The scene I witnessed on the afternoon of Oct. 22 while attending the Imperial Palace's 30-minute-long Ceremony of Enthronement for the Emperor at the Seiden State Hall will always remain engraved on my mind. On that day, it had been rainy and windy since the early hours, but when the Emperor began officially proclaiming his enthronement from a dais called the Imperial Throne for the Emperor, also known as the Takamikura, it momentarily became bright outside.
Looking straight ahead, the Emperor made his remarks in a clear voice. He articulately swore that he would inherit the way the Emperor Emeritus had paved while on the throne, wishing for the happiness of the people and the peace of the world, turning his thoughts to the people and standing by them while fulfilling his responsibility as the symbol of the state and of the unity of the people of Japan.
This was the moment the Imperial throne was admirably succeeded by the new Emperor in the enthronement ceremony. As a person who was involved in the pre-accession process to some extent, I experienced a sense of relief. In front of the Takamikura throne, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, representing the chiefs of the three branches of government, stood directly in front of the Emperor and read a congratulatory message to the Emperor.
At that time, I thought anew about the sense of distance and the delicacy between the Emperor and the prime minister. I felt signs that a new phase of politics will begin, superseding an earlier one. I had such a thought because the Emperor and the prime minister stood facing each other as the "symbol of authority" and the "symbol of power," with both of them presumably thinking about the future.
With Japan having ushered in the new era of Reiwa in May, the new Emperor and the prime minister are both leaving marks on the history of the country's sovereign governance system -- unprecedented marks in Japan's 150-year modern history.
The symbol of authority demonstrated its "activeness" when the Emperor Emeritus chose to terminate his era -- Heisei -- on his own by abdicating after three decades of reign, a bold move that was accepted by the people. Under Japan's gengo era name system, the Meiji, Taisho and Showa eras each concluded with the demise of the then reigning emperor. I believe the transition from Heisei to Reiwa as a consequence of the first abdication of a reigning emperor in modern Japan has breathed new life into the gengo system, which is not being supplanted by the international standard of the Western calendar system.
For their part, the Japanese people, for whom the Heisei era will be unforgettable because of the Imperial abdication, will recognize anew the meaning of the way the Reiwa era came into being and the reason why the modern history of Japan was marked in accordance with each Imperial reign. Recognizing the gengo system as a standard unique to Japan while learning how the Japanese system can exist in parallel with the Western calendar can be a useful approach to deeply and widely understanding Japan's traditions and history.
Era of political reform
The three-decade Heisei era also turned out to be a period of political reforms. The inauguration of the Heisei era coincided with an outburst of public demand for political reforms amid the revelation of a number of political scandals, including the Recruit scandal that came to light in the closing years of the Showa era and the Tokyo Sagawa Kyubin scandal.
If we try to sum up the period of political reforms with three key terms, the first one is the "single-seat constituency system." Its introduction in House of Representatives elections was expected to make election campaigns less costly and bring about black-or-white outcomes, as in an Othello game. This single-seat constituency system was also expected to be effective in eliminating collusive politics. As a result, it was expected to establish a genuine "two-party system," which would lead to the realization of policy-based competition between the parties in each national election, which in turn would become tantamount to the people electing a prime minister as the symbol of power. Then, changes of government were expected to become routine, prompting politicians to come up with politics that would be really effective and responsive to the needs of the people.
The dream eventually failed while the relevant things remained little changed. The three key terms -- "single-seat constituency system," "two-party system" and "changes of government" -- have lost their power. It is true that over the last three decades, there were times when the three key terms seemed to be close to being realized and accelerating political reforms. However, each of those occasions wound up as a missed opportunity. The enthusiasm seen at the start of the Heisei era consequently faded away like mist.
Yet, a close look at what actually occurred during the past three decades shows that the only change has been in the way the prime minister becomes and remains the symbol of power. On Nov. 20, Prime Minister Abe is set to become the longest-serving prime minister in Japan's modern history, to be followed, in order of length of service in the post, by Taro Katsura, Eisaku Sato, Hirobumi Ito, Shigeru Yoshida and Junichiro Koizumi.
Since the end of World War II, every prime minister except Yoshida and Abe has assumed the post only once. The extreme difficulty of coming back to the post during the era reflected the Liberal Democratic Party's ability to always have multiple hopefuls qualified to readily become the new symbol of power. Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather, who wanted to assume the prime ministership for a second time, criticized Japan for wastefully throwing away prime ministers after using them once.
It is ironic that what may be described as the political phenomenon of "wasting prime ministers" was rectified while the three key terms for Heisei-era political reforms went to waste. Abe was the first person to begin nonconsecutive terms at the helm of government under Japan's present Constitution. This is a meaningful development.
The administrations of Heisei-era prime ministers were mostly short-lived. More than 10 of them were in the post for periods ranging from a few months to just over one year, with Abe being on that list after serving in the post for the first time. Because of this experience, Abe knows the meaning of coming back to the top post of the government. It is said that when one serves in the post of prime minister for the first time, one will be significantly influenced by the people at the Prime Minister's Office, but when one returns to the post, one will be able to control every part of the office at will. Kishi predicted that the activeness of the symbol of the power would be enhanced when one made a comeback as a prime minister. It can be said that Abe has proved that his grandfather was absolutely right.
In addition, Abe has made an impression by returning to the top government post hand-in-hand with one of the briefly serving past prime ministers, Taro Aso, who now is deputy prime minister.
Of course, a prime minister's activeness is not demonstrated only by making a comeback to the post. When Koizumi headed the government, the power of the prime minister was enhanced to the extent that he had a free hand to dissolve the House of Representatives, as he did to mobilize voter support for privatizing the state-run postal services. Koizumi, concurrently serving as the LDP president, also explicitly debilitated intraparty factions by strengthening the party chief's say in determining allocations to LDP members of state subsidies to political parties and granting places on the LDP ticket to election candidates. Abe had an opportunity to directly observe how actively Koizumi behaved as head of the government.
Lack of successors
As we are now in the Heisei era, both the symbol of authority and that of power are becoming more active, but their directions are different.
On the side of the symbol of authority, the Emperor Emeritus, as if having thought that the length of reign is not the reason for being respected by the people, gained the freedom to abdicate. Thus, the Imperial family has become diversified and rich with three key members of the Imperial lineage -- the Emperor Emeritus, the Emperor and Crown Prince Akishino -- simultaneously on the scene for the first time in Japan's modern history. However, this also highlights the fact that the number of family members eligible to succeed the Emperor is on the decline. If the situation goes as it is, the Imperial family may be in danger of having no Imperial successors. This is clearly the greatest challenge for the symbol of authority during the Reiwa era.
On the other hand, the symbol of power has taken increasingly greater initiative in both domestic and foreign policy arenas, led by Abe's long-serving administration. The president of the LDP, who traditionally serves as the prime minster, now can serve up to nine consecutive years (three consecutive three-year terms) instead of the past limit of six consecutive years (two consecutive three-year terms). The problem with the LDP is the same as that facing the symbol of authority -- a lack of successors.
As mentioned earlier, there continued to be "flocks" of hopefuls for the top post of the government in the postwar years of the Showa era. Sato, one of the longest-serving prime ministers, was succeeded by Kakuei Tanaka, followed by other key LDP hopefuls including Takeo Miki, Takeo Fukuda, Masayoshi Ohira and Yasuhiro Nakasone. The Nakasone administration was expected to be succeeded by either Shintaro Abe, Noboru Takeshita or Kiichi Miyazawa -- and in fact Takeshita did succeed Nakasone. In contrast, the Heisei-era succession of the symbol of power became unscripted because the negative impact of the Recruit scandal on the LDP.
In the middle of the Heisei era, the long-serving Koizumi administration aimed to rather forcibly get Aso, Sadakazu Tanigaki, Yasuo Fukuda and Shinzo Abe prepared to succeed Koizumi. The subsequent administrations headed by Abe, Fukuda and Aso all ended up being short-lived. The continuation of short-lived prime ministerships only exacerbated the scarcity of successors. The prolonged existence of the Abe administration can be said to be evidence of the lack of hopefuls promising to succeed Abe as prime minister, whether you like it or not.
As such, the situation surrounding the symbol of power is exactly opposite to that of the symbol of authority. However, the symbol of authority and the symbol of power are alike in that they both face critical situations. Japanese people are apt to turn away from the two symbols as they tend to think first of all that they have nothing to do with either of them. If this is the case, it is indispensable for the two symbols to overcome the dangers they face by behaving more actively on their own in order to connect with the people and gain understanding and support from as many of the people as possible.
Mikuriya is a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo specializing in Japanese political history and a visiting professor at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology of the University of Tokyo. He served as acting chair of the Advisory Council on Easing the Burden of the Official Duties and Public Activities of His Majesty the Emperor, which submitted a final report to the prime minister in April 2017.
Read more from The Japan News at https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/
