The Abe Restoration: Contemporary Japanese Politics and Reformation

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Shinzo Abe returned to office as Prime Minister of Japan 2012, leading the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) for a second time. This book examines how Abe has sought a restoration of Japanese primacy at three levels: political, through the restoration of the traditional postwar parliamentary dominance of the LDP; economic, through his signature policy known as Abenomics, which aims to restore Japans economic prosperity and end decades-long deflationary stagnation; and strategic, in which Abe wishes to restore Japan to a prominent role in regional and international security by reinterpreting and potentially altering or even abolishing Article 9 of the constitution, which would allow greater deployment of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. This study argues that Abe has achieved overall political dominance, being re-elected in 2014, and has passed controversial legislation allowing Japan to exercise collective self-defense, but it also contends that Abenomics has yet to lift the country out of its long-running deflationary stagnation.

Reviews

Craig Marks The Abe Restoration is a masterful survey of the Japanese economy and politics since Prime Minister Shinzo Abes second coming in 2012. Marks focus on the Abe record in the overall context of postwar Japanese development and the changing nature of the system since the momentous changes of the 1990s give the reader a breathtaking view of the seismic shifts in Americas key Asian ally. The notion of a political restoration on par with the Meiji Restoration that opened Japan in the late nineteenth century is apt, and is a useful way to reconceptualize Japan as it shifts to a new security paradigm for the early twenty-first century. Readers will take away a much better sense of direction for a country that may once again truly become the Land of the Rising Sun. -- Joel R. Campbell, Troy University

Author Bio

Craig Mark is assistant professor at Tokyo Denki University.