TOKYO, March 4 2024—More than three decades after the Diet (Japanese parliament) unanimously adopted a resolution to promote decentralization of government, thus gradually empowering municipalities the regional authority to share administration with the national government, the tide is dangerously flowing back. And the shift is bringing about changes in public administration, some dramatically, by the central and local governments, making American debate about federalism and states’ statehood looking more democratic and healthy.
Perhaps the most hyperbolic case is the Japanese supreme court decision Dec. 20, 2023 on the Okinawa prefecture vs. the Japanese government on the relocation of the U.S. Marine Corp. Futenma Airbase to Henoko shore. Okinawa had refused to authorize Henoko shore reclamation work for environmental degradation, irreversible damage to corral habitation and other reasons. The high court ruled that Okinawa is obligated to authorize work and gave the central government to directly perform work instead. In an earlier local referendum, Okinawa voters voted down the central government’s request.
The court decision and the Japanese government’s hardball approach toward Okinawa were not isolated from other policies Tokyo had been taking during the reins of the late prime minister Shinzo Abe, particularly since 2020, when Japan was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic as it struggled to ask all 125 million citizens to obtain the ‘My Number’ taxpayer ID card.
The ‘move toward centralization of power as a countermeasure against the coronavirus pandemic that began in 2020 has intensified, resulting in discrepancies in policy measures and confrontation between the national government and local governments,’ Kunihiko Ushiyama, professor of the school of political science and economics of Meiji University, wrote on Oct. 25, 2023.
Centralization of government administration to the national government, which can be interpreted as a simplistic form of U.S. federalism, has a long suffocating period in Japanese history.
During much the 270-year-long Edo period through the mid-1800s, the country’s administration had basically functioned on local ‘Han (samurai war lord domain)’ statehood The Tokugawa Shogunate commanded supreme authority over other ‘Daimyo (domain lords),’ the shogun’s power was superlative, his administrative policies weighing on what top Daimyos had to think and decide at a ‘Roju (senior baron and chamberlain’ conferences, and thus he could not make his own decisions.
Those Daimyos came from many regions of Japan, all of them maintaining high levels of autonomy from the Tokugawa Shogunate. Thus, by mid-Edo period, the Shogun had been made a figurehead, stripped of all important duties, his daily life, including his night life with wife and mistresses in the (O-oku (the Shogun harem), and what he ate, fixed rigidly by chamberlains. No freedom and little power. He was not permitted to eat a piping hot grilled ‘sanma (weak sword fish, the variety that only poor people consumed then),’ given only after his aides sample the delicious warm fish for poison.
The long statehood period ended come the Meiji Restoration period (1868-1912), when the Tokugawa Shogunate was toppled by the new government force (called the ‘Kangun’) that introduced Japan’s first constitution, the Great Nippon Imperial Constitution) in 1889, that articulated the centuries-long ambiguity of national-state administrative authority to the central government by elucidating that the emperor assumes sovereignty of the nation (Article 1). This policy had been observed rigidly until 1945, the year when Japan officially surrendered to the U.S.-led occupation forces. In 1946, the current Constitution was enforced that accorded sovereignty to the Japanese people (Article 92) and government administration is entrusted to their representatives by the people, as well as that local entities shall make own decisions on organizations and administration (Article 93).
In fits and starts, the decentralization movement had spread in municipalities, finally culminating with the 2006 enactment of the Regional Administrative Authority Promotion Act and its enforcement in 2007. But contrary to what many local had hoped were for reactivating the then-already sliding local communities, the act turned out to be primarily for merging shrinking villages and towns under new, deceptively bright names like ‘green town’ or telling such consolidated municipalities to advertise their they now have clinics, hot springs, and other facilities – which the merged entities acquired from the acquired halves).
Decentralization should give local communities greater statehood and autonomy at administration, including taxes for ultimate empowerment in policy and action. What the decentralization led to after the law was introduced was local governments were given ‘passive freedom’ of administering policies on their own though passively, instead of being instructed by the statement.That’s far different from ‘positive freedom’ in which local governments explore something new on their own. In other words, local governments were asked to find solutions to problems they encounter without looking up to government for help – which is an impossibly tall wall for many that have been accustomed to following government instructions.
The top court ruling on the Futenma Airbase relocation may not be a good case to cite as an example of what will happen next in the re-centralization wave. But having coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic, in which the national government took a decisively powerful role by shoving aside local governments in vaccine distribution and numerous other policies, it’s a lead nevertheless that the bureaucracy, the prime minister’s cabinet and politicians can follow in their pursuit to re-muster power and authority in many other areas.
The timing can be right for them as most of those policies, including the My Number card, subsidies, taxes and others will be connected via the government’s DX digitalization economy, societal platform, a highly complicated program that overwhelms lay people’s understanding.
So, at the end of the day, many Japanese do not feel comfortable about the ‘positive freedom’ drift and elect to entrust decisions to the ‘Okami (higher-up, government, politicians, God).’
Dangerous.
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