Abe and Japan

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed today, at the age of 67.

Although Japan remains an impotent shadow of its long gone empire, it was not in spite of the late Shinzo Abe. As the cheerleader in chief of what I diagnose to be modern day cordon sanitaire, he was instrumental in the silent rearming of Japan, and more importantly, the change in mentality towards self-determination. In his many years of tenure I witnessed the spirit of a nation of evolve from a willing love of Chinese economic subjugation to one of wilful defiance and liberation from the servitude that so parasitises China’s unfortunate neighbours. In this regard, I have no higher praise. And though his track record on Japanese war crimes left much to be desired, he was nonetheless steadfast in the resurrection of the national spirit and the abandonment of the sorrowful dogmatism of the past.

As many will have already read, Abe was also an economic pragmatist. From inheriting a recession in his first ministerial post, he led an unprecedented period of Japanese economic exceptionalism marked by low inflation, stability and the successful navigation of free trade under the Trump administration. In his Three Arrows policy he also sought to undo the mistakes of past monetary policy and in doing so, arguably set the lead for Bernanke and Yellen’s more recent economic prosperity. History however, is yet to absolve him on that front.

For better or for worse, Abe was one of the last of a dying breed - that of the political dynasty. Not since the Kennedy’s had the world seen such a successful lineage of political power that, rather refreshingly, did not grow from the barrel of a gun. With a grandfather that once governed Manchuria and a father who led his beloved party, the Abe of another timeline would have no doubt groomed his children for the Machiavellian squalor that is the world of Japanese politics.

Though his philosophy will undoubtedly continue to echo I feel the time is also right to disseminate what is, from what ought to be. There can be no doubt that the outright xenophobic immigration policies Abe helped perpetuate have condemned Japan to demographic disaster and the prohibitive stance towards Syrian refugees was most shameful. In this regard, Abe’s Japan did an awful amount of talking, but not a lot of doing. He can be further criticised for not doing more towards climate change and allowing the fear of nuclear energy to grip Japan, as we have seen with Germany. But there are also many aspects that I feel no one could have changed. Despite much fruitless handwaving, the Japanese citizen is still brutally overworked, stressed and dissatisfied. If suicide rates are any measure, Japan has indeed not done too well. But with the cleansing fire of COVID, I believe it’s time to forge a new destiny for Japan. While history does not read well for other countries every that time that phrase is said, I hope to see a new era of East Asian co-cooperation in resisting China. That, we can all agree, is a moral imperative.

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As polarising of a figure that Abe might have been, he was nonetheless an enigma of the small, and perhaps excessively patriarchal, world of Japanese politics. In death, he leaves us with nothing but sombre thoughts but also joins the esteemed and pleasant company of Kennedy and Lincoln.

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In light of Abe’s assassination, I also wish the autocrats and tyrants of the world to be reminded of a particularly prescient point that too many of them have had the leisure of forgetting. They, much like us, are very mortal. Though entropy shall make us all equal, the oppression of the common man is nothing but the finest catalyst for that.

Let us therefore take a sober moment to remember that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.