As Japan and the UK face serious challenges at home and in their respective regions, this report makes the case that a stronger relationship could advance each country’s ability to address shared global concerns.
A Japanese translation of the report is also available as a PDF via this link.
Democracy is in crisis. Across the globe, particularly in Europe and the US, disruptive and unanticipated political forces have undercut the once-confident assumption that liberal democratic governance and a stable international order would survive and flourish in the modern era. The centre ground of politics, marked by the convergence of left- and right-wing mainstream parties around a model of pragmatic governance, technocratic management and a commitment to internationalism, has abruptly disappeared – or at the very least appears under threat and in many places is in retreat.55 In its place has emerged a populist wave that has threatened to sweep aside established political elites in favour of political newcomers. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, these new figures have fostered a politics of anger, fear, resentment and radical change, threatening the institutional practices and values of tolerance, dialogue and openness that have been at the heart of the West’s post-1945 democratic culture.
The victory of Donald Trump in the November 2016 presidential election signalled an abrupt discontinuity in US foreign and domestic politics. The electorate threw its support behind a candidate intent on unilaterally abandoning the country’s traditional post-1945 role as the guarantor of international strategic, political and economic order, in favour of a policy of narrow, zero-sum, competitive nationalism. In the process, critical international alliances (most notably NATO and US alliance partnerships with Japan and South Korea) have been downgraded – or at least called into question. The US has instead embraced a crude, transactional trade protectionism that seems a throwback to the beggar-thy-neighbour mutually destructive economic rivalries of the 1920s and 1930s.
In Europe, new authoritarian leaders have come to power in Hungary and Poland, while xenophobic, nativist parties backing anti-immigration policies – such as Sweden’s Democrats, Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) or France’s Front National (renamed in June 2018 as The National Rally) – have acquired greater political prominence. In some cases, parties such as Italy’s Northern League or Austria’s Freedom Party (FPÖ) have been able to enter government in coalition with more centrist political parties. Such changes have threatened both the political values and the institutional practices that have been at the heart of post-war Europe’s collective identity, as reflected, most powerfully, in the European Union (EU). The most notable challenge to the EU has, of course, been the surprise outcome of the UK referendum on 23 June 2016, with the electorate deciding to leave by a narrow margin of 52 per cent to 48 per cent. The resulting turmoil has reinforced a polarization and potential splintering of the UK political landscape, apparently undermining and paralysing cabinet government, and raising the prospect of a much-diminished status and international role for the UK as a foreign policy actor in Europe and further afield.
In contrast to the disruption and uncertainty that appear to have taken hold in Europe, leading Asian polities such as Japan or South Korea appear more stable
In Asia, the forces of anti-establishment political reaction appear less powerful, at least in the region’s politically and economically advanced countries. In contrast to the disruption and uncertainty that appear to have taken hold in Europe, leading Asian polities such as Japan or South Korea appear more stable. Established mainstream parties, such as Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) or South Korea’s Democratic Party (DP, or Minjoo Dang), remain in government; political institutions, whether South Korea’s Constitutional Court, or Japan’s National Assembly, retain an important mediating or deliberating role, ensuring an effective and confidence-enhancing political dialogue between voters and their elected representatives. Global economic uncertainty and stagnation or slow economic growth at home do not appear to have fostered the forces of political reaction in either country. Populism appears to have had little traction in influencing either national elections or government policy in Tokyo or Seoul.
The dominant impression in Europe and the West has been one of political change, uncertainty, disruption and a retreat from liberal internationalism in favour of narrow national interests. Meanwhile, in Asia, at least for the region’s leading democratic states, the picture is one of continuity, predictability, sustained international engagement and strong support for liberal values and global order.
Considering this contrast, it is tempting to reach for simple, analytical answers. Culturally deterministic interpretations that highlight the consensual norms of relatively homogeneous societies, such as Japan, might explain why populism is apparently less relevant there than in the UK.56 Materially focused interpretations that emphasize the gradual adaptivity of flexible economies long inured to slow economic growth (in Japan’s case, over more than 20 years) might explain why economic pain has apparently not fostered political radicalization or a blowback against mainstream political elites of a type seen in Europe or the UK. Alternatively, stressing the relatively closed character of some Asian societies and economies such as Japan and South Korea – as evidenced by migration, and foreign trade and investment figures – might help explain the apparent greater stability and democratic durability of these Asian states compared with their European counterparts.57
First impressions can, however, be misleading, and there may be a risk in rushing too quickly and confidently to pronounce the health of liberal democracy in some parts of Asia. A more cautious analysis needs to start by examining the nature of populism as a complex, multidimensional and essentially contested concept. Uncovering the dynamic character and causes of populism can help to make sense of some of the changes affecting politics to varying degrees in the UK and Japan. It is natural and commonplace to judge the political process in any polity according to the outcomes that emerge over time in terms of domestic or foreign policy. But just as important as outcomes are the values, norms and beliefs embraced by all political actors – both the governed and the governing. Democracy is not only defended as a model of government because of its efficiency in meeting the collective but sometimes competing needs of its adherents. It is also supported because it is underpinned by universal values of tolerance, openness, inclusivity and pluralism that are seen as desirable in their own right. Today’s crisis of democracy has arisen not merely because of doubts about the efficiency of the democratic model in dealing with the challenges of an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world; it has also emerged from profound doubts (sometimes imperfectly or indirectly articulated) about the values of inclusiveness and mutual tolerance that have been at the heart of modern political life. A close look at recent political changes in the UK and Japan suggests that below the surface, there are populist pressures that, in important but differing ways, may perhaps decisively shape the future of both countries, whether separately or jointly. The following analysis examines the nature and significance of these politically important seismic trends and the impact they may have on leadership capacity in Japan and the UK.
Populism, as the distinguished Cambridge political theorist John Dunn has noted, is not ‘a clear and distinct idea’.58 It is rather a ‘political pathology’,59 a degrading or distortion of democracy based on a false reading of who governs. In place of the familiar system of popular sovereignty in which the people (i.e. the electorate) rule via the periodic selection of their elected representatives, populists substitute an abstract and moral, rather than empirical, definition of the ‘people’. In the words of Jan-Werner Müller:
Populism … is a particular moralistic imagination of politics, a way of perceiving the political world that sets a morally pure and fully unified – but … ultimately fictional – people against elites who are deemed corrupt or in some other way morally inferior. It is a necessary but not a sufficient condition to be critical of elites in order to qualify as a populist. Otherwise, anyone criticizing the powerful and the status quo in any country would by definition be a populist. In addition to being anti-elitist, populists are always antipluralist; populists claim that they, and only they, represent the people.60
Populism manifests itself most strikingly in a politics of fear, anger and deep resentment directed at national political elites who are accused of being out of touch with the sentiments, frustrations and hopes of ordinary people. It is a phenomenon that transcends traditional class politics and, in principle, can appeal to radicalized forces on both the far left and the far right. It can therefore help to explain the rise of the left with Podemos in Spain or Syriza in Greece, or equally of the right with the Tea Party in the US, the Front National in France, or the UK Independence Party (UKIP). In its extreme form, populism encourages xenophobia, nativism and a strong resistance to foreign migration based on the perception that immigration dilutes and threatens the interests of the legitimate, authentic ‘people’. In a more moderate form, populism, by stressing the importance of reforming the political process to re-establish an effective connection between the governed and the governing, advances a more positive message in support of grassroots politics based on local, communitarian values, but one that at the same time typically rejects multiculturalism.
Importantly, populism is not unique to one particular type of political environment or historical moment. While the label ‘populist’ has been used to describe different mass political phenomena such as the ‘back to the people’ (narodniki) movement in mid-19th century Russia or agrarian radicalism in late 19th-century America, it has wide-ranging relevance today.61 Indeed, the salience of the populist phenomenon can be attributed to a combination of critical global changes that have accentuated the sense of alienation on the part of those most receptive to the populist narrative.
At one level, the critical drivers of change have been material developments, particularly the economic dislocation associated with the 2008 global financial crisis. This shock is just one part of a wider set of structural changes reflecting the growth in relative inequality within Western economies as the global centre of economic gravity has shifted to China, India and the newly emerging economies of Asia. For the ‘squeezed middle’ classes of Europe and North America, relative economic deprivation can be measured by the decline in the availability of affordable education and housing. Added to this are the pressures of the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and the associated technical advances that are eliminating traditional employment in manufacturing and creating a new, expanding industrial precariat.62 National governments have proved ill-equipped to grapple with the challenges of globalization. All too often, they have taken refuge in neo-liberal dogmatism and the assertion that market forces, free trade and global finance have fatally compromised and undercut the policy autonomy of national governments.
In the face of the powerlessness of the state and its leaders, voters have, not surprisingly, lost faith in governing elites, both politicians and bureaucrats. European electorates have become dealigned from mainstream political parties, and there has been an increase in volatility and variability in the voting patterns of individual voters, who are more inclined to support new, third parties. These new parties have frequently tended to advance a radical, right-wing, nativist agenda; traditional centrist social democratic parties have seen their influence diminish.63 These marked political shifts have been amplified by the growth of new social media that have eroded trust in traditional news sources, given greater opportunity for the dissemination of distorted and inaccurate stories, and curtailed the space and time in which political leaders have been able to exercise the critical judgment needed to make informed policy choices.64
This last phenomenon – the tyranny of compressed decision-making timetables – has become especially acute given the scale and intensity of the policy challenges faced by national governments. These range from environmental degradation, the mass migration pressures arising from the crisis in Syria and the Middle East, and the perennial threat posed by radical, fundamentalist Islamist terrorism. Faith in modernity as a technocratic solution to various social, economic and political problems has been eroded, along with trust in mainstream politics.
In its place, a new generation of populist leaders has deliberately embraced a new politics of nostalgia.65 It is striking how often these new leaders have deliberately resurrected and embraced historical narratives designed to bolster a mythologized view of an idealized and all too often ethnically and socially purified image of the nation (Müller’s ‘moralistic imagination’). These ‘imagined communities’ and ‘invented traditions’66 are part of a revival in identity politics, sometimes designed to bolster traditional nation-state narratives, and sometimes used to foster more localized, tribal identities, which share with their national counterparts a sense of exclusivity and exceptionalism that intentionally discriminates against and marginalizes outsiders.67 In the process, internationalism and the universalism that underpinned much of the post-1945 ethos associated with the UN and other supranational bodies have been increasingly exposed to challenge.
Alongside the growth in tribalism and the new ‘post-truth’ politics, has been a decline in rational and evidence-based decision-making
Alongside the growth in tribalism and the new ‘post-truth’ politics, has been a decline in rational and evidence-based decision-making. Emotion has become more prominent as a factor shaping the actions of populist leaders and their followers. It is easy to dismiss this as the triumph of ignorance and narrow prejudice. A more sophisticated interpretation of this trend, solidly grounded in the recent, empirical research of social psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt, sees it as arising from a predisposition on the part of human societies to reach moral decisions based on intuition rather than on systematic, reasoned thought. We are, according to Haidt, both as individuals and especially as members of groups, conditioned (for good Darwinian, evolutionary reasons of collective survival) to be self-righteous and exclusive in framing our moral choices. Cognition – our ‘thinking’ – depends as much on gut instinct as it does on careful rational analysis.68
This retreat into sectional identity politics can be seen in a wide number of political contexts. Sometimes this can be aggressively uncompromising and adversarial, as in the growth of often violent Hindu nationalism in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s India, or the alt-right ‘blood and soil’ white nationalism of parts of the US. Sometimes it is expressed in a more moderate form, such as in the rise of Scottish nationalism, or the attempt by different political actors across the French political spectrum (whether the Front National’s Marine Le Pen or President Emmanuel Macron) to appropriate the political symbolism and memory of Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc) as a means of bolstering their national leadership credentials.
Railing against the weaknesses and limitations of traditional politicians and established institutions, highlighting the failures of conventional governments to address contemporary global challenges, and retreating into a politics of symbolism, morality and mythologized, historical identity has allowed populist leaders to tap into a new mass politics that transcends traditional class loyalties and conventional left–right distinctions. As a formula for winning power, this strategy has sometimes proved remarkably effective. Once in power, populist leaders have often had to adopt slightly different techniques. Those with a strong authoritarian bent have sought to co-opt or ‘hijack’ other elements of the state decision-making structure, often by undermining the autonomy or political independence of rival branches of government; such leaders have also frequently used corruption, financial inducements and manipulative, clientelist politics to ‘buy’ support from key sections of society; they have also been willing to act aggressively to undercut and weaken civil society as a way of consolidating their power in government.69
This power has been enhanced by the tendency of such leaders to command monolithic political parties or movements in which rank-and-file members are usually subordinate to the leadership, with limited decision-making autonomy.70 Whether in the form of Donald Trump’s co-option of the Republican Party, or Emmanuel Macron’s dominance of En Marche (a movement that not coincidentally shares the initials of its leader) and its new cohort of 313 party loyalists elected to France’s National Assembly in June 2017, there is powerful evidence of the strength of populist leaders who not only command their parties but also can use this dominance to appeal directly to the public at large and their core supporters.71
To what extent does populism explain recent trends in UK politics? The Brexit decision itself and the events leading up to the fateful vote reveal a sharp decline in British voters’ confidence in their traditional elected representatives. Some of this was foreshadowed by earlier decisions. In the summer of 2014, for example, the UK Independence Party startled the political establishment by securing more votes than any of its British rivals in the European parliamentary elections; in the 2015 general election, the Scottish National Party swept the board in Scotland, winning virtually every parliamentary seat and routing the Labour Party, which traditionally had been the leading party in the region; and following that election, Jeremy Corbyn – the quintessential political outsider and serial rebel within the Labour Party – stunned political mainstream opinion by winning the party’s leadership election.72
This rebellion against the mainstream has been explained in a number of ways. David Goodhart has characterized the change as arising from the division between ‘Anywheres’ and ‘Somewheres’.73 The former are those committed to international, cosmopolitan, liberal, multicultural values and who typically live in ethnically diverse, relatively prosperous urban environments in the UK; the latter are those who are more socially and politically conservative, receptive to authoritarian values, inclined to embrace communitarian, local interests, far removed spatially and temperamentally from an ethically diverse and internationally connected urban centre such as London,74 and who tend to feel left behind and marginalized by mainstream politics. Goodhart characterizes the populist surge in the UK as a result of the ‘Anywheres’ over-reaching and failing to pay attention to the interests of those who feel the system has failed them.
Steve Richards offers a similar but slightly different interpretation in his distinction between ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ – which he sees as a general, global phenomenon but especially relevant in the case of the Brexit decision. The outcome of the referendum was not inevitable, in Richards’ view, but can be explained critically by the tactical and strategic failures of the mainstream parties, both left and right.75 For the Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the principal shortcoming was an excess of political timidity. New Labour, because of its obsession with focus groups and fear of antagonizing middle-class voters, failed to make the case for state intervention as a tool for addressing the material interests of UK citizens. Redistributive policies were adopted, along with important social welfare programmes, but these were implemented almost covertly with no effort to sell them explicitly as positive initiatives to the electorate. At its heart, Labour’s mistake, according to Richards, was to abandon any positive notion that the state had agency and could be used to offset the effects of globalization. Within the Conservative Party, under the leadership of David Cameron and his chancellor, George Osborne, Richards identifies a similar tendency to denigrate the state.76 Here, however, the limited faith in the state stemmed less from political nervousness and a tactical desire to avoid antagonizing certain voters, but rather from an excess of ideological zeal. This was seen particularly in the party’s blinkered faith in austerity and the policies of fiscal retrenchment as a means of tackling rising government debt – a common problem among the advanced European economies.
The analytical and policy shortcomings of mainstream politicians were, of course, just one of a number of key factors that weakened faith in the EU. For the UK, a major source of public anxiety, cleverly exploited by populist politicians such as Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, was the controversial issue of immigration. The reality has been that net migration from the EU to the UK has contributed to the country’s economic growth, and most migrants are well educated and less likely than their UK counterparts to claim state benefits. Yet the issue seized upon by critics as a major problem was the increasing pace of immigration. After 2004, when a number of East European countries joined the EU, there was a sharp rise in the number of immigrants entering the UK. The government’s predictions of a rise of a few thousand were sharply at odds with the reality of more than a million newcomers who arrived in the course of a few years.77 While other European countries had sought exemptions to limit the inflow of new East Europeans, the UK adopted a more permissive attitude, thereby providing an easy opportunity for anti-EU populists to attack the government for failing to protect the interests of UK workers.78
For the anti-EU lobby, other techniques from the populist toolkit that could be deployed to bolster its arguments included the blanket rejection or denigration of reliable empirical evidence, or the promotion of its own factually dubious arguments, such as the notion that leaving the EU would free up £350 million per week to be spent on strengthening the National Health Service. Through their campaign, the populists were cleverly reclaiming the argument in favour of state activism, and in the process sharply distinguishing themselves from mainstream politics. They were also very deliberately appealing to the electorate in terms that were essentially more emotional than rational, by advancing a set of moralistic arguments that would resonate with voters in a manner consistent with the theories of social psychologists such as Haidt. These played neatly into the identity politics and intensifying tribalism that appealed to a significant cross-section of the population – those who felt insufficiently committed or connected to the abstract ideas of European communitarianism and the thinking of remote Brussels bureaucrats.
To talk of ‘taking back control’ from the EU was to advance a point of view that was essentially vacuous and meaningless – and consistent with a campaign that offered virtually no concrete details on the type of post-Brexit world that Britain would inhabit. However, such unfocused, aspirational language is arguably little different from the type of vague sloganeering that all skilled politicians are prone to adopt, be it Bill Clinton’s faith in ‘a place called hope’, Barack Obama’s ‘yes, we can’ mantra, or Franklin Roosevelt’s reminder that ‘there is nothing to fear but fear itself’.
To talk of ‘taking back control’ from the EU was to advance a point of view that was essentially vacuous and meaningless – and consistent with a campaign that offered virtually no concrete details on the type of post-Brexit world that Britain would inhabit
It is tempting to view the pro-Leave Brexit campaign as a manipulation of public opinion by cynical politicians interested in maximizing their own interests. There is substantial evidence that some Brexiteers have exploited weaknesses in the democratic process to advance their cause. A. C. Grayling, one of the strongest critics of the Brexit process, sees the Leave campaign as part of a wider effort to subvert democracy itself: ‘Without overexaggerating, it is arguable that the EU referendum itself and the government’s subsequent actions resemble something like a coup.’79 Such subversion has been pursued by using a strengthened political executive to weaken the power and authority of a sovereign parliament, through the deliberate use of misinformation (for example, by the government’s disingenuous suggestion, before the June vote, that the Brexit referendum was merely advisory) or by using the intimidatory power of government whips to undermine the independence of members of parliament.80
Notwithstanding the strength of these claims, it is also important to understand the motivations of those who remain committed to Brexit, both among the general public and within the ranks of the Conservative Party, and of a not insignificant number of Labour politicians (including Corbyn) who remain sympathetic to an anti-EU position. If we accept Haidt’s view that our moral arguments and our group identity are based more on instinctive reasoning than on rational analysis, then we should be prepared to accept that the sentiment in favour of Leave is a genuine, principled conviction rather than the result simply of an opportunistic desire to seize power by one political factional interest.
The trouble for the UK today is of course that the different constituencies on either side of the post-referendum debate do not only remain sharply divided and equally emotionally committed to their separate and potentially irreconcilable views. They are also operating in a political context in which deciding how best to implement Brexit remains exceptionally difficult, if not impossible.
Prime Minister Theresa May, as a result of her misjudged decision to hold a general election in June 2017, has since then led a minority Conservative government, critically dependent on the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (the socially conservative, pro-UK, Eurosceptic, and largest protestant party in Northern Ireland), in order to form a government. On the issue of Brexit, the Conservatives are split between ‘soft Brexiteers’ who wish to see the UK remain part of a customs union with the EU, and hard-right Leave ultras who are implacably opposed to any agreement that dilutes UK sovereignty. May’s attempt to square the circle with her Chequers plan of July 2018 – an effort to sign up to a ‘common rule book’ on trade with the EU while exempting services and asserting the freedom of the UK to decide how best to harmonize trade provisions with the EU in future81 – looked like a compromise too far; it would not satisfy the EU leadership, and it provided the illusion of sovereign independence for the UK while delivering at best marginal economic benefits for the country.
The UK parliament retains the right to agree any negotiated settlement between the government and the EU. Its refusal to support May’s draft withdrawal agreement, based on the Chequers plan, for a time left the distinct and unnerving possibility that the country would simply crash out of the EU in March 2019 without any formal agreement. Such an outcome would have potentially devastating consequences for the UK economy, and would raise substantial doubts about the country’s ability to maintain key elements of day-to-day governance, including access to European goods and commodities, along with unfettered air, rail and road travel to and from the European continent. With Prime Minister May now committed to stepping down as Conservative Party leader on 7 June, a contest is already under way among multiple Conservative rivals to become the next prime minister. It remains unclear whether May’s successor will commit to a no-deal Brexit, but already a number of the leading candidates have signalled that this is a possibility should no agreement be reached before the revised deadline for the UK’s departure from the EU on 31 October.
In foreign affairs, it is also unclear what opportunities there are for the prime minister to seize. Unless and until an agreement has been reached with Brussels, the UK is blocked from reaching any new trade agreements with other international actors. While there has been talk of new bilateral trade agreements with India, Japan, Singapore or the US, or of the possibility of the UK joining the 11 members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), these remain aspirational rather than realistic immediate possibilities.
Rhetorically, the UK remains committed to being globally engaged and supportive of international order and the rule of law, but it is difficult to see where it has been able to make its mark in foreign affairs, despite its long-standing role in key international forums such as the UN, the G7 and the G20.82 In its traditional ‘special relationship’ with the US, the UK is a much-diminished power – a point painfully underlined by Trump’s humiliating and dismissive treatment of May during his July 2018 visit to the UK. Relative to other European countries, the UK’s defence spending remains high, but its decision to leave the EU has deprived it of the opportunity to participate in the recent effort to bolster collective European defence partnerships. Moreover, the previously talked-of new ‘golden era’ in cooperative economic relations with China remains unrealized. The UK retains substantial aid and defence budgets and has, in principle, the capacity to act as an assertive ‘middle power’. Yet amid the current crisis over Brexit, it is hard to discern a strategic direction for the country in foreign affairs: the government has insufficient time and political bandwidth to chart a clear course for the future. In the short term, the UK is likely to remain more reactive than proactive and increasingly eclipsed by peer competitors such as France, which under Macron has shown a more obvious capacity to innovate and lead in foreign affairs.83
At first glance, Japan seems immune to the populist contagion that is spreading across Europe and parts of North America. The governing LDP is the quintessential party of the establishment, having first come to power in 1955 and remained securely in place with the exception of two brief interludes (in 1993–94 and 2009–12).
The party itself has long been a broad church of different personal and policy interests and does not fit the populist model of a cohesive movement united around loyalty to a single, charismatic leader. Moreover fear, anger and resentment do not appear to have been critical animating factors in shaping Japanese voters’ participation in politics. It is true that, especially since the early 1990s, Japan has experienced increasing volatility, dealignment and political fragmentation as strong party identification has declined. The splintering of politics on both the left and the right of the political spectrum has allowed new parties to emerge to challenge the political establishment.84 At no point, however, has there been a decisive breakthrough that shattered the norms of mainstream politics, allowing voters to embrace an entirely new form of politics.
The closest the country came to departing from conventional politics was in 1993, when Hosokawa Morihiro, leader of the aptly entitled Japan New Party (JNP, or Nihon Shintō) formed an eight-part anti-LDP coalition (with 243 out of 511 seats in the House of Representatives). This relied on public disaffection with the LDP’s ability to grapple adequately with the challenges of political corruption, poor economic management in the wake of the country’s speculative property bubble bursting, and the challenges of integrating Japan’s economy into a more open international trading environment. Hosokawa’s success was short-lived (he served as prime minister for just 10 months) and support for mainstream conservative candidates remained strong in the 1993 general election, with the LDP hanging on to 223 seats in the lower house. Moreover, Hosokawa himself, despite his new political credentials as the head of the JNP, came from an established political family: his grandfather, Prince Fumimaro Konoe, had been prime minister in the days before the Second World War, and before rising to national prominence, Hosokawa had served eight years as governor of Kumamoto prefecture. Given his well-established political pedigree, he was far from being the political outsider typically associated with populist politics.
Even in 2009, when the main opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), seized power in a landslide, part of its success was again the result of frustration with the outgoing LDP’s economic record. In the election campaign there were relatively limited differences between the manifestos of the two parties, and while the DPJ focused on generous economic redistribution policies and pledged to limit the policymaking authority of the country’s civil service, its policy shift once in power was more cosmetic than radical. Both the LDP and DPJ have been, and continue to be, pragmatic parties. Both are inclusive but distinctly heterogeneous coalitions of interests, incorporating politicians who, on a range of critical issues (such as large versus small government, deregulation versus dirigiste, state-led economic planning, UN-centred internationalism versus security-focused, realist defence policymaking), share much in common not only with colleagues within their own party, but often with their counterparts across the political aisle.
Centrist politics, at least at the level of national politics, is thus a key feature of contemporary Japan. Indeed consensus decision-making has dominated post-war Japanese political culture (with the notable exception of the 1950s, when politics was sharply polarized around the twin issues of constitutional revision and the US–Japan alliance in the context of Cold War politics). Citizens’ protests are not uncommon, and the country has a history of vocal, well-organized and publicly active protest campaigns, including in the aftermath of Japan’s triple earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in 2011. Yet even the demonstrations in 2015 against Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s more active national security policy and commitment to new collective self-defence initiatives operated within the framework of mainstream politics. They have had little impact on the government’s ability to develop a more centralized and, in the view of some critics, more dirigiste style of decision-making. Public attitudes towards politics appear to have been dominated by low expectations, limited enthusiasm and scepticism, rather than intense anger or resentment. Even in the face of widespread and continuing political corruption (Abe has himself been bedevilled by two major financial scandals), the public has tended to give the benefit of the doubt to whichever party can demonstrate general economic competence. In this respect, Abe’s careful promotion of ‘Abenomics’, with its three-pronged focus on monetary easing, fiscal expansion and structural reform, has been able to reinforce an image of policymaking continuity, pragmatic problem-solving and the ability to keep the Japanese economy afloat. He has achieved this even in the face of major structural challenges such as the rapidly ageing population and a ballooning public debt that, at 253 per cent of GDP, is one of the world’s largest.
How best to explain this apparent lack of populist reaction at a time when other countries have departed from mainstream politics? Jennifer Lind has recently suggested that economic and cultural nationalism is the key to understanding this apparent anomaly. She points to the closed nature of the Japanese economy, the country’s long post-war history of centralized economic planning, a highly protected agricultural sector and a mercantilist approach to trade and investment policy, along with the country’s unwillingness to open itself up to large-scale immigration, as key factors in the country’s relatively muted response to the disruptive impact of globalization.85 It is as if Japan’s anti-liberal credentials have inoculated it against any reactionary, populist backlash.
The absence of large-scale immigration has certainly allowed the country to avoid a major, potentially disruptive social pressure point. Nevertheless it is worth noting that in recent years there has been a disturbing increase in incidents of social discrimination and attacks against Japan’s small but high-profile minority communities, particularly against long-term Korean and Chinese resident communities, many of whose members can trace their families’ arrival to forced migration to Japan during the country’s colonial period.86 Cultural and racial discriminatory identity politics are therefore not unknown in Japan and in some cases are on the rise. In the past, too, there have been unprincipled, demagogic politicians who have shamelessly exploited race and ethnicity issues to appeal to right-wing public sentiment (most notably the former four-term governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintarō).
It is as if Japan’s anti-liberal credentials have inoculated it against any reactionary, populist backlash
On the question of economic liberalism, it is also important to distinguish between the past and the present. While Japan’s early post-war economic development embraced a ‘plan-rational development state’ model, which combined both indicative planning and restricted access to the Japanese market by foreign firms and exporters, the country went through a wave of economic liberalization in the 1980s that sharply curtailed the restrictive economic nationalism of the past. As Paul Krugman and Jagdish Baghatti have argued,87 Japan became an increasingly global player in that decade, embracing the notion of internationalization, or kokusaika. Much of its success as an exporting country at that time was a function of macroeconomic structural conditions both at home and in the US (the country’s largest export market in the 1980s), rather than of any restrictive, illiberal domestic economic practices.88
Far from adhering to a closed economic agenda, Japanese administrations have sought to embrace successive waves of economic reform. These started with the policies of the 1960s designed to limit government growth; Thatcherite privatization initiatives of the Nakasone era followed in the 1980s; deregulation continued under Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro between 2001 and 2006; and reforms have culminated most recently in Abe’s ambitious agricultural policies as part of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) process, and most dramatically the signing in July 2018 of the new Japan–EU Economic Partnership Agreement, creating a free-trade agreement that encompasses one third of global GDP.
Japan’s cushioning from the full impact of globalization may stem less from any inherent economic nationalism and more from a residual confidence by all parties in the state as an important actor, although not necessarily the decisive one, in shaping economic and social outcomes for ordinary Japanese citizens. It also may reflect the distinctive nature of economic expectations among voters. The gradual nature of the country’s economic adjustment following the bursting of the growth bubble in the 1990s has allowed workers to adjust to a slow or stagnant growth trajectory.89 Younger voters have either had to become reconciled to a gradual diminution of traditional career opportunities, or have responded to economic change by opting in some cases to lower their economic and social expectations, forgoing both traditional lifetime employment and conventional marriages in favour of a furītā lifestyle of part-time employment and greater social choice. Far from channelling their disappointments and resentments into a populist effort to ‘throw the (establishment) rascals out’, Japan’s marginalized and disadvantaged have simply dropped out of the conventional ‘rat race’. The result of such changes may have been to increase the gap between economic winners and losers in Japan, but this may have been less the result of abrupt, corporate downsizing and more a function of gradual economic changes and a long-term hollowing-out of the country’s traditional employment structures.
Internationalization in trade and the partial embrace of neo-liberal values have their parallels in the foreign policy space. Under Abe, Japan has renewed and expanded its commitment to a range of international initiatives. It is seeking to consolidate its traditional alliance with the US while also pursuing a range of new ‘minilateral’ initiatives with states in Southeast Asia, along with Australia and India. Expanding defence spending, the relaxation of legal constraints on the deployment of the country’s Self-Defense Forces, and most recently the launch of the country’s bold Indo-Pacific Strategy (recently reformulated as a ‘vision’) are all markers, rhetorically at least, of a confident, outward- looking Japan that seems little inclined to retreat into the chauvinistic, competitive nationalism associated with populism elsewhere. Even allowing for moments of diplomatic tension with historical rivals such as China and South Korea, pragmatism rather than radical revisionism appears to be the key factor shaping Japan’s foreign policy agenda. Abe, as an actor on the world stage, appears confident and well equipped to deliver on his rhetorical commitments to defend the rule of law and his assertion of the need to maintain international order at a time of sharply rising uncertainty. In this regard, he appears well ahead of his UK counterpart and genuinely able to pursue a proactive rather than reactive foreign policy. This ability reveals the weakness and fragmentation of the opposition in Japan and the absence of any obvious leadership rivals within Abe’s own party capable of launching a credible challenge in the LDP, particularly in the wake of Abe’s successful re-election, for a third term, as LDP President in September 2018. It also marks the steady strengthening of executive power since the turn of the century, which has accelerated since Abe became prime minister in 2012.
A strengthened system of cabinet government, while helping to streamline policymaking, can of course also be a potential challenge to democratic openness, transparency and accountability. Critics have pointed to the steady erosion of parliamentary checks and balances in the Japanese Diet and the relative absence of single-member legislation or a robust system of parliamentary scrutiny to hold the government to account.90 Indeed, if one wanted to find evidence for the imperfect functioning of democracy in Japan, plenty of phenomena could be cited: the narrowing of media debate; the weakness of investigative journalism; efforts by the Abe administration to manage public discourse by appointing LDP loyalists to senior positions in the national broadcaster, NHK; a public diplomacy programme that all too often denies access to public platforms to academics deemed too critical of the government; the strengthening of state security legislation; and a growing general climate of self-censorship.91
Debate on these issues is, in part, a discussion about the efficiency of the democratic process in Japan. A more fundamental concern is the nature of the norms and values that shape the political process employed by leading political actors in Japan. Here there are distinct grounds for suggesting that Japan may not in fact be as immune as it appears to the appeal of populist politics.
Clear proof that Japan, like other states in the grip of a populist reaction, is firmly wedded to its own powerful politics of nostalgia comes from the right of the political spectrum, in the growth of controversial historical revisionist organizations such as Nippon Kaigi (the Japan Conference), which boasts a membership of 38,000 and includes most of the members of the Abe cabinet, and the prime minister himself in a special advisory role. Mythologized historical identity based on questionable arguments surrounding the unbroken ruling lineage of the Japanese monarchy, or attempts to advance highly controversial, revisionist accounts of Japan’s actions during the Pacific War, or the routinized commitment by Nippon Kaigi members to visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine commemorating the country’s war dead, are all indicators of a type of tribal, cultural conservatism that is much more about identity politics than practical policymaking.
Parallel examples of this nativist drive can be found in the arguments for constitutional revision (a key agenda issue for Abe), the promotion of new patriotic education from primary school upwards, and the broad support within the LDP for the continuation of an explicitly traditional, male-centric Emperor system. None of these views need be seen as inherently illegitimate or necessarily threatening, but they remain sharply divisive and polarizing. It is striking, for example, that roughly 58 per cent of the Japanese public remain either opposed to or hesitant about supporting Abe’s desire to revise Japan’s 1947 constitution.92 By contrast, for some of Abe’s conservative colleagues and supporters, the promotion of conservative values is a zero-sum, non-consensual process and constitutes a form of cultural anti-pluralism apparently straight out of the populist playbook.
The key challenge for contemporary Japan is to balance these controversial and contentious historical and cultural arguments against the more internationalist outlook of rival sections of Japanese society, particularly on the left and among older voters, many of whom remain fiercely committed to Japan’s post-war culture of pacifism and internationalism and adamantly opposed to any form of constitutional change. To revert to Steve Richards’ terminology, it is as if Japan’s ‘outsiders’ (if only when it comes to historical arguments) have figuratively seized power in government and ousted the ‘insiders’, who for much of the post-war period have embraced a cosmopolitan outlook that has been hostile to any efforts to re-legitimize some of the cultural, nativist arguments dominant in the pre-1945 period.
The reality of this ‘transfer’ of power is, to be accurate, more complicated. The LDP remains a broad church that includes committed internationalists and those whose priorities are more domestically focused. Nevertheless, when it comes to identity politics, Abe’s past cabinet appointments have frequently included a preponderance of members of Nippon Kaigi.93 Many cultural conservatives in the LDP have in fact long served in government, but it is only relatively recently that they have acquired more confidence in articulating their views publicly and forcefully. In Abe they have found a confident and sincere supporter who shares their views. But he also recognizes the need to tread carefully in advancing them for fear of antagonizing unsympathetic groups both at home and abroad, particularly in Asia among those countries, such as China and the two Koreas, which bore the brunt of Japan’s colonial and wartime expansion in the 1930s. Abe’s pragmatism in foreign affairs is therefore not necessarily incompatible with his revisionist sympathies and his strong views on some aspects of the country’s contentious identity politics.
A key challenge for analysts and policymakers will be identifying the salience, intensity and impact of Japan’s newly invigorated cultural nationalism, both at home and abroad
Looking ahead, a key challenge for analysts and policymakers will be identifying the salience, intensity and impact of Japan’s newly invigorated cultural nationalism, both at home and abroad. It will also be important to address the question of the legitimacy of these views and their relevance to their individual adherents. Seeking to revisit and reclaim the past may seem anachronistic and irrational, but to those Japanese conservatives who look to their imperial heritage for personal and collective inspiration, and those UK Conservatives who are intent on revitalizing the nation state and freeing it from the encumbering influences of a distant and overly bureaucratic European super-state, the past is anything but a foreign country. This explains the populist impulse in some parts of British and Japanese life and demonstrates why instinct as well as reason will remain a core part of the political (and ideally democratic) process in both countries.
