Risk-taking Abe may not be what Japan, or Asia, needs right now
Tom Plate says Abe's nationalism is a real worry for many so perhaps an ineffectual leader, of which Japan has had many, would be better for peace and stability in Asia and beyond
I don't know whether I am rooting against Shinzo Abe in the sudden election the incumbent Japanese prime minister has teed up for next month. It's a hard call. Japanese culture has given the world reason to be grateful for some of the best electronics, the healthiest food, the cleverest anime, the neatest cars, the most fabulous novelists and the most subtle and daring film directors. At the same time, it has had some of the least worthy prime ministers of any country. The gap between its general culture and its political culture seems about the dimensions of Mount Fuji.
Giant Japan, the world's third-largest economy and America's leading ally in the Pacific, tends to produce prime ministers who are such lemons, they are almost constantly being replaced. Since 1990, Japan has suffered through no less than 16 prime ministers, including the present one - twice.
Abe's first, brief tenure was blown apart by another of those dreary Japanese political scandals that seem to yield both a ritual suicide (in this case, the then-agricultural minister's) and renewed hopelessness about Japan ever getting its political act together. Yet he managed to win anew the leadership of his Liberal Democratic Party, and Abe II was born.
Abe's feral nationalism turns off much of Asia. Historical memory will do that. But, supposing Abe flops, what will Japan and an anxious world get in his place? As the saying goes, it is always best to look before you leap. Here in the US, we are looking at the election for two main reasons.
As the US "pivots" to Asia, it has no wish to fall on its face. And the challenge of constructing better relations with China is crucial. This is now America's most important bilateral relationship in Asia - no longer is it with Japan. Japan should consider what a mistake it would be in its relations with the US to be the seeming spoiler of any happy ending in the Sino-US relationship.
But this is what an Abe government may bring to the table: the growing fear that Tokyo and Beijing will end up slugging it out, over some stupid offshore island disagreement, or something equally trivial. This is not to say such disputes do not have some real content or that Beijing itself should not try to do more to maintain peace and stability, as Premier Li Keqiang himself seems to recognise. All nations must do more. But the way Abe's brain seems to be wired, you often worry about a short fuse blowing.