Shinzo Abe officially resigns

[Love Mountain]

CBS News

It's been known for a couple weeks now, that Shinzo Abe is going to resign as Prime Minister of Japan due to health issues. He is being succeeded by his Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yoshihide Suga. Shinzo Abe came into office attempting to end the stagnation of Japan. His main policies have been to essentially run monetary stimulus and budget deficits ad infinitum to stimulate Japan's economy. This has had mixed success and I wouldn't characterize his stimulus as anything extraordinary. I'd actually argue he's not going far enough. On foreign policy, Abe gradually loosened restrictions surrounding JSDF, continued to build stronger ties with local allies to contain China, even heralding a new chapter in Japan-India relations. On the other hand, his rule has seen a souring of relations with South Korea, rekindled nationalist voices within Japan, and rather than reforming the economy, has doubled down on its aging bureaucracy.

All in all, Shinzo Abe has been a responsible and stable steward of Japan in the eyes of his Western allies. His departure leaves a lot of question marks. Shinzo Abe is easily the longest serving Prime Minister in recent history, this is normally a job with very high turn over. Most PMs only last a year or less.


The current trajectory of Japan's foreign policy is unlikely to change, I find it possible that the energy behind it will disappear. Internal intrigue, COVID, and other domestic concerns will likely be Suga's top priorities in the next year or two, if he lasts that long. The U.S. - Japan alliance is not in danger, but now, United States will have to pick up the slack in the Pacific to build the alliances to contain China.

[Lord Thesaurian]

There seems to be a consensus that Suga will continue the idiotic hawkishness that characterized Abe’s posture toward Korea. It remains to be seen whether any of that hawkishness will be useful in strengthening Japan’s defensive posture vs China. So far, such a posture appears purely political in nature, limiting its effectiveness in my view. Trying to contain this vs Korea whilst directing it towards the idea of an Indo-Pacific defense project(s) will be a challenge to US administrations going forward. After all, Beijing has also positioned herself as an economic and political peacemaker in this dynamic between the world’s third and soon to be ninth largest economies.

[Love Mountain]

It is unlikely that the Korea-Japan schism will stop, especially now. Appearing weak on Korea will open him up for criticism and attacks from his own party, plenty of who, benefit from a weak PM. Abe was an exception to this rule, but even as iconic as Abe was, he was unable to reign in the bureaucracy.

Best case scenario is US mediation.

[Cyclops]

I am a bit ignorant about the hostility between Japan and the Koreas, although I have a basic grasp of the historical context. Was Abe hostile to a possible reunification because a united Korea would be in China's camp? South Korea and Japan both depend on US forces as a balance to the threat of Chinese hegemony, is this jostling ion the pecking order?

[Love Mountain]

Lol I wish it was over serious security concerns. No, the issue is over historical grievances of "comfort women". I.E. korean sex slaves used by Japan during WWII. There is squabbling over compensating the descendants of those victims. I don't mean to downlplay the horror of such issues, but it seems incredibly petty to put modern, and immediate, security and economic concerns on the basis of history. Nor is only Japan at fault, Korea has also failed to reign in their activists and come to a reasonable agreement. This issue stokes the Nationalists in both countries, and really, the only person who can solve this issue is Abe, who is no longer in power.

To his credit, Abe did try to figure out a compensation plan, but that was derailed. The issue once again resurfaced when Korean courts ordered a Japanese firm to pay damages over this issue.

[Cyclops]

Its a pretty horrible issue from a number of angles and hard to discuss without upsetting people from all sides of the discussion.

Australia had a long history of treating Japanese (and all "non-whites") as lower grade or sub-human, but we were horrified when Japanese people did something horrible or refused to apologise. I can recall even in the 1970's some people nursed a white hot hatred of Japanese , so much so they would refuse to even speak to a Japanese person.

I'm sure Japanese people are quite capable of being racist (or tolerant or whatever) on their own behalf but i can't help thinking any entrenched racism must have been magnified by the racism they encountered dealing with Europeans in the 19th century.

Australian citizens who were sex slaves received an apology and compensation years (IIRC decades) ago. I guess we were/are an important resource base for Japan so an apology could be made, but surely Korea is also important? Maybe the racism/superiority issue is too real: it has been for us here. It took until the 21st century for an apology to aboriginal people from our government for deeds that are now defined as genocide and even now they are the group in Australia that gets it in the neck.