[Text/Observer Network Columnist Sha Qingqing]
The controversial Shinzo Abe "State Funeral" finally ended at the end of September. But the current Prime Minister Kishida Fumio 's cabinet's support rate "has been falling" and shows no sign of an end.
According to the latest public opinion survey released by Kyodo on October 11, the support rate of Kisha Cabinet fell to 35%, setting a new low.
Generally speaking, in Japanese society, compared with other news organizations' left or right positions, the polls of Kyodo News have always been considered the most objective and can best exclude the "institutional effect".
So, what is the concept of the 35% approval rating released by Kyodo News?
At the end of July last year, the support rate of the cabinet was only 35%. A month later, in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, Suga Yoshihide had to announce that he would not seek re-election as president of the Liberal Democratic Party, thus ending his own regime.
However, what is even more amazing is that Japan's Current Affairs News Agency reported on October 13 that in the October public opinion survey implemented from October 7 to 10, the Kishida cabinet's support rate fell by 4.9% compared with the lowest September after the establishment of the regime, reaching 27.4%; the non-support rate was 43.0% (3% increase from the previous month); "not supporting" exceeded "support" for two consecutive months, and the gap expanded from 7.7% last time to 15.6%.
This is the first time that the Kishida regime has dropped to about 20% of the "dangerous waters" that maintain the regime, lower than the lowest in August 2021 during the Suga Yoshihide's cabinet period.
In fact, since September, the polls of various mainstream media in Japan have shown a trend of decline in support from Kishida Cabinet. NHK showed in the survey from September 9 to 11 that the Kishida cabinet's "no support" and "support" were both 40%. The same period survey by Asahi Shimbun said that "not support" is 8% higher than "support" and "not support" reaches 47%. In the polls implemented later in " Nikkei Shimbun ", the "not supported" was as high as 49%, with a support rate of only 43%. A month later, the Kishida cabinet's approval rating not only did not improve at all, but fell further.
You should know that when Kishida Fumio's cabinet "made full" from October 2021 to August 2022, its support rate has always remained above 55%, and even reached a "peak" of 66% in May 2022. At that time, after experiencing last year's House of Representatives elections and this year's Senate elections, it was generally believed that the Kishida regime would gradually consolidate and have the potential to achieve "long-termization".
However, since August, Kishida's support rate has plummeted like a free fall. From the point of time, it seems like a gunshot from Abe started the process.
screenshot from Nikkei News
The issue of unified church aroused public anger
After Abe was assassinated, the secret connection between himself, his faction and the entire Liberal Democratic Party and the unified church was exposed, causing waves of criticism from all walks of life. According to surveys by various Japanese media, nearly 50% of the current 379 members of the Liberal Democratic Party have admitted or been proved to have more or less contact with the Unified Church. These so-called "contacts" include accepting political donations, organizing volunteer support, sending congratulatory messages, and attending events on site.
Faced with such a horrifying investigation result, Kishida has never taken decisive measures to deal with it due to the interests of various factions within the party. For example, the economic regeneration of his cabinet, Oshiro Yamashima and House Speaker Hiroyuki Hokuda were accused of having close ties with the power of the unified church, but Kishida never gave corresponding punishments.
In this latest Kyodo Popular Survey, the Liberal Democratic Party’s investigation into the release of the relationship between the members of the parliament and the church, and the responses that the party’s response measures were “inadequate” accounted for 83.2%, far exceeding the 13.3% who believe “full”. The ruling ally of the Liberal Democratic Party and the leader of the Komeito Party, Yamaguchi Natsuo, even publicly criticized: "It is precisely because the Liberal Democratic Party's explanation that it has caused severe criticism."
As for the controversy surrounding the issue of Abe's state funeral, it is actually a by-product of the "unified church issue."As the Nihon Keizai Shimbun commented in a recent editorial: the lack of sufficient investigation and explanation of Abe himself, the history of the people around him and the unified church is the main reason why the general public does not support and do not understand the decision to "state funeral".
Tokyo branch of the Unified Church Picture from New York Times
And technically, Kishida also made a "big mistake". From the announcement of the "state funeral" to the formal ceremony, the interval between the two was too long, leaving enough fermentation time for the exposure of the relationship between the Unified Church and the Liberal Democratic Party; at the same time, the little bit of mourning caused by the sudden assassination also disappeared with the passage of time and media disclosure.
It is obvious that after Abe was assassinated, Kishida quickly announced the "state funeral" with political considerations. On the one hand, in order to appease the conservative right-wing forces within the party, they were given an "explanation". On the other hand, by inviting politicians from various countries to attend the funeral, Kishida can quickly meet with these politicians in a short period of time to win over relations, which is the so-called "funeral diplomacy." However, things went against my expectations.
As for why it delayed for so long? The key problem lies in the Prime Minister after all, unlike the Emperor. There is no set of established procedures for how the Prime Minister's funeral is held in Japan. The last prime minister who held the "state funeral" was Shigeru Yoshida (deceased in 1967), which is too long ago, and no relevant rules have been set since then. This means that there is no precedent for Abe's "state funeral" to follow, and details need to be discussed from scratch, and even the funeral fee needs to be convened to convene an interim parliament to resolve and pass (at that time, Congress had entered the adjournment period). In addition, as we all know, the inefficiency and lengthy work of the Japanese bureaucracy system has made the preparations for "state funeral" even more delayed.
This is probably "the mechanism is too smart, but it has lost Qingqing's life."
Japanese people held protests on the streets to oppose Abe's "state funeral". The picture is from the New York Times
yen continues to depreciate and out-of-control prices
On October 3, the yen once fell below the important mark of 1:145 against the US dollar. This is the yen exchange rate has fallen below the 145 mark again since the Japanese government and the central bank bought the yen and intervened in the foreign exchange market on September 22. The continued depreciation of the yen further exacerbates the inflation of in Japan.
Ironically, after the bubble economy burst and fell into a long-term recession, Japan has been trapped in deflation for a long time. The goal of " Abenomics " that year was to get rid of deflation through quantitative easing and negative interest rate , and set an inflation target of rising prices to 2%, but this goal has never been achieved. As a result, this year, under the combined effect of factors such as the epidemic, the Russian-Ukrainian war and the depreciation of the yen, prices in Japan that have not moved for 20 years began to soar like wild horses in summer. In August, the consumer price index of rose by 2.8% year-on-year after excluding fresh foods.
is exactly the proverb in the British and American regions, “Be careful what you wish for” (be careful what you wish for). Faced with a bit of out-of-control prices, the Kishida government seemed helpless. The people who had already endured the "recession" of the epidemic for more than two years even vented all their resentment. In Kyodo News' survey, the "no expectation for economic policies" soared from 26.7% last time to 36.1%.
Japan's consumer price index rose 2.8% year-on-year in August. Figure from Nikkei Chinese website
Kishida
In the Japanese context, there is a saying of "reading air", which means "looking at the face", "looking at the situation", and "looking at the direction of the wind". If someone says "can't read air", it means "not reading air", that is, they think that the other party "can't read the face" and "not very cognitive", and then make some annoying actions.
Today’s Kishida has given many Japanese people the impression that they “can’t read air”. A typical example is that when Kishida's unification church issue was not properly handled and his approval rating declined, he suddenly activated his eldest son, Shotaro Kishida, who was only 31 years old, as prime minister secretary.
As we all know, Japanese politics has always had the tradition of so-called "second generation" or even "third generation" parliamentarians, and it is not new for children to inherit their father's constituencies.There is no precedent for the Prime Minister to use his son as Prime Minister's secretary. For example, former Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda has served as secretary of Duffy Fuku , who also served as Prime Minister. However, Kishida made such personnel arrangements when the cabinet's support rate plummeted, which was undoubtedly to lift oil and put out the fire and create another target of public opinion for attack for the outside world. At the same time, it also reminds people of the most conservative and pedantic side of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Kishida Shotaro's avatar on Facebook platform has been replaced.
Shotaro Kishida after being appointed as Prime Minister Secretary
Another recent thing that has happened is the decision to raise the salary and bonus of state civil servants. The reason is that considering the epidemic, the wages of national civil servants have been suspended for two years in 2020 and 2021, so it is decided to increase the salary in 2022. However, most working-class people in Japan are currently facing a situation where their income has shrunk due to the impact of the epidemic, and the performance of private enterprises is generally sluggish, and they also have to cope with soaring prices.
When the economy has not yet fully recovered, the Kishida government rashly chose to raise wages to national civil servants at this moment, which will naturally bring people a bad impression and even arouse disgust. As Yukito Murohashi, the representative of the Japanese Youth Agreement, commented: this behavior of the Kishida regime always reminds people of the former Liberal Democratic Party, but this outdated image of the prime minister cannot cope with the new era.
Of course, for the current Kishida regime, the support rate can still be so "willful" when it plummeted, to some extent, because its situation is probably better than the Suga Yoshihide regime last year. After all, there will be no important national elections in Japan in the next two or three years. Although the approval rating has dropped rapidly, Akida theoretically does not need to face the test of election battles.
If the inflation trend is curbed and the economy improves by the end of this year, it is not impossible to maintain a barely acceptable approval rating. But if Kishida's support rate still does not improve by the end of the year, it is possible that the cabinet will be reorganized again, and it is even impossible to rule out that there will be voices within the Liberal Democratic Party that "requests for replacement" will appear. Unknown variables cast a thick shadow on the long-term growth of the Kishida regime.
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