For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose government has entered its seventh year, 2019 will be a crucial year in his attempts to create a political legacy for his long-running administration — with the triennial Upper House election this summer serving as a key test. The extended boom cycle of the economy, now believed to have continued for a record-tying 73 months under Abe's watch, will also be tested by the consumption tax hike in October and the growing uncertainty over the global economy, as illustrated by recent stock market volatility.
On the strength of his record of leading the Liberal Democratic Party-Komeito coalition to landslide victories in all five Diet elections since 2012, Abe was elected last September to his third three-year term as LDP president through 2021, putting him on a path to becoming the nation's longest-serving prime minister. Now the question is on what issues does Abe intend to expend his resources and his remaining time in office to try to create a legacy for his administration.
A longtime advocate of revising the postwar Constitution, which hasn't been altered since it was introduced in 1947, Abe has set a goal of amending the nation's highest law by 2020 and the LDP has come up with a draft amendment, including a revision to the war-renouncing Article 9 to clarify the legal status of the Self-Defense Forces. An amendment needs to be proposed by a two-thirds majority in both chambers of the Diet — which the LDP-Komeito alliance currently has (with the help of pro-amendment forces in the Upper House) — for approval in a national referendum.