SNA (Tokyo) — It’s hard to feel the passage of time and seasons in 2020, a year in which a global panic has shut us up in our homes. Spring turns to summer, then to autumn; we venture outside to the wind’s faint chill and realize that somehow, it’s already October. I felt the same about the dramatic change in Japanese leadership that snuck up on us as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stepped down on September 16 to make way for Yoshihide Suga, who became the country’s 99th prime minister.

It’s like those who don’t care what’s going on around them still see Abe as Prime Minister Abe. Yoshihide Suga long served as chief cabinet secretary but played the ‘wife’ to the prime minister and gave the strong impression of being the government’s press secretary. When speaking to the media, Suga looks like he’s wincing as he wipes his nose with a twig (as we say in Japanese). When questioned about the various scandals involving the then Abe administration, Suga avoids any substantive response, denying allegations had ever been made or that any issues had even arisen. Suga served as an iron wall between Abe and his subjects.

Abe’s ideology was crystal clear: a commitment to changing the Constitution, patriotic education, and a willing subservience to the United States. His mission as chief cabinet secretary was to keep the Abe administration alive for as long as possible.

But what kind of country will he try to build in his next role as protagonist, having already played the role of devoted “wife” (putting aside the anachronistic gender norms that inform this nickname)? Most people knew not to expect any policy deviating from Abe’s orientation. Consider Suga’s other nicknames, such as Petit Abe and Abe’s Matryoshka doll. But we were given a shock just a fortnight after inauguration.

On October 1, we learned that Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga rejected the appointment of six members recommended by the Science Council of Japan, a national academic group that makes policy proposals. It is the first time that a prime minister has refused to appoint candidates recommended by the council. The six nominees are Sadamichi Ashina, Shigeki Uno, Masanori Okada, Ryuichi Ozawa, Yoko Kato, and Takaaki Matsumiya — scholars of political science, history, law, and Christian theology. All have criticized Abe’s policies, including the security laws and the Act on the Protection of Specially Designated Secrets. Neither Suga nor Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato provided any explanation as to why they were excluded.

Article 7 (2) of the Science Council of Japan Act states, “Members are appointed by the prime minister on the recommendation of the Science Council of Japan.” The phrase “appointed on the basis of the recommendation” means, in principle, that the appointments are made in accordance with the recommendation. For example, regarding the appointment of the prime minister, the Constitution stipulates that “the Emperor shall appoint the prime minister on the basis of the nomination of the Diet,” but the Emperor cannot refuse to make the appointment. If there is suspicion that a nominated researcher has “plagiarized a paper” or other malfeasance, the prime minister could ask the Science Council of Japan about the circumstances that led to the nomination or urge it to reconsider before making the appointment. But outright rejection of certain researchers without disclosing the reason is an abuse of the prime minister’s power.

For many, this surely recalls the 1933 Kyoto University Incident and the Emperor Organ Theory Incident (disrespect for the emperor) in which the government stepped in to the educational arena before the Pacific War, suppressed researchers critical of the government, and expelled them from their universities.

The background to the establishment of the Science Council of Japan cannot be discussed without mentioning the violent history of the prewar military state that intervened in the world of academia, coddled scholars, and permitted them to speak only in line with state interests, while driving out disobedient ones. This history led to Article 19 and Article 23 of the Japanese Constitution, which guarantee freedom of thought and belief, and to the placement of the Science Council of Japan in an independent position free from interference from the state.

Shinzo Abe’s Matryoshka imposed his personal feelings into the appointments, to the extent that they are now derided as friendship appointments. His approach smacks of even more intransigence than his predecessor. The corporate media love to portray him as a “pancake-loving Uncle Reiwa,” but we must not be duped by this unthreatening avuncular description.

Yoko Kato, a professor of modern Japanese history, was among the deselected. In Japan Chose War Anyway, she explains the importance of fully and publicly disclosing the grounds for each assertion made and the process leading to each decision. Losing this transparency is dangerous, she argues. We should all fear a prime minister who refuses to explain his decisions to his people.

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