Shinzo Abe is history. He just doesn’t know it yet. In his zeal for keeping the trappings of office as prime minister, Abe has already given up much of the substance of power. Let us count the ways.

His new cabinet shifts a great deal of power from the Kantei (office of the prime minister) back to the bureaucracy and Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) faction leaders. The press and prosecutors feel complete impunity to pillory one cabinet minister after another for corruption, forcing the resignation of Abe’s new agriculture minister just one week after his appointment, and putting the environmental minister’s fate in doubt. Not once during the five year reign of Abe’s predecessor, the wildly popular Junichiro Koizumi, did prosecutors or the media feel free to explore publicly the financial peccadillos of his ministers and advisors. (We somehow doubt that padding expenses and other illicit money dealings were born with Abe’s ascension). Conventional wisdom has it that Abe is weak because of a bad luck string of exposes. The opposite is the case: the exposure of corruption takes place because Abe is so weak that no one fears his wrath or potential retribution.

It goes on. Abe has backpedaled on one of his most prized initiatives: an effort to “reinterpret” the Constitution to enable Japan to play a more active military role. And, finally, at the special autumn session of the Diet, opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa has pledged to block renewal of the law that authorizes Japanese naval activities in support of US and allied efforts in Afghanistan. If renewal is blocked, it will show that Abe has become a stumbling block to precisely the security policies that he treasures. There would be renewed pressure both for him to step down and for early Lower House elections.

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