that the LDP alone would win between 290 and 310 seats.

The public broadcaster NHK and other media forecast turnout at around 52%-- seven percentage points down from the last election in 2012 and the lowest since the end of the second world war.

The result also underlines the precarious state of the main opposition Democratic party of Japan (DPJ) and confirms its failure to rebuild its support base after its trouncing by Abe’s LDP two years ago.

“This is not so much a vote of confidence in Abe and the LDP as a vote of no-confidence in the political opposition,” Professor Gerry Curtis of Columbia University told Reuters.