The Intellectual Origins of Abenomics

Tobias Harris Fellow for Trade, Economy, and Business

Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA

Abstract

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Introduction

1 Author’s translation. 「安倍晋三総裁 記者会見」Press Conference, 17 December 2012, Tokyo, Japan. https://www.jimin.jp/news/press/president/128914.html. 2 See Abe’s remarks in his campaign kickoff event, 14 September 2012.

<https://www.jimin.jp/sousai12/topics/abe-0914.html>. 3 “We will mobilize all policies such as monetary policy, tax and fiscal policy, growth strategy – like a Heisei

New Deal – to promote the elimination of the GDP gap by stimulating private demand while looking to the

future economic structure.” (Author’s translation.) 「緊急経済危機対策について」Liberal Democratic

Party, 8 September 2010. <https://www.jimin.jp/policy/policy_topics/pdf/seisaku-025.pdf>.

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On the Origins of Abenomics

4 Nogami, Tadaoki, Kikotsu: Abe Shinzō no DNA [Backbone: Abe Shinzō’s DNA] (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2004)

272. 5 Jeff Kingston, “Nationalism and the 2014 Snap Election: the Abe Conundrum,” in Robert Pekkanen,

Steven Reed, and Ethan Scheiner, eds., Japan Decides 2014 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) 212. 6 Robert Pekkanen, Steven Reed, and Ethan Scheiner, “Conclusion: Japan’s Bait-and-Switch Election

2014,” in ibid., 265.

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7 “Press Conference by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,” Prime Minister’s Office, 3 August 2017.

<http://japan.kantei.go.jp/97_abe/statement/201708/1224001_11583.html>. 8 Jiyukokuminsha, “The U-Can 30th Annual (2013) Grand Prize for Neologisms and Buzzwords.”

<http://singo.jiyu.co.jp/old/nendo/2013.html>. 9 As Ben Bernanke writes of Franklin Roosevelt in an essay on Japan, “Roosevelt’s specific policy actions

were, I think, less important than his willingness to be aggressive and to experiment—-in short, to do

whatever was necessary to get the country moving again.” See “Japanese Monetary Policy: A Case of Self-

Induced Paralysis?” Princeton University, December 1999.

<https://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/bernanke_paralysis.pdf>.

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10 Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolution from Above (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Books, 1978)

117. 11 The quote cited by Abe to describe the Iwakura mission is revealing: “Japan may be a small country, but

if all the people’s hearts are united as one and national power is fully engaged, it will not be at all difficult

to become a country active in the world.” 12 Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 13 February 2015.

<https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGKKASFS12H3E_S5A210C1PP8000/>.

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13 Prime Minister of Japan, “Press Conference by Prime Minister Abe,” 25 October 2013.

<http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/96_abe/statement/2013/1001kaiken.html>. 14 Prime Minister of Japan, “Prime Minister Abe’s Policy Speech regarding the 165th session of the Diet,”

29 September 2006. <http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/abespeech/2006/09/29syosin.html>. 15 Economist Ueno Yasunari noted in an opinion piece in Nikkei Business before the October 2017 general

election that by referring to the North Korea crisis and the demographic crisis, Abe explicitly used the

“troubles at home and dangers from abroad” framing.

http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/atcl/opinion/15/248790/090700107/. On the use of the slogan before

the Meiji Restoration, see W.G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972)

41.

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16 From Bungei Shunjyu (November 2003), quoted in Matsuda Kenya, Zeccho no ichizoku (Tokyo:

Kodansha, 2015) 21. Author’s translation. 17 Ben-Ami Shillony, Revolt in Japan: The Young Officers and the February 26, 1936 Incident (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1973). 18 Quoted in Dan Kurzman, Kishi and Japan: The Search for the Sun (New York: Ivan Obolensky, 1960) 92. 19 Ibid.,, 94. 20 Hara Yoshihisa, Kishi Nobusuke (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995). Chapters 2 and 3 address his student

years and early bureaucratic career.

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As Kishi rebuilt his career after his release from Sugamo Prison, he articulated a comprehensive and coherent nationalist program, in which Japan had to upgrade the U.S.-Japan alliance to a more equal relationship, replace the U.S.-authored “peace” constitution with a constitution of its own making, develop its own diplomatic relationships in Asia, and rebuild its economy as the foundation of all national power. Kishi’s premiership (1957-1960) is often regarded as preoccupied with “high politics” like the security treaty and the constitution, but as historian Hasegawa Hayato has argued, it is a mistake to view Kishi only through the “high politics” lens. He was pursuing a coherent program of national revival that included both political and diplomatic measures to reassert Japan’s sovereignty and economic policies to build the material basis for national independence.24

Kishi believed that during the 1950s Japan became too dependent on the U.S.

for its growth – symbolized by the boom spurred by the Korean War – and that it was

necessary to develop new sources for sustainable growth. His developmentalist

program – which laid the foundation for the subsequent “income doubling plan”

pursued by the Ikeda government (1960-1964) – recognized the need for investment

in new technology that would boost productivity, which would in turn raise wages

and boost consumption. Japan would also need to develop new markets so it could

export surplus production, which meant working with the United States to deepen

the bilateral trade relationship (it is not an accident that the 1960 U.S.-Japan mutual

security treaty included a clause on economic cooperation) and rebuilding

21 Janis Mimura, Planning for Empire (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011) 85. 22 Ibid., 198. 23 Yukio Noguchi, “The 1940 System: Japan under the wartime economy,” American Economic Review, 88,

2, Papers and Proceedings of the Hundred and Tenth Annual Meeting of the American Economic

Association (May, 1998), pp. 404-407. 24 Hasegawa, Hayato, “Kishi Naikaku-ki no Naisei / Gaikō ronsen no rekishiteki sai-kentō: “fukushi kokka,”

“keizai gaikō” toiu shiten kara [A Historic Reexamination of Domestic Affairs and Diplomatic Alignments

during the Kishi Cabinet: From the perspective of “the welfare state” and “economic diplomacy” (Ph.D.

dissertation, Hitotsubashi University, 2015).

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relationships with Southeast Asian countries and Australia. Increasing national

wealth would be the foundation for shared prosperity based on redistribution, and

Kishi made building a welfare state a fundamental goal for his government from the

moment he took power. Underlying much of his thinking was hostility to laissez-faire

capitalism and a strong belief in the need for state planning to curb the abuses and

excesses of the market.

25 Abe Shinzō, Speech at the Naigai Jyōsei Chōsakai, 19 September 2014.

<http://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/96_abe/statement/2014/0919naigai.html>. Author’s translation.

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26 Kyodo News journalist Kakizaki Meiji has also argued that Abe’s economic thinking is inspired by Kishi.

Kensho Abe-izumu (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2015). Chs. 1 and 3 are especially clear on this point. 27 Abe Shinzō, Utsukushii kuni e [Towards a Beautiful Country] (Tokyo: Bunjyu Shinsho, 2006) 170.

Author’s translation. 28 Abe Shinzō, Atarashii kuni e [Towards a New Country] (Tokyo: Bunjyu Shinsho, 2013) Kindle edition.

Author’s translation.

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29 Mimura, op. cit., 37. 30 Abe Shinzo, Utsukushii kuni e (Tokyo: Bungei Shinsho, 2006) 219. Author’s translation. 31 Aoki Kumiko, “Kawariyuku ‘Showa-30-nen buumu’,” Shakai kagaku ronko 32 (2011) 83-107. Economist

Yoshikawa Hiroshi discusses the popular experience of high-speed growth in chapter two of Kodo seicho

(Tokyo: Chuko Bunko, 2012). 32 Prime Minister’s Office, “Minutes of the First Meeting of the Government-Labor-Business Council for

Realizing an Economic Virtuous Cycle,” 29 September, 2014.

<https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/seirousi/26-1st/gijiyousi.pdf>. Author’s translation.

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33 Richard Samuels, The Business of the Japanese State (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).