Buy in to Japan’s new dawn
Japan is entering a new era of “beautiful harmony”, says Justin McCurry in The Guardian. Japanese emperor Akihito abdicated this week in favour of his son, ending the country’s “Heisei” imperial era that began in 1989. Crown Prince Naruhito’s ascension to the Chrysanthemum Throne marks the start of the new “Reiwa period”, which roughly translates as “beautiful harmony”.
The outgoing era will not be fondly remembered by investors, says Tom Stevenson in The Daily Telegraph. Japan’s stockmarket bubble peaked in the first year of Emperor Akihito’s reign. After thirty years of “protracted deflation”, the Nikkei index is still valued at just over half its 1989 high.
Consumers put to the test
The “imperial retirement bash” means a ten-day holiday for citizens of the world’s third-largest economy, notes Pete Sweeney on Breakingviews. Retailers and travel agents are hoping that a nation of “workaholics” will take the opportunity to go on a rare spending spree. Brewer Asahi Group has even increased beer production in anticipation.
“If spending fizzes”, then policymakers will be reassured that the economy can withstand a 2% sales tax hike scheduled for October. “Everyone agrees that a higher sales tax is needed,” says The Economist. At 8% the current tax is low by international standards, and strained government coffers could do with a boost. The trouble is that a previous increase in 2014 “provoked a sharp downturn”.
Even if spending dips owing to the tax, however, the medium-term outlook for consumption, which accounts for roughly 55% of overall GDP is good. Unemployment stood at 2.5% in March, down from more than 5% at the start of the millennium and comparable to the rate in the early 1990s....MOREAnd from Palladium Magazine, some background:
April 6
Japan Is Reinventing Itself As China Surges And American Power Declines
Japan is one of the oldest nations on earth, in cultural terms. And it is also the oldest nation demographically on the planet, with a median age of 47.7 years. Unsurprisingly, Japan has developed a reputation recently for economic and cultural stagnation, a place where nothing of consequence is happening. But it’s wrong to ignore what’s going on in a country that is at the very edge of the liberal world, in a time where the world order led by the United States is waning. Japan has tough choices to make, and slowly, it is making them..... MORE
On May 1st, the Japanese Emperor Akihito will abdicate and cede the Chrysanthemum crown to his first son, Naruhito, the crown prince. What I just did, namely referring to the royal family by their birth names, would be a scandal in Japan, though not illegal, as it would be in, say, Thailand. In Japan, the proper way to refer to the royal family would be to say that His Majesty Emperor 天皇陛下 (tennō hēka) will soon abdicate and cede his place to His Highness the Crown Prince 皇太子殿下 (kōtaishi denka).
This fact itself is, in theory, of little significance. The Emperor in Japan today is not a controversial figure. Not that people think of him as a god. In fact, the Emperor is barely thought of at all. He is just an old man who does his rituals and gives a rather boring speech now and then. Everybody knows he has no personality of his own, nor is he supposed to; all his behavior and speech are tightly controlled by the Imperial Household Agency. But everybody more or less still has positive feelings toward him.
But the monarchy has not always been as safe as it is today. In the post-war years, well into the 1960s, Japan had a big, loud, and culturally influential Communist movement, which made a point of calling for the abolition of the imperial house. The Communists had a point in that Hirohito, the Shōwa Emperor, was still reigning after having, officially at least, led the Japanese military over the invasion of China and World War II. The extent of his responsibility is still controversial, but old Hirohito kept quiet, very quiet, for decades, and then died in 1989. By then, the Japanese Communist movement had pretty much died alongside the Soviet Union. His son, the present emperor, is universally liked. He has a lovely empress, and just looks and talks like he’s never done anything but give people joy and encouragement.
The one single time when His Majesty, who after his death will be called Heisei Emperor, did something which wasn’t part of the usual script was three years ago. On August 8, 2016, he made an unscheduled TV appearance to give a public speech. That was incredibly odd. And odder still was its content. The Emperor announced his will to abdicate the throne, citing his age (he was 82 at the time) and ill health, making it impossible for him to fulfill his job as the symbol of the nation.
This speech came as a huge blow for Japan’s right wing, and especially for the current government. Shinzo Abe, the current prime minister and most powerful politician in Japan for the last half a century, is known to be a strong supporter of a constitutional change to do away with the most liberal parts of the 1948 Constitution, widely considered to be an “American imposition.” A draft (here’s a summary in English) has been circulating for years calling for several changes, including the abolition of Japan’s famous Article 9, which solemnly proclaims “the Japanese people forever renounce war…and the right of belligerency of the state.” With that out, the change would also decree the transformation of Japan’s Self-Defence Forces into a proper Japanese Military Force legally capable of sending troops overseas, and in terms of breaking with the post-war culture, proclaiming the Emperor as the Head of State, not just a symbolic figure.
The constitutional reform never happened. It doesn’t seem like it ever will. Part of the reason is a complete lack of interest by the majority of the Japanese population. The changes are all rather cosmetic. People’s lives are hard enough in a time of prolonged economic stagnation and higher taxes to pay for the crushing burden of retirees. And part of it is because of the Emperor’s speech stressing that he was a symbol, a good symbol. Reading between the lines, he must have sensed that the government was trying to use his personal charisma to push for a right-wing constitutional reform, and he wouldn’t have it. A Japanese emperor is abdicating for the first time in 200 years, in what could very well be read as a left-wing political statement.
The Crown prince himself is widely known as a liberal. In Japanese terms, that means he’s opposed to the Japanese right’s neotraditionalist bent, in large part because of his own temperament. But this temperament is likely a product of education from his parents to be wary of the political right and its delusions of grandeur, which damaged Japan so much in the 1930s and 40s. And without a doubt, some of his wariness of the right has to do with his commoner wife, Masako (née Owada), a career diplomat who never enjoyed life in the Imperial Household, routinely fails to attend imperial rituals, and only regularly shows up for official trips to Europe, which she allegedly enjoys greatly. She also failed to produce a male heir, having only given birth to a single daughter, Aiko. Perhaps because of it, Masako is said to have suffered from chronic depression for decades. Her now-teenage daughter is said to suffer from anorexia and a series of emotional conditions, too. Needless to say, the Japanese right hates Masako with a passion, deeming her a complete failure as a future empress and an embarrassment to the nation.
That’s not a good combination for imperial advocates pushing a constitutional reform to enhance the powers of the Emperor. Both he and his father are fine with that. Given the lack of cooperation by the actual holders of Imperial office, Abe and his fellow cultural right-wingers are left with no choice but to use the powers they do have to advance their cultural agenda. A good example was the announcement of the new Regnal Era Name, called the 元号 gengo, on April 1st. The era names are relics of Chinese imperial politics. East Asia never developed a way of sequentially recording years, such as Ancient Rome’s ab urbe condita, counting from the foundation of Rome, or the Western anno domini, counting from the birth of Jesus Christ. So calendars in China merely counted the years after the current ruler’s accession. Emperor Wu of Han in 115 BC decided to embellish the calendars with an “era name,” a set of two auspicious words to describe his reign, so that instead of documents saying “in year 3 of Emperor Wu,” they would say “in year 3 of the era of Light and Greatness.” The system stuck until the very end in 1911. All cultures which adopted Chinese writing and statecraft, including Japan, adopted the era name system in time....
