Mr. Abe's plan for Japan

要約

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Feb. 28 delivered his second policy speech during the Diet session. He started his speech with the phrase “a strong Japan.” He seems to have strong attachment to the word “strong.”

At the outset of his speech, he said a strong Japan is “for us, not somebody else” to build. In other parts of his speech, he used such phrases as “strong agriculture,” “a strong economy,” “the only way to leave a great country, a strong country, to the next-generation Japanese,” and “Let’s aim to be No. 1 in the world.”

But the prime minister should not forget the possibility that as the county pursues policies aimed at making Japan “strong,” such policies could result in discarding the weak in Japanese society. As he said in his speech, many people are suffering from the effects of the 3/11 disasters.
Also many people have anxiety about their future lives because of poor economic conditions. Mr. Abe should not forget paying enough attention to the conditions of the weak and working out detailed policies aimed at them.

Unless policies aimed at alleviating the anxieties of people on the economic bottom rung of society are vigorously pushed, the country as a whole will be socially and economically fragile.

His policy speech shows that he leans toward market fundamentalism. Declaring that “I aim to build a country where enterprises are the most free in the world to do business,” he said he will push “regulation reform without sacred cows” and remove obstacles to enterprises’ activities one by one.

What appears to be lacking in his thinking is the idea of reforming regulations for the sake of strengthening the rights of people and workers, and enhancing the safety of products and services. Experience has shown that deregulation often puts workers into a weaker position.

Deregulation not underpinned by strong social policy could make conditions for workers and people miserable.

Stressing the importance of creating a sustainable social security system as the country faces a low birthrate and a graying population, Mr. Abe said that he will build a system in which people’s benefits and financial burdens are balanced. Without going into detail, he left this matter to discussion by a government panel on the reform of the social security system.

At the outset of his speech, Mr. Abe also said, “We cannot open up our future unless we discard the attitude of relying on others and have the will to forge our own destiny.” Disclosing his idea about social security, he said that self-help and self-reliance must come first, and then he will combine mutual assistance and public assistance to help the weak. There is nothing wrong in stressing the importance of self-help and self-reliance. But Mr. Abe seems to have forgotten that many people’s lives have become difficult because of conditions they could not control and that they cannot help themselves.

It sounds thoughtless to mention self-help and self-reliance in the same breath as social security. The prime minister should remember that it is the government’s duty to assist such people.

Mr. Abe should wake up to the record number of more than 2.14 million people who were on welfare, receiving public livelihood assistance, as of November 2011; to the December unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, the first rise in eight months; and to the nearly 28,000 people who killed themselves in 2012.

The prime minister said, “It is the responsibility of our generation to build a strong Japanese economy so that young people can believe that their future is bright.”

He also said that he will build a society in which people who have failed socially or economically can take on new challenges to start anew. But he failed to present concrete measures for building such a society. It is strange that he did not mention the difficulties many young people are facing in finding jobs.

Although Mr. Abe pointed out that people in Fukushima Prefecture are still suffering from the effects of the nuclear catastrophe at Tokyo Electric Power Co.‘s Fukushima No. 1 plant, he made it clear that he will restart nuclear power plants once the Nuclear Regulation Authority confirms their safety.

Given Japan’s vulnerability to earthquakes, and the absence of technology to safely and permanently store high-level nuclear waste, it is regrettable that he did not commit himself to ending nuclear power generation at some point. He said only that he will lower the country’s dependence on nuclear power as much as possible through energy savings and “maximum introduction” of renewable energy sources.

日本語の抄訳はウィークリー3月16日号のP18に掲載されています。