Last Friday’s visit to Darwin by Prime Minister Abe was one of those “blink and you’ll miss it” moments in bilateral relations.  Shoved between the East Asia Summit in Singapore and the APEC Leaders’ Summit in Port Moresby, PM Abe managed to find the time to swing by northern Australia in order to conduct discussions with Prime Minister Morrison on matters of mutual importance, primarily the situation with China and its aid efforts in the Pacific along with discussions on the long-awaited Reciprocal Access Agreement. 

The fact that this agreement has not yet been finalized has been a source of some frustration for those watching the progress of Australia-Japan strategic relations. Perhaps the best way to regard the slow pace in developments might be to remember that “good things come to those who wait”. 

Nevertheless, both sides still had plenty to talk about over the 20 or so hours of the visit.

One particular item that was kept under wraps but later revealed during APEC was the Australia, the US, and Japan trilateral joint initiative on infrastructure funding for the Pacific.  PM Abe also took the time upon arrival in Australia to travel to the Darwin Cenotaph to pay his respects and lay a wreath in memory of those who perished during Japan’s air raids on the city in February 1942. As was highlighted during the visit, this gesture followed on from a similar one he made at Pearl Harbour in 2016. Given Abe’s political background and heritage, he is perhaps the most qualified of any of Japan’s recent leaders to make this gesture, which was generally well received by both the Darwin community and Australia at large.  Abe (or more correctly his wife Akie) also visited the memorial to the Fujita Salvage Operation of 1959 to 1961, located out the front of the Darwin Uniting Memorial Church, while the prime ministerial couple laid wreathes at the memorial to the crew of the I-124 submarine that was sunk outside the Port of Darwin one month before the air raid on the city. 

The visit was certainly more memorable for the above events than for the equally as important but perhaps less attention-grabbing visit to PM Abe to the Ichthys LNG project, Japan’s largest overseas investment. This mammoth project, which is expected to continue to supply LNG to Japan for the next 40 years, is the figurehead of the Australia-Japan economic relationship at present, and has been vigorously promoted by the governments of both countries since the announcement of the project in 2012. 

The only other event of note during the visit was a quick trip by PM Abe to greet the crew of the Japan Coast Guard Vessel “Echigo” during their inaugural training exercise with the Australian Border Force, along with anti-piracy maneuvers in Southeast Asian waters.  This is an extension of similar visits that Japanese Coast Guard vessels have made around the region, and marks a welcome expansion in Japan’s security apparatus to reinforce the sovereignty of regional states.

The visit itself will primarily be remembered for the Darwin reconciliation gesture, and certainly had more to offer than a visit to Tokyo made earlier in the year by former PM Malcolm Turnbull (a visit that also promised a major announcement, only for it to turn into a standard PR opportunity replete with a visit to an SDF base, a first by an Australian PM, if I recall correctly). While it might be a while before the leaders of either country undertake any bilateral visits (given that Australia is expected to have a federal election by mid-May, the results of which could see a change in government) it was a good reminder of just how close the bilateral ties are between both nations and how these “middle powers” are acting on behalf of their own and partner nation interests to bring some stability to this part of the world.

Right now Japan is going through a period of introspection (albeit mostly in a political context) in relation to what kind of society it wishes to be and how it might retain something of its labour strength in the face of dwindling population and productivity statistics. On Tuesday, debate began in earnest in the Lower House on proposed changes to immigration laws to expand the range of professions allowable in order to increase the number of foreign workers permitted to work in Japan.  Up until now, most professions involving foreign workers have been limited to those at the higher end of the income curve, most notably lawyers, traders, university professors and the like, with a separate program for foreign ‘students’ in industries that are more reliant on physical labour, notably fishing and farming (this program has, however, been somewhat controversial, for while it is ostensibly about teaching foreign students to acquire agriculture and technical skills, it has often been used as a simple means of finding staff without regard for adequate wages or good working conditions).  

Debate this week has mostly focused on the number of workers that will be allowed into the country. Under the proposal put forward by the government, the range of permitted professions will expand to 14 in number, with a first intake of between 3,300 to 4,700 workers starting in April 2019. By 2023 the government predicts that between 260,000 to 340,000 foreign workers will have been employed in Japan’s domestic industries. The problem here, however, is that according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan will have a shortfall in workers of around 1,300,000 to 1, 350,000 by 2023. The Ministry of Justice initially anticipated that Japan would need to admit 40,000 workers in the first year of the new program, which would then expand to 250,000, although these figures were never made public.

Hence the disparity in numbers will need to be met either by increasing the intake of foreign workers or changing regulations governing employment in Japan.  Opposition parties in Japan are demanding that the government reveal how it intends to overcome the worker gap, particularly if it wants to boost worker numbers. The government itself has said that it is examining the prospect of a greater intake, although details of its policy have yet to be made public.  

The issue of foreign labour in Japan is a contentious one for a number of reasons. Despite Japan benefiting from large influxes of immigrants from South America from the 1960s onwards, immigrants who were by and large of Japanese ancestry with some form of tangible link to the country, these immigrants still experienced difficulty in integrating with Japanese society. Japan, unlike other developed countries, does not have programs in place to deal with large scale immigration, and there aren’t enough NGOs available to cope with the needs of diverse immigrant communities. Japanese society itself is not in favour of an expanded immigration regime (although somewhat paradoxically a majority of Japanese also believe that immigrants help society by contributing their labour and skills).

Japan is coming to this issue somewhat late, given that declining productivity and the drop in the domestic working age population has been debated at length for over a decade. It is also competing against other countries around the region and world who have large scale immigration programs targeting manual labourers from developing countries, with some of these offering better working conditions and wages than can be found in Japan. 

It is to the credit of PM Abe that he has been at the forefront of this initiative, and that he is using his renewed authority within the LDP to push for increased immigration. This policy, which is primarily aimed at insuring against any sharp downturn in Japan’s productivity over the long term, could have added benefits for Japan’s renewed focus on regional leadership as well.  Since a majority of workers will be drawn from developing nations in the region, their acceptance will provide evidence of Japan’s desire to contribute to the well-being and technical progress of the region as a whole. While many challenges lie ahead, not least of which is getting a majority of Japanese society to accept the presence of larger numbers of foreign labourers in their midst, it opens the door to a potential resolution of Japan’s labour woes and a greater integration of Japan into the global labour market.   

In a long litany of posts in which I apologise for the lack of updates, this won’t be one of them. I’ve been busy. And I’ve been trying to juggle various responsibilities while thinking of a subject about which to write. Today, amidst news of the attempts by Tokyo Medical University to wind back the clock and reduce the number of women entering the university by doctoring (no pun intended) their entrance scores, this gem of a story came to my attention during the week and deserves a mention on this blog.

As most readers would know, Japan is scheduled to host the Olympics in two years’ time. While this fact itself has been reported almost to death, what has not received quite as much exposure has been articles talking of cost blowouts, potential fatalities from running a marathon in the middle of Japan’s summer, and the churn in ministers responsible for keeping the Olympic schedule on track. After the recent LDP leadership election and subsequent reshuffle in responsibilities, it has fallen upon the rather obscure figure of Sakurada Yoshitaka to assume the mantle of minister responsible for this logistical and PR behemoth.

On Monday Sakurada did not exactly cover himself in glory when he fronted the Upper House Budget Committee to answer questions about his portfolio.  The questions were, admittedly, pretty straight-forward; namely what was the vision for the Olympics, what were the key concepts involved in the Olympics, and how much were the Olympics likely to cost. The problem was that Sakurada was not able to answer these questions straight away, and on a few occasions proceedings had to be brought to a halt as Sakurada received some quick briefings on his portfolio by senior bureaucrats. On the following day, Sakurada fronted the media to explain his performance, claiming that because the opposition had failed to provide the government will a list of its questions beforehand (a unique aspect of the Diet system much commented on by other countries where parliamentary debate is less scripted) he had been unable to provide answers in a more ‘timely’ manner (the opposition claim that they did inform Sakurada’s staff ahead of time, which the LDP itself confirmed on Wednesday).

The problem was then exacerbated on Friday when Sakurada once again fronted the media, this time to withdraw his comments made to the Committee, saying that they were “somewhat different to the truth”, but against reiterating his claim that “if only the opposition had provided detailed questions ahead of time, then I could answer them in full”. 

Naturally the opposition parties have been zeroing in on this performance, for the absence of anything else with which to berate PM Abe they have to take what is available.  Questions were raised about Sakurada’s suitability to serve in cabinet, with past examples of his gaffes raised for good measure, most notably his comments while serving as Deputy Minister for Education in which he said any radioactive waste from the Dai-ichi nuclear plant should stay in Fukushima Prefecture “where nobody wants to live”, and when he described comfort women as “engaged in prostitution as a profession”.    

Sakurada is probably not going anywhere in the time being – after all the reshuffle was only two months ago, and there is still time for Sakurada to gain more knowledge of his portfolio. Moreover he is a factional ally of Nikai Toshihiro, Secretary General of the LDP, and Nikai wanted one of his men in cabinet in exchange for support during the LDP leadership election. So Sakurada will most likely survive this round of scrutiny, however he will be closely watched, and any subsequent gaffes could bring his ministerial career to an abrupt (but possibly welcome) halt.