On January 12, the divided Japanese Diet finally enacted a legislative measure that authorised the Yasuo Fukuda administration to restart replenishment support for the US-led maritime interdiction operation in the Indian Ocean. Earlier, in the Upper House, the leading opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and other mini-parties together voted down the already passed House bill with a simple majority. Subsequently, in the Lower House, the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Komei Party resorted to their two-third majority to override the Upper House decision.

During the impasse of five and a half months since then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s crushing defeat in the July 2007 Upper House election, the issue of replenishment support continued to represent the major focal point of the political power struggle in Tokyo. This prolonged impasse revealed that the battle between both the LDP and the DPJ was devoid of any ideological divide - a state of affairs that did not sharpen the national debate at all. Worse, it also suggested that neither party had more than a handful of competent next-generation leaders to constitute an effective power nucleus in decade to come.

Abe and the LDP leadership failed to evade this deadlock because they did not renew the 2001 Anti-Terrorist Special Legislative Measure, well before the Upper House elections, at the time when the ruling coalition still controlled both chambers. They mistakenly placed top priority on a conservative agenda, marked by education reform, the elevation of the Defense Agency to the department status, and the enactment of a referendum law for constitutional amendment. Swamped with a series of bureaucratic negligence and corruption episodes, and political fund scandals, they neglected to ensure the continuation of replenishment support, a major international commitment that was also essential to the integrity of the US-Japan alliance.

Over this critical period, Abe vainly attempted to rescind the longstanding interpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution, centered on the ban against exercising the right of collective self-defence, a caveat that posed a major impediment to strengthening the US-Japan alliance. If this could have been achieved in time, no legislative measure would have been necessary for the replenishment support operation.

Consciously or not, Abe was flying on auto-pilot. He created a Prime Minister’s study panel to issue authoritative statements justifying a rescission of the current interpretation of Article 9, and behind the scenes, bureaucrats hand-picked the panel members while tasked to draft the same panel’s statements. However, Abe just had to declare such a rescission, and if necessary, resolve the Lower House to secure a popular mandate. The common perception holds that at the early stages of his term in office, well before many domestic obstacles surfaced, Abe had a good chance to win a national election.

Abe’s myopia, later emulated by Fukuda, also led to a critical misjudgment of framing the replenishment support as a legislative question. The two prime ministers presupposed that their decisions had to be based on explicit statutory authorisation. In reality, the US-led maritime interdiction operation was no longer linked to an offensive military operation in landlocked Afghanistan, but was already an international policing action aimed to prevent the movement of terrorists, arms and narcotics on the high seas. This operation neither violated the current interpretation of Article 9, or any other statutory requirements.

Yet, both Abe and Fukuda were continuously entrapped in the legalistic approach that resulted from their reliance on bureaucrats who handled a substantive part of post-Cold War security-related legislations, based on the identical legal reasoning against Japan’s collective self-defence.

Instead, the issue should have been identified as a political question. As the US Congress and the Bush administration did, in initiating combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, Abe and Fukuda should have utilised a Lower House resolution to justify the replenishment support. In the Upper House, the opposition parties are able to pass a censure resolution against Prime-Minister. To counter such a move, the ruling coalition can pass a Lower House confidence resolution in support of the Prime Minister. And under the Constitution, only a Lower House no-confidence resolution requires either the dissolution of the Lower House, or the resignation of the Cabinet enmasse. The Constitutional procedures also allow the ruling coalition to enact House appropriation bills, although this would take a considerably longer time.

Accustomed to a one-party-dominated system over several decades, both LDP and DPJ leaders are afraid of legislative stalemates and popular distrust of their respective parties. As the result, the confrontation between both parties has continued. They have never experienced a deeply entrenched standstill, for instance, similar to the federal government shutdowns when the Clinton administration clashed with the Republican Congress. Therefore, LDP leaders are reluctant to accelerate and intensify the current partisan strife, even though doing so would vindicate their policy positions and thereby benefit them in the coming national election. Further, the LDP leadership is not ready to take a full advantage of the Constitutional rules for steering the Diet, while the DPJ counterparts remain opportunistic.

Although the Japanese public remains highly skeptical of the inexperienced DPJ that has been incapable to present effective policy alternatives, the LDP under Fukuda is drifting because the Prime Minister is only an excellent manager, but neither an innovator or a risk-taker who is able to carry out a systemic overhaul, ranging from a resolution to the hung Diet, to the attainment of political leadership over bureaucrats, and to policy innovations on issues that various policy strategists have already proposed.

As extraterrestrial as it sounds, the current Japan’s political stasis awaits a big bang that will bring competent next-generation leaders into the power nucleus. This is unlikely to be expected from the existing parties, but possibly feasible either through a reformed LDP or an evolved DPJ, or even a new party born as the result of the two parties’ reorganisation along ideological lines. The good news is that we already know the prescription for a more proactive and prosperous Japan. The bad news is that time is running out when rapidly changing international security and economic conditions require Japan to respond promptly and offer visionary leadership.