Former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe gave voice to otherwise ignored perspectives on pressing issues.
But, if the Administrative State runs everything, then why assassinate a politician?
This is a grievously bad business. Yesterday a mysterious fellow shot former Japanese prime minster Shinzo Abe in Nara, Japan. Abe did not survive. Next week Japan puts on parliamentary elections and local elections. Is there a connection?
The reliably passive-aggressive National Public Radio (NPR) put it this way:
His ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to create what he saw as a more normal defense posture angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.
Loyalists said that his legacy was a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan's defense capability. But Abe made enemies by forcing his defense goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.
NPR is to the United States what the CBC is to Canada, the BBC is to Britain, and the RTÉ is to Ireland.
Meanwhile, week to week, the Chinese and Russian navies have been conducting patrols around Japan[1][2], often streaming between the major islands Honshu and Hokkaido. China’s Global Times itself highlighted the point the day before the Abe’s assassination:
Over the past month, the Japanese Defense Ministry has posted more than a dozen reports on Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) naval activities around the island country, as the last ship in the PLA Navy task force led by the Type 055 large destroyer Lhasa reportedly returned to the East China Sea on Tuesday, wrapping up its voyage that went round Japan almost entirely.
The growing capabilities of the PLA Navy will mean that such activities become routine, and their significance goes beyond just sending Japan warnings amid its right-wing provocations, as the PLA Navy aims to become a blue-water navy that will operate farther in distant waters to safeguard China's sovereignty, security and development interests, experts said on Wednesday.
I cannot pretend to be an expert on Japanese affairs, but, a very coarse view would be that Japanese security has been a running issue. That issue illuminates tensions between two broad views of how to deal with it. In the settlement of the Pacific War (1941-1945), the Americans imposed on Japan a constitution that effectively barred Japan from engaging in military activities that are anything but reactive and defensive. The NPR-consistent view would be that Japan should continue to maintain a strictly passive, defensive posture and that any other view should be dismissed as “ultra-nationalist.” An Abe-consistent view might be that Japan should start thinking about amending the constitution to enable it to a assume a proactive capability, all in the way of developing a credible deterrent vis-à-vis Russia, China and North Korea. These are countries that have made habits of launching missiles over and around Japan and of threatening Japan with their navies.
Japan does not live in, and has never lived in, a friendly neighborhood. One reason would derive from straight-up geopolitics: Japan maintains free access to the Pacific going east. The Russians and Chinese have always been hemmed in by the First Island Chain. The First Island Chain encompasses Taiwan, the Kurile Islands (northwest of Hokkaido), the Ryukyu Islands of Japan (which include Okinawa) as well as the major islands of Japan itself. China would love to nab Taiwan and the Ryukyus. In 1945, Russia made a point of nabbing the Kurile Islands from Japan. This was after Japan had surrendered in the Pacific War.
It is hard not to think that the assassination of Shinzo Abe has something to do with the elections as well as with Abe’s role in encouraging the Japanese to discuss, rather than ignore, security issues. Be that as it may, let me pose something of a puzzle: In a country in which the bureaucracy, the “deep state”, has been deeply entrenched since at least 1588, what political value would anyone perceive to assassinating a politician? Never mind how appalling such an act is. Never mind that it constitutes an actually violent assault on democratic process. Why do such a thing when there really is no reason for it?
One possibility would be that the premise is wrong. It may be the case that the bureaucracy does not run everything afterall. Mushy political constraints might bind, in which case elections do have consequences, even in Japan, a country in which administrative process has historically assumed a greater role in the day-to-day governance than in most other countries. How, then, should we think about the role of centralized administrative process in Japan and its relationship to democratic processes?
I do not have definitive answers. I still puzzle about it, and I would be following the lead of people who immersed themselves in such issues. In The Master of Go (1951), Yasunari Kawabata puzzled over just such things. He used the governance of Go tournaments as metaphor for governance more generally. Among other things, he identified something we might identify as rules-versus-discretion tradeoffs. Traditional modes of governance depended more heavily on discretion: leave it to the wise philosopher kings in the bureaucracy to sort out solutions. Let them operate as the guardians of society. But, “Who guards the guardians?” Should we really place undiluted faith in the administrative state? What happens when the administrative state runs the country off the rails and gets it engaged, as it just had as of 1951, in a disastrous Pacific War?
We might endeavor to supplant the discretionary, and sometimes arbitrary rule, of the administrative state, with a more rules-based mode of governance. Rules should suppress arbitrary governance, right? We might label the new mode of governance “democratic”. Kawabata yet went on to observe, however, that rules-based governance could degenerate into sclerotic government. Well-situated parties could yet arbitrarily appeal to the rules to yield arbitrary results.
On my reading, Kawabata’s sly observations seem consistent with the proposition that a bureaucracy would be well situated to capture the process of rule-making and the process of implementing rules so as subordinate ostensibly democratic, rules-based governance to its own discretionary mode of governance. And, if so, what role would politicians have to play? Again, why bother assassinate politicians if the administrative state can subordinate any mode of governance to its will?
There do seem to have been some episodes in Japanese history in which the administrative state did lose some measure of control. A Japanese prime minister was assassinated in the 1920’s. “Militarists” soon managed to secure the reins of government. Or, rather, a faction representing the army struggled with a faction representing the navy for control. The army got on with designing plans to secure resources for the country by, possibly, taking over Manchuria and invading China. The army even contemplated nabbing portions of Siberia from Russia. The navy, for its part, got on with a more practical program: How to secure the seaways given other naval powers operated along important sea lanes. The United States itself was firmly situated in the First Island Chain. (The US Navy operated out of the Philippines.) The British Navy, meanwhile, effectively guarded the gateway from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean. The Japanese Navy developed plans for neutralizing threats from both the American and British navies. In 1941 and early 1942, they found themselves implementing the plan, and it unfolded better than expected.
The settlement to the Pacific War got the Japanese army and navy out of politics. An idle administrative state then launched itself into reconstruction, a worthy project that would keep it busy for decades.
Going forward, the US Navy would maintain free navigation on the seas. Japan and all of the other countries of the developed West benefited, but nearly 80 years later the Chinese and Russians seem intent on upsetting that comfortable arrangement. Might these historically hegemonic, rapacious powers endeavor to secure the seaways around Japan for their own benefit—and to the exclusion of others? Should Japan perceive the threat of these powers cutting it off from the seaways? Can it depend on a faltering West to maintain free navigation on the seas going forward? Was Shinzo Abe on to something, and was he proving to be too inconvenient?
The political class in Japan—and in the United States and Britain and Continental Europe—may not exercise the power of the administrative state, but they may yet give voice to important initiatives. Yesterday’s assassination silences an important voice, the best in a generation of Japanese politicians.
[1] https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202207/1269747.shtml
An interesting take. My sense of the Japanese administrative state was long ago when I lived there. Then (late 60's) the various departments kept to their assigned lanes with minimal inter-departmental friction or jealousy. The Japanese culture is not one of greed nor power but of obligation. They really do expect excellence in execution of tasks. That's what drives the salaryman to devote himself to his work.
Abe was requiring a relook at policy about defense even into obtaining nuclear weapons. If you recall, Trump even mentioned giving Japan such weapons. I suspect that prospect was a bit much for the Japanese even given Korea. But the Chinese are reopening old wounds in a particularly disrespectful way. Few Americans can appreciate the xenophobia among Asian societies. And Chinese aggressive moves might trigger really old battles of 1274 and 1281 that are part of Japanese mythology of kamikaze (divine wind).
Hard to say the motivations of Abe's killer. He did go to great trouble to build a shotgun. Had he tried to steal one from a licensed owner he would have been found, my guess. The shells are somewhat available in Japan and easier to steal. The shooter claims Abe was friendly to the Unification Church, but Abe was supposed to be a Shinto and has been known to be friendly to the Catholic Church. Abe notably got bad marks outside of Japan for visiting a Shinto Shrine honoring "war criminals". We await more investigation.