Last week's Lower House election was all about what people didn't want — the Democratic Party of Japan — but the issue foremost in voters' minds was the state of the economy, and new prime minister Shinzo Abe has made that his first priority by pledging to boost inflation through monetary easing and ¥200 trillion in public works over the next ten years.
This latter strategy has delighted general contractors. The president of a Gifu Prefecture construction association told the weekly Post that he was "looking forward to the return of the Liberal Democratic Party" since public works spending decreased by 35 percent under the DPJ. "Everyone is convinced that we need facilities for disaster prevention," he added, referring to the main focus of the proposed outlay. However, Abe's scheme also alarmed some in the financial community who say that mass spending will only exacerbate Japan's national debt. Pork barrel public expenditure, referred to derisively as baramaki (literally, "throwing seeds"), was a pillar of the LDP's agenda until Junichiro Koizumi took the party reins at the turn of the century and made privatization and fiscal tightening his life's work. He was the last prime minister who was generally popular, so for Abe to go back to the old ways could be risky, but one recent news item is so fortuitous as to be downright scary.
The collapse of the ceiling in the Chuo Expressway's Sasago Tunnel on Dec. 2, which killed nine people, has provided a readymade rationale for Abe's scheme. Even before the election the media was exploring the matter of how much money will be needed to inspect and rebuild Japan's infrastructure, not just highways and tunnels but bridges, waterworks, public housing, harbors. The Nihon Keizai Shimbun estimates it's about ¥8 trillion a year, while the construction ministry says it will need ¥190 trillion over the next 50 years just for maintenance. Two weeks ago, a group of scholars discussed the Sasago incident on NHK radio and one explained that Japan is unique in the developed world for having built almost all its infrastructure during a very brief, intense period of growth in the 1960s and 70s. All these facilities must be renovated or replaced very soon if not immediately. It's a huge undertaking separate from and perhaps more urgent than the need for disaster prevention measures.