Japan's Prime Minister Resigns

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, September 12, 2007; 4:20 PM

TOKYO, Sept. 12 -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who resigned abruptly on Wednesday after a year in power, has for weeks been a walking political corpse.

His party, which has dominated Japanese politics since World War II, was crushed in a July parliamentary election -- the type of humiliation that had forced previous prime ministers to quit without delay.

But that was just part of Abe's predicament. His judgment in picking a cabinet had proven faulty in the extreme, as scandals and ineptitude had pushed four ministers to resign and one to kill himself.

With poll numbers dipping below 30 percent, he became an object of ridicule, derided as a "spoiled little boy" by cultural critics and broadly criticized for a nationalist agenda that neglected a tightening economic squeeze felt by many Japanese, especially in rural areas. Public faith in his competence collapsed, polls showed, when he failed to respond aggressively last spring to revelations that 50 million pension records had been misfiled.

Yet Abe, the grandson of a prime minister, the son of a foreign minister and, at 52, the youngest prime minister since the war, had clung tenaciously to power until Wednesday afternoon, when he unexpectedly announced what has been obvious to the Japanese people since mid-summer.

"In the present situation, it is difficult to push ahead with effective policies that win the support and trust of the public," Abe said during a nationally televised news conference. "I need to change the situation to break the deadlock."

The deadlock that he referred to concerns a parliamentary fight over the extension of Japan's high-seas refueling operation in the Indian Ocean.

For the past six years, it has been the country's principal contribution to the war in Afghanistan and President Bush, along with many other world leaders, has urged Japan to continue to help out.

As recently as last weekend, Abe had said that he would do everything in his power to extend the anti-terrorism law that authorizes the floating gas station, which has pumped more than 127 million gallons of fuel, free of charge, most of it into U.S. warships.

But the operation had been seized upon here by the Democratic Party of Japan, the opposition group that grabbed control of the upper house of parliament in July. Closing it down was a way for the opposition to demonstrate Abe's political weakness.

The party's leader, Ichiro Ozawa, has enough votes in the upper house to stop parliament from renewing the anti-terrorism law before it expires on Nov. 1.

Abe said Sunday that he would only quit if he failed to extend the Japanese fueling operation. But on Wednesday, with the extension fight barely begun in parliament, he decided that he had indeed failed.

"I now believe we need change," he said, looking weary. "We should seek a continued mission to fight terrorism under a new prime minister."

In parliament, the debate over the fueling operation was put off until the end of the week, as the Democratic Party criticized Abe for ducking a fight he was bound to lose.

"I've been a politician for nearly 40 years, but I think this is the first time that a prime minister has remained in office after the ruling party lost a majority . . . and expressed his resignation right before parliamentary questioning," said Ozawa.

The front-runner to succeed Abe appears to be Taro Aso, a close ally, a fellow hawk on security issues and the secretary-general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which controls the powerful lower house of parliament and picks the prime minister. Aso, 66, grandson of a prime minister who negotiated the peace treaty that ended the U.S. occupation of Japan in 1952, told news agencies Wednesday that it was too early to comment.

The prime minister did not announce a date for leaving office, but said he had told his party's leaders to search quickly for a replacement. The LDP soon announced that it would streamline its selection and, according to national television, it planned an election for party president next week.

When he came to power a year ago this month, Abe -- successor to the immensely popular Junichiro Koizumi -- enjoyed high poll ratings and had some early success in improving Japan's tense relations with China and South Korea. He also pushed through an upgrade for the country's Defense Agency and made it a full ministry for the first time since the war.

But Abe seemed to squander his popularity on nationalist issues, which did not resonate with the electorate and which upset many outside of Japan.

He championed patriotic education in public schools and backed away from his nation's previous apologies for a wartime policy of forcing women to become sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.

Contrary to studies of the "comfort women" issue by the Japanese government, which disclosed more than 100 documents showing Japanese military involvement in the building of brothels and recruitment of women, Abe insisted there was no documentation proving that the military coerced Asian women into prostitution.

Political analysts here suggested that Abe's failure as prime minister has crippled the LDP's ability to govern Japan.

"The LDP no longer has the ability to rule," said Minoru Morita, a longtime political analyst. "Politics will not move forward unless you have someone very capable at the top. There is no such person in the LDP."

On the streets of Tokyo, people seem puzzled that Abe had chosen to quit just after he vowed to fight for the law that would keep the Japanese ships pumping fuel in the Indian Ocean.

"I wanted him to quit long ago, but my initial feeling is why now?" said Takako Katayama, 36, who works at a securities firm. "He had said he would put his job on the line to get the terrorism law through parliament. I think he was cornered and he is just not the leader type."