Ken and Garrett on Abe’s stonewalling and gaffe, along with his upcoming meetings with Hu Jintao in Beijing and Roh Moo-Hyun in Seoul, which your hosts think will important in setting the tone for foreign affairs in Abe’s administration.� What might happen regarding a North Korean nuclear test?

(Intro: Shamisen and an orchestral version of Kimigayo.)
In the news:

New Prime Minister Abe Shinzo frustrated opposition DPJ and Communist Party Diet members by literally sticking to the script and reading answers written by his aides off of note cards in response to direct, specific questions, especially from DPJ Secretary-General Hatoyama Yukio, during his first session of questioning in the Diet on Monday. The session ended half an hour early due to Abe’s refusal to answer questions or explain his positions.

What the Prime Minister did do was express a desire to pass legislation to extend the special measures law by a year. The law allows Japan to engage in collective defense in fighting Islamist terrorism, primarily by using Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels to refuel American and other coalition ships in the Indian Ocean. On collective defense as a policy or an interpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution, though, he refused to comment, saying only that he considered the fight against terrorism to be an issue important to the country and one in which Japan had an important role.

Furthermore, in a Diet session this past Tuesday, Abe continued to frustrate opposition lawmakers and may have started to head down the wrong road vis a vis Japan’s neighbors by saying that he needed to be humble in his view of history, but refusing to do more than deny that his intention in revising the Constitution was to allow the country to go to war. He followed the precedent set by Koizumi in reaffirming former PM Murayama Tomiichi’s 1995 statement of regret. However, it is no secret that Abe holds conservative views on history and he angrily called, in 1997, for revisions to Murayama’s statement. He also referred, on Thursday, to Murayama”s statement and former Cabinet Secretary Kono Yohei’s 1993 statement on “comfort women” as having been decisions made previous Cabinets at the times when they were in power and handed down to the current Cabinet.
In this writer’s humble opinion, Mr. Abe is fooling no one. He is getting off to an active start as Prime Minister, but seems to be hoping his caginess will defuse the tension around controversial issues. It isn’t and it probably won’t; it’s only making him look insincere at best and disingenuous at worst. He presumably has opinions - at least one would hope so - and those opinions are probably not dramatically different from those he held up until he was elected President of the LDP. Why the faux humility and aversion to speaking his mind now?

As promised, though, Abe has begun to make moves in the education arena. By appointing an unprecedented five special advisors, four of whom are Diet members, to help him do battle with the bureaucracy, Abe has sent a strong signal that he intends to take the lead in policy initiatives. This has rankled some bureaucrats, including recently appointed Minister of Education Ibuki Bunmei, who claims the Education Ministry, in consultation with the Central Council on Education, will continue to decide the nation’s education policy. Abe has other plans and has designated Special Advisor Yamatani Eriko to head a new Council for the Reform of Education.

In another bureaucratic battle, the Prime Minister has stated an intention to privatize the recently scandal-ridden Social Insurance Office, which will ruffle feathers when the office’s many employees lose their status as civil servants.

But that’s not all. Abe is raising hackles throughout the government by relying on his special advisors in other roles as well. As part of his efforts to form a US-style National Security Council, he plans to send his Special Advisor on National Security Koike Yuriko, who sat in on Abe’s phone call to George W. Bush the night of Wednesday, the 27th, to Washington as soon as possible, so she can begin gaining the trust of President Bush’s National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.

This did not sit well with Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who sees Abe as impinging on its turf by assigning diplomatic responsibilities, heretofore the Foreign Ministry’s job, to Koike. An unnamed Foreign Ministry official wondered to a reporter what the Foreign Minister’s job would then be. (Although, considering that Aso Taro, not exactly a tactful or diplomatic personage, now holds that position, the question might be valid regardless of what Koike’s responsibilities turn out to be.)

Surely that’s all, right? I mean, how much could Abe’s new Special Advisors be doing? He did just appoint a new Cabinet, after all. Well, the Prime Minister further stepped on the Foreign Ministry’s toes by having Special Advisor for Public Relations Seko Hiroshige brief the press on Abe’s Thursday morning (September 28th) phone call to South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun, which would have normally been the job of a Foreign Ministry official.

In other news (but still about Abe because that’s the big news):

The Prime Minister is planning to travel to Beijing on Sunday to meet with Hu Jintao, followed by a Monday meeting with President Roh Moo-Hyun in Seoul as part of his stated efforts to improve relations with Japan’s neighbors. These meetings could prove difficult or even testy for the Prime Minister, though, as he finally commented on his opinions on history in response to opposition lawmaker Kan Naoto’s questions in a Thursday Diet session, saying, “The people who are said to be so-called Class-A criminals were tried and convicted as war criminals at the Tokyo tribunal, but they were not war criminals under domestic laws. That also was the case for my relative.” Referring to his grandfather, accused war criminal, wartime Cabinet member, Manchukuo administrator, and 56th and 57th Prime Minister, Kishi Nobusuke. He also declined to distance his Cabinet from the controversial views propounded by the Yushukan at Yasukuni Shrine. South Korea and China had both canceled summits with former PM Koizumi and refused to schedule new ones earlier this year in response to his refusal to stop visiting the controversial shrine.
Thank you to Amy & Doug of Planet Japan for their very kind mention of us in PJ #69. Planet Japan is a laid back podcast on a variety of subjects from Japan and, occasionally, beyond. They take on the lighter, often bizarre side of things and toss in a few jokes and a tune or two along the way. Pay them a visit by clicking on the link above.