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Macroscope | Japan an island of stability in the Asia-Pacific? Think again
- Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his party are flailing in response to a fundraising scandal, shaking Japan’s image as an island of stability
- Japan’s political structure has clearly not matured and stabilised in the post-war period to the same extent that its institutional and economic structure has
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Japan is an island of political and economic stability in an Asia-Pacific region full of geostrategic threats and ideological tensions. This is at least the perception cultivated by Japan and some of its allies, but is it still valid?
How does this view square with the spectacle of prosecutors descending en masse recently on the offices of key factions within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – supposedly a pillar of Japan’s stability – over a political funding scandal?
How does it square with the fact that current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida could soon be forced to step down by his party, just a couple of years after taking office, in the face of withering attacks from the Japanese media over his handling of government affairs?
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The 99-member Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyukai faction, the largest in parliament, which former prime minister Shinzo Abe had led, along with the 40-member faction led by former LDP secretary general Toshihiro Nikai, is at the centre of a political funding scandal that is also reaching into other party factions and into the heart of the Kishida administration.
The scandal involves under-reported revenue from political fundraisers. LDP factions usually set targets for members selling tickets to these events, and in some instances, surplus revenue from ticket sales went to those who surpassed their targets but was not properly declared to the tax authorities. Over a five-year period, these kickbacks reportedly have totalled around 500 million yen (US$3.5 million) for Abe faction members and 100 million yen for Nikai faction members.
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It seems more accurate to portray Japan now as a nation which has been shaken to its core by internecine political warfare and which will require fundamental reforms if the image of stability is to be preserved or regained.
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