In the old days, politicians in Japan were highly respected by the general public and were often referred to as members of "the elected elite." Today, however, there are virtually no politicians worthy of that appellation.

The ever deteriorating quality of Japanese politicians is seen not only among those serving their first terms as lawmakers but also among leaders of the highest ranks, including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Last month, a panel of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party held hearings to question representatives of TV Asahi and NHK about their news programs. TV Asahi was reportedly grilled at length on comments made during a program broadcast March 27 dealing with Shigeaki Koga, formerly with the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Trade. He said during the show that he had been "bashed" by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga and other officials from the prime minister's office.

Suga made a quick rebuttal, saying Koga's comments were unfounded and that it was inappropriate for him to make "false" statements through a public medium.

Although former Prime Ministers Kakuei Tanaka and Noboru Takeshita were often targets of criticism by the mass media, they never filed lawsuits against them. The background of the high-handed attitude of the LDP toward the press is undoubtedly the words and deeds of Abe himself.

On the same day the LDP panel questioned the TV representatives, Abe had his first meeting with Okinawa Gov. Takeshi Onaga, after having ignored his repeated requests for such a meeting. Abe apparently thought his continued refusal to meet with the governor of Okinawa — home to three-quarters of bases solely used by the U.S. military in Japan — would work to his disadvantage in his upcoming meeting with President Barack Obama.

Initially, it was agreed that only the first five minutes would be open to the press, during which Onaga would speak first and Abe next. Hours before the meeting, the prime minister's office asked that Abe be allowed to speak first, which Onaga's team accepted "without much thinking."

The request for the change stemmed from a lesson learned from Suga's meeting with Onaga in the Okinawa capital of Naha on April 5. The governor spoke about 30 minutes, driving home to Suga that the citizens of his prefecture were becoming increasingly angry at the central government's plan to build a new air base off the coast of Henoko in northern Okinawa as a replacement for U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma located in the densely populated city of Ginowan.

Onaga wanted to do the same at his meeting with Abe. But Abe spoke first, stressing that there was no alternative to the government's plan, and when Onaga started speaking from his long memo, he was suddenly told by a worker of the prime minister's office that the time was up and the reporters and TV crews had to leave. Onaga expressed his fury upon his return by saying, "The videotaping was cut off before I was able to say that I would never let the new base built off Henoko." The meeting resulted in increasing the amount of distrust.

Powerful though it is, the prime minister's office may not be getting sufficient information on crucial matters, as evidenced by the way it handled China's initiative to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. While collaborating with the U.S. in deciding against participating in the AIIB plan for the time being, Japan was taken aback when members of the Group of Seven like Britain, Germany, France and Italy decided to jump on board as founding members.

Abe even made a slip of the tongue April 20 when he said, in reference to the AIIB, that business corporations will throw away their future if they borrow from a usurer. Comparing the AIIB to a usurer was quite imprudent, coming shortly before Abe was to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Jakarta.

On April 23, three female members of the Abe Cabinet — Sanae Takaichi, minister of internal affairs and communications, Eriko Yamatani, chairwoman of the National Public Safety Commission, and Haruko Arimura, state minister in charge of encouraging women to play more active roles in society — visited Yasukuni Shrine, which honors the war dead and the Class-A war criminals — at a time when not only China and South Korea but also the U.S. are paying close attention to the Japanese government’s moves in connection with perception of modern history. The shrine visit cast suspicion over the three Cabinet members’ political and diplomatic sensitivities, and can’t help being regarded as an act of flattery to Abe.

Abe has now become so powerful that regardless of what he does, virtually nobody dares offer any dissent. For example, when he heckled an opposition questioner during a Lower House Budget Committee meeting, no politician had enough courage to rebuke him.

With the quality of the man at the top and politicians close to him so degraded, nobody can expect any better quality from young, new legislators.

Since the current election system was instituted, many young candidates have been newly elected to the Diet but the turnover rate is high. In the 2012 general election, which returned Abe to power, 119 new faces won seats on the LDP ticket. Of them, 103 survived the ensuing election last year while another 15 novices were elected. This means that of the 291 LDP members of the Lower House, more than 40 percent are in their first or second terms.

In contrast, the number of veteran lawmakers has fallen sharply since the LDP banned those over 73 years of age from running for the Lower House under the proportional representation system. The resulting imbalance in the age composition of LDP lawmakers explains why the Abe administration lacks a sense of stability even though the party enjoys an overwhelming majority in the Diet.

The weakening of intra-party factions, which used to provide education and training for young politicians, has made them less disciplined, leading many of them to simply enjoy their privileges and the high income accruing from their positions as Diet members, and to play no greater roles than voting on bills.

Then came a scandal unveiled by a weekly magazine, in which Yuko Nakagawa, a parliamentary secretary in the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry and widow of the late former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa, was photographed kissing Hirofumi Kado, a married LDP Lower House member, on a busy Tokyo street.

A secretary to the prime minister who has observed the behavior of Diet members for many years laments that too many lawmakers are coming to the Diet in a picnicking mood. As long as a powerful leader like Abe, who does not give any hint about what his successor should be like, wields strong political power, everything will be left as it is without being corrected out of a fear of rocking the boat.

The LDP used to have a number of elder statesmen who would dare to give straightforward counsel to the party's highest leader. It also had a council of "supreme advisers," who had served as prime minister, deputy LDP head, speaker of the Lower House or president of the Upper House. They used to meet prior to crucial events such as prime ministers' visits to the U.S. and summits with leaders of other countries. That helped the prime minister and other politicians exhibit a proper degree of restraint, which in turn enabled the LDP to remain in power for so long.

The deteriorating quality of LDP legislators may well be a harbinger of collapse of the administration due to depletion of the party's human resources.

This is an abridged translation of an article form the May issue of Sentaku, a monthly magazine covering political, social and economic scenes.