Under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Liberal Democratic Party’s leadership offered the Japanese people and the region the Free and Open Indo-Pacific Vision (FOIP), Abenomics to revive the nation’s economy after nearly three decades of stagnation and “proactive pacifism” as guiding ideas for Japanese citizens.
While not completely successful in realizing these visions, they offer a stark contrast to Japan’s Upper House elections. These performative “elections” have again exposed a troubling void at the heart of the island nation’s political culture: the absence of any compelling strategic vision for the country’s future.
While political parties jostle for position and trade barbs over peripheral issues, none have articulated a coherent blueprint for addressing Japan’s serious and mounting structural challenges. This vacuum of imagination reflects not merely political timidity but a deeper cultural reluctance to embrace bold leadership, a tendency encapsulated in the Japanese proverb “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
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