10 Leaders The EconomistSeptember 5th 2020
T
he recordwasbeateninlateAugust.Then,justfourdays
later, the record-breaker said that he was, too. After serving
the longest continuous stint of any Japanese prime minister (as
well as the longest time in the job overall) Abe Shinzo announced
his resignation on August 28th.
Mr Abe blamed the abrupt decision, over a year before the
rules of his Liberal Democratic Party (ldp) would have obliged
him to step down, on an old digestive ailment. But many have
cast his departure as an admission of defeat. The economy,
which he has worked hard to revive after decades of listlessness,
is swooning again because of covid-19. His campaign to revise Ja-
pan’s pacifist constitution to give the armed forces a proper legal
underpinning has gone nowhere. His planned swansong, the To-
kyo Olympics that were supposed to have taken place this sum-
mer, may never happen. His approval rating is dire.
It is a gloomy moment. What with the depredations of the
coronavirus, the growing pugnacity of China and Japan’s shrink-
ing and ageing population, Mr Abe’s successor, who will be cho-
sen on September 14th by the ldp’s mps, will have his work cut
out (see Asia section). But all these problems have been made
more manageable by Mr Abe’s eight years in office. The outgoing
prime minister has done a far better job than is commonly ac-
knowledged. Before covid-19 struck, “Abenomics” was succeed-
ing, albeit slowly, in resuscitating the economy.
Japan, something of a wallflower in global af-
fairs since the second world war, was playing an
unusually prominent and constructive role in
Asia and around the world. And Mr Abe was
pushing through difficult reforms that shorter-
lived and less adept prime ministers had
shirked for decades. He leaves a much more im-
pressive legacy than his muted exit suggests.
Abenomics was supposed to banish deflation and spur
growth through lavish spending, radical monetary policy and
structural reforms. Mr Abe never met his own, ambitious target
to pump up inflation to 2% a year, but he did at least turn it posi-
tive. Before he took office, prices had been falling for four years
straight; they have risen in all but one of the seven years since.
During his tenure the economy enjoyed a 71-month recovery, just
two months shy of a post-war record. And productivity has risen
faster in Japan than in America.
To get the economy moving, Mr Abe adopted policies previ-
ously considered politically or culturally impossible. As part of
the Trans Pacific Partnership (tpp), a big regional trade deal, he
agreed to slash tariffs and increase import quotas for agricultural
goods, even though coddled farmers are some of the ldp’s most
loyal supporters. Japanese women entered the workforce in
droves, helped by free nursery school and other subsidies for
child care. They are now more likely to work than their American
counterparts. And there are more than twice as many foreign
workers in Japan as there were when Mr Abe took office, despite a
supposed national phobia about immigration.
Corporate governance has also improved dramatically. Al-
most all big listed firms have at least one independent director,
compared with less than 40% in 2012. That in turn has broad-enedJapan’sappealtoforeigninvestors.Justthisweek Warren
Buffett piled into Japanese conglomerates (see Business sec-
tion). The main stockmarket index has more than doubled on Mr
Abe’s watch, having barely budged for the previous decade.
There have been mistakes, too, of course, most notably the
decision to raise the sales tax twice, both times sending the econ-
omy into brief recession. But the pundits’ grim warnings—that
the scale of government borrowing would prompt unaffordable
rises in the interest rate it had to pay or, conversely, that the cen-
tral bank’s adoption of negative interest rates would fatally in-
jure the big banks—were simply wrong (see Free exchange).
Mr Abe confounded expectations even more with his vigor-
ous and adroit diplomacy. As the grandson of one of the archi-
tects of Japan’s imperial war machine and an avowed nationalist
himself, he was expected to spark dangerous rows with China
while alienating Japan’s allies (see Books & arts). He has, it is
true, got locked into a pointless historical feud with South Korea.
For the most part, however, he has managed to rally like-minded
governments in the region to counter China’s military and eco-
nomic might without unduly provoking China’s ire. When
America pulled out of the tppit was Mr Abe who kept the project
alive. He also strengthened military co-operation with fellow de-
mocracies like Australia and India. He has stayed chummy with
President Donald Trump, yet he is also, remark-
ably, on goodish terms with Xi Jinping, China’s
president, who had been due to visit Japan in
April until covid-19 intervened.
The constitution may remain unchanged,
but Mr Abe has nonetheless made Japan a more
credible force on the world stage. He has in-
creased spending on the armed forces and
pushed through legal changes allowing them to
take part in joint-defence pacts and peacekeeping missions. De-
spite constant Chinese prodding, he has held firm on a territorial
dispute over some tiny islands in the East China Sea.
Mr Abe leaves plenty of pressing problems to his successor.
Japan’s shrinking population makes it all the more important to
get as many people as possible into the workforce and to raise
their productivity. Although more women are working, cor-
porate culture remains too sexist to make the most of their skills:
most are in dead-end jobs. The rigid divide between salaried and
part-time workers also makes the labour market inefficient. Far
too little, especially of the work of government, is digital. And Ja-
pan has made little progress in greening its energy mix.
Although Mr Abe leaves lots of unfinished business, he also
leaves his successor the tools to complete the job. Perhaps his
most important and least recognised achievement is to have
made Japan more governable. He managed to quell, at least for
now, factional jockeying within the ldp, which doomed previ-
ous prime ministers to short, turbulent stints in office. And he
brought the bureaucracy, which used to run the show as the poli-
ticians rotated, more firmly under the control of its elected
bosses. Japan’s economy, in particular, still needs a lot of help.
But if the next prime minister manages to get anything done, it
will be thanks in large part to the groundwork laid by Mr Abe. 7How Abe Shinzo changed Japan
He not only reshaped the economy and foreign relations, he also paved the way for future reformsA prime minister’s legacy