“People of Japan, be confident!” So said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in a keynote speech to the Japanese parliament in February, an unusually emotional appeal for support of his bold constitutional revision and economic revitalization agenda.
Postwar Japanese prime ministers have rarely consolidated the political capital needed to engage in serious game-changing policy reform, but Abe’s December election triumph – the so-called victory without a mandate – presents a rare opportunity to cement lasting foreign policy and economic metamorphosis.
In pursuit of constitutional reinterpretation and revision, the prime minister follows a slow but determined course pioneered by other Liberal Democratic Party leaders dating as far back as Kakuei Tanaka, the “Shadow Shogun” of the 1970s, and including Yasuhiro Nakasone and Junichiro Koizumi. Abe broke through 70 years of foreign policy ambiguity and paralysis with a precedent-setting decision in July last year. The Cabinet announced its intent to broaden the legal scope of actions Japan may take under certain scenarios to strengthen collective self-defense, and more flexibly allow participation of Japanese forces in overseas collective security missions.
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