The Daily Signal - Former Japanese Leader Shinzo Abe Assassinated. What You Need to Know.

Episode Date: July 8, 2022

Japan’s longest serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is dead. Abe’s legacy loomed large over Japan and his untimely death sent shockwaves throughout the country and the world. But with Abe’s death, questions arise about what direction Japan will go. Bruce Klingner, a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow specializing in Japanese affairs, joins this bonus episode of “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss what the implications are for Japan, and dive into the legacy that Abe leaves behind. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Daily Signal listeners, Doug Blair here with a bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is dead, assassinated in Nara, Japan. As the world reels from the assassination of this beloved public leader, it can be interesting to know what exactly the consequences of this assassination will be. To answer those questions, we have Bruce Klinger, a Heritage Foundation Senior Research Fellow, specializing in Korean and Japanese Affairs, to come talk to us. Enjoy. My guest today is. Bruce Klinger, a Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, specializing in Korean and Japanese

Affairs. Bruce, welcome to the show. Well, thanks for having me. Major world news today as former Japanese Prime Minister Shino Abe was just assassinated. Kind of first off, what are the immediate implications of this murder for Japan? It's just a shocking development because having such a senior leader assassinated, of course, would be stunning to a nation, particularly given that. gun violence is virtually unheard of in Japan. They have very strict gun laws. They have a culture against gun ownership. And last year they had one gun-related death amongst a population of 125 million. So the nation will be stunned not only because it was Abe being killed, but just

anyone related to gun violence. And Abe casts a very long shadow on the Japanese political landscape. He served two different ten years as prime minister, including as both the youngest post-war prime minister and the longest serving prime minister. And he still was a very, very influential legislative member and head of a major political faction in the Japanese political system. It sounds like there are pretty large implications in the country itself, but are there implications now for the rest of the world, for the globe at large? Paul's policies will not change.

So it's a devastating loss for Japan, for its political landscape, but it will not change or alter Japan's policies. Since he resigned for the second time for health reasons two years ago, his two successors have maintained Abe's policies. They are very welcome policies in the United States. Abe was really visionary in creating a larger role for Japan in the Asia-Pacific region as well as sort of strengthening Japan's security status, its military status, and his successors have maintained that. So Japan has shown itself to be a very stalwart and

earnest ally of the United States. And Prime Minister Kashita, the current leader, has affirmed in recent meetings with President Biden, Japan's willingness to confront the Chinese and North Korean threats in Asia. Do we know anything about the possible motives of this assassin? It seems to be a troubled individual. The initial reports was that he used a shotgun, but the photos of the assassination, it seemed like a handmade weapon. And given Japan's very strict gun laws,

citizens are only allowed to own shotguns or air rifles, not handguns or rifles, and there's a very stringent process even for getting the shotguns. He seemed to be troubled. There was a statement by the police that he was upset with Abe, but not because of Abe's political beliefs. Other reports bit cryptic about that he wanted to assassinate the leader of a religious movement that Abe is affiliated with, and that leader wasn't going to be in the Japanese

city that Abe was, and so he decided to kill Abe instead. So I think it's a troubled individual. Now, you mentioned at the very top that this is. unprecedented that this type of crime just does not happen in Japan. Are there implications now that this has happened? One of the things that was sort of striking about this was Abe was on a stump speech, which was literally a stump speech. He was out in public and people were shaking hands with him and very close. Do we see that sort of narrative shifting or do we see that type of communication that a politician will do in Japan shifting? There may be additional security

measures implemented. Prime Minister Kashida said that this Sunday's upper house election will continue, although with additional safety measures unspecified to be implemented. But amongst the Japanese political landscape, really there is no distance between politicians and the citizenry so that this assassin as well as other citizens could get very close to Abe as well as other politicians. They often show up at railroad stations or subway stations to sort of press the flesh with the voting public. So we may see additional steps now to take safety measures for politicians. American media has been seemingly pretty harsh about Abe's legacy.

I have some stuff from NPR. They tweeted a header describing him as a divisive arch conservative. While later on in a piece sort of describing what happened, they described him as an ultra-nationalist. Is that a fair assessment? There's a lot about Abe and his legacy. So his policies were, I think, very strong on national defense, on affirming Japan's security role in the region, which has been limited since the end of World War II by a pacifist constitution and just a cultural resistance to expanding the role of the self-defense forces. Abe was pushing and he accomplished a great deal, the first National Security Council creation, the first national security strategy strategy. He really was the visionary behind what became the free and open Indo-Pacific strategy

and the quadrilateral security dialogue, which the U.S. later embraced. So really a very accomplished statesman. He also did have sort of what would be seen as nationalist beliefs. He believed that Japan had suitably apologized for its role not only in World War II, but it's 1910 and 1945, very brutal. occupation of the Korean Peninsula. And he did espouse views that seem to downplay Japan's participation and responsibility for those actions. And that generated a lot of controversy. So I think if you need to separate his policies from sort of his personal beliefs, which did

tend to have nationalist tones. Now, you did mention that Fumio Kishida, who is currently the prime minister of Japan, is probably going to continue a lot of those policies that Abe had put into place beforehand. His death changes nothing. It's literally just going to sort of continue on the way. I think it will continue. And what we've seen is because Mr. Abe was divisive because of his nationalist beliefs, he was unable to achieve some of his security goals in many ways because of that legacy of his views.

Mr. Kashida does not carry that same baggage. And also given North Korea's and Chinese continuing bad behavior, encroachments on the sovereignty in the east and South China Sea by Beijing, North Korea's continuing nuclear and missile tests, et cetera, there's a growing support amongst the Japanese public for stronger security roles. And two issues in In particular, Japan striving to double its defense budget to perhaps 2% of its GDP, as well as Japan acquiring what would be called retaliatory base strike capabilities or attacking North Korean or Chinese missile units after they have already fired an initial attack on Japan. Both of those issues would have been very unheard of in the mainstream political discussion

even two years ago. And now they're being discussed by Mr. Kashida as well as sort of mainstream pundits and politicians. So that's not necessarily because of Mr. Abe, but because the security environment has been seen as increasingly being degraded by Chinese and North Korean actions. Given that this is a domestic security concern and that Abe was murdered before he was able to get a lot of these things like the constitutional shift away from not being able to have a sort of formal. military. Currently, Japan has a self-defense force, which is not really a military, but kind of a military in name only. Does that seem to impact maybe how that will go forward now that there is a domestic security concern as well? It's hard to say. I don't know if there will be a sense of, you know, we need to fulfill Abe's legacy by implementing the policies he advocated,

because Mr. Kashita, in essence, already does that. I think there will be a collective shock in Japan, perhaps such as what the U.S. went through when John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated or Robert Kennedy, just a stunned nation. But I think on the policies, it won't really have an effect. As we begin to wrap up here, now that obviously Mr. Abe is dead and we have this opportunity to look back at his legacy, how should we view Abe's legacy and how should we view how it will impact Japan going forward? I think it's a very positive legacy on the policy side. So he really had to take the ball and run with it against a lot of domestic resistance to having Japan have a stronger military to stand up to the threats from China and North Korea, which were not always understood by others in his party or his country. And he really put a lot of political capital into achieving security success. that I don't think anyone else would have been able to do. They either did not have the acumen or just the star power that Mr. Abe had, so he was able to push it.

And as I said earlier, that said, he did have sort of a stigma of being a nationalist. So any step that Japan took to improve its security was instantly interpreted by Japan's neighbors, China, North and South Korea, as a dangerous return to Japan's militarism of the 1930s and 40s. So, you know, the current leaders don't have that legacy. So I think they will be able to further Mr. Abe's policies really in an easier way because he not only broke the ice on those policies and set the path, but also they won't have that contentious persona that Mr. Abe was seen to have. Absolutely.

Well, in the meantime, we wish the best, obviously, to the people of Japan, Mr. Abe's family. and as they go through this. But that was Bruce Klinger, a Heritage Foundation, senior research fellow specializing in Korean and Japanese affairs. Bruce, thank you so much for joining us and explaining everything that's going on. Well, thank you for having you. And that'll do it for this bonus episode of The Daily Signal Podcast.

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