Global Perspective: How to Overcome Japan’s National Crisis

The British Royal Navy’s aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth at the US Naval Base in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, in this photo on September 7, 2021. (Mainichi/Hiroshi Maruyama)

We are now in the fourth year of the Rewa era, but that is preceded by 30 years of the Heisei era (1988-2019). What kind of era was it?

Simply put, it was a time of trilogy agony. First, the economy, of which we were so proud, collapsed and sank after the economic bubble burst in the early 1990s. Second, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake of 1995, the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and other major disasters occurred frequently. Third, rapid military expansion and the threat posed by North Korea and China have exposed Japan to a real national security threat for the first time since the end of World War II.

Despite the tripartite problems, Japanese society remained calm, did not fall into the circle of populism, maintained a people-friendly lifestyle, and the fame of the wonderful Japanese culture increased.

So, how will it change in the Reiwa era? Has the triple burden been eliminated? No, the country is now facing quadruple problems. This was due to the spread of the new Corona virus. While major disasters are limited to certain regions, the novel coronavirus poses a threat to the life of the entire nation. People are not tolerant of a government that is unable to respond to the threat to their survival. Even the government that enjoyed the longest period of power in modern Japanese history (Abe), or a government with a strong grip on the bureaucracy (Suga) was easily replaced in the midst of the Corona disaster. It is a terrible crisis.

Has the threat from external enemies subsided with the emergence of Rewa? The opposite is true. North Korea is more challenging and provocative when it comes to nuclear weapons and missiles. Since nuclear weapons are practically unusable, the probability of actual damage is not high, but what should be feared is China, which has built a comprehensive military system and is not afraid to use it. Its aggressive behavior, also known as wolf warrior diplomacy during the coronavirus pandemic, has led to international restrictive measures targeting China, such as AUKUS (Australia, UK and US Security Framework) and QUAD (Japan-US Strategic Dialogue, Australia and India). The major countries of Western Europe, which had traditionally viewed China as an economic opportunity, became so cautious that they sent warships to patrol East Asia. However, China’s actions towards Taiwan and the Senkaku Islands cannot be prevented, and Japan must find an answer to the difficult problems at the front.

In short, our country is in the midst of a national crisis. Now I would like to make three suggestions as to what should be done.

The first is the creation of a crisis management agency for disaster prevention and epidemic control. A century ago, the Spanish flu killed about 400,000 people in Japan, but the Japanese government still lacked an effective system for dealing with infectious disease crises. Changing the working directory in peacetime can be an unexpected problem for bureaucrats, who can only respond reluctantly. The Prime Minister’s Office should be supported by a specialized organization that has accumulated experience in foreign and domestic infectious diseases and can respond to new situations through rapid research and studies.

The same applies to disaster prevention. It’s hard to believe that the Prime Minister’s Office does not have a permanent division of disaster prevention experts in an archipelago where disasters happen frequently. As for external threats, a group of political experts headed by the Prime Minister, including the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are studying and rehearsing contingency plans on a daily basis. An agency for disaster prevention and control of epidemics should be established to respond to crises, with experts in the field of disaster prevention and infectious diseases.

Second, Japan must restructure its national security strategy. Postwar Japan, by reflecting on its behavior before the war, believed that the condition for peace was not to start wars alone. Today, this is only half the story. It is now necessary to find a way to prevent our neighbors, who are rushing to expand their armed forces, from using force. This is remarkably difficult to achieve, but it may be useful to combine three approaches: (1) strengthening self-help capabilities, including strengthening missile networks, (2) making the Japan-US alliance more effective, and (3) expanding international cooperation.

The gap in military power between Japan and China has now widened dramatically. Under these circumstances, we must avoid the mistakes of going two extreme ways. One is no peaceful defense. As was the case with Belgium’s unpreparedness prior to World War I leading to the invasion of Germany, and China’s seizure of the Philippines from the Mishev Atoll in the Spratly Islands in 1995, the lack of sufficient resistance to a country threatening to use force had the effect of stirring. and seduce her greed.

The other side is to say that we must have complete deterrence against the other country. With Japan’s economic strength, it is not easy to build an army (deterrence) that can destroy the heart of China, and we must not allow the problem to spread too much. The only Japanese territories that China intends to capture are the Senkaku Islands. There is an urgent need to enhance the capabilities of the Japanese Coast Guard and build a multi-layered missile network to make this difficult. As long as the Japan-US alliance is alive and well, a direct attack on the Japanese mainland is very dangerous for China. We need to rebuild our relationship with China on the basis of the “Japan-US alliance plus Japan-China Entente” so that we are neither attacked nor attacked.

Third, the revitalization of the Japanese economy, which is the basis of everything. In an effort to achieve this goal, the second Shinzo Abe administration launched “three stocks”: (1) radical monetary easing, (2) tight fiscal policy, and (3) growth through capital investment. The first two measures succeeded in boosting stock prices and creating a positive economic sentiment. However, the third program did not succeed, and Japan continues to experience low growth.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida called for a “new capitalism” through wage increases and the correction of inequality. This is a global issue and I hope progress will be made. However, the most urgent task is for Japan to restore its growth potential by promoting research and development and direct investment. Without this, there will be no improvement in the finances of the nation and there will be no renaissance for Japan. However, in the current situation where many companies have forgotten this for 30 years and focused on internal reserves, strategic direction by the government is essential in research, development and investment. In this sense, the construction of a semiconductor manufacturing plant by the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC) in Kumamoto Prefecture in southern Japan gives me hope.

Some senior officials have called for addressing the national budget deficit. It is an important political goal, but now is not the time to pursue it. Budget austerity in a COVID-19 recession is suicidal. Now is the time to use strict fiscal measures to aggressively boost digitization, as Japan lags behind the rest of the world, and to focus on accelerating investment in new industries with an eye on global warming.

The triple or quadruple burden is about the gravity of the environment. What matters is how we act. History is replete with examples of realizing the danger and setting ambitious goals to turn a crisis into an opportunity. Let’s aim for creative recovery in the Reiwa era.

(By Makoto Iokibe, President of the Asian Affairs Research Council)

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