Originally published on July 9, 2019.
This passage, based on a dialogue between Takashi Tsutsumi and Kōshi Kubo in Hanada, offers a sharp critique of the opposition’s calculations surrounding the idea of “post-Abe” and the emptiness behind them.
Through remarks by Yukio Edano, the background to the creation of the Constitutional Democratic Party, shifts in his views on constitutional revision and security policy, and anecdotes involving Yasuhiro Nakasone, Shin Kanemaru, and Shigeru Yoshida, it explores the qualities required of political leadership and the seriousness of the Liberal Democratic Party’s succession question.
It is a highly suggestive piece for understanding both the limits of the opposition and the realities of Japanese politics.

2019-07-09
When I heard this, I thought, “What an idiot this man is… but still, good for him for saying it.”
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Prefatory text omitted.
Meanwhile, the opposition has now realized that “as long as Abe remains in power, we have no chance of winning,” and has effectively given up.
Well, of course they have, because there is absolutely nothing with which they can overturn the situation.
That is why their true feeling is that “post-Abe is the real opening.”
Speaking of post-Abe, during last year’s Liberal Democratic Party presidential election, Yukio Edano of the Constitutional Democratic Party said something like this.
“As the leading opposition party, we will become a governing alternative and before long take charge of the government.
My responsibility is not merely to gain power, but to create a long-term administration.
I, the leader of the largest opposition party, am ‘post-Abe’!”
When I heard this, I thought, “What an idiot this man is… but still, good for him for saying it.”
Because once you say, “I am post-Abe,” people are bound to compare Abe and Edano whether they want to or not.
No matter who looks at it, the result is obvious（笑）。
Kubo
By the way, Aso recently said this on television, taking into account the closeness between Abe and Trump.
“People casually say that Shinzo Abe can be replaced, but do they have any idea how much successive postwar Japanese administrations have agonized and struggled over how to become close to the United States?”
In reality, relations between states are often greatly influenced by the degree of personal closeness between their top leaders.
For example, Nicholas Wapshott wrote the following in Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.
“The reason Reagan and Thatcher were able to display the strong leadership for which they are remembered was that they had a special relationship like a ‘political marriage,’ in which, like a long-married couple, each accepted the other’s differing views with broad-mindedness.”
Nakasone once said, “When I became Prime Minister, the first thing I kept in mind was, first, to stand next to Reagan in summit photographs no matter what, and second, to create a relationship in which I could call him by his first name.”
Many people mocked that “lightness,” but through the accumulation of such things, the ‘Ron-Yasu’ relationship was formed, and Japan-U.S. relations became stronger than ever before.
That said, Nakasone leaned too far forward and even called Thatcher “Margaret” by her first name upon first meeting her, leaving the Iron Lady taken aback（笑）。
The CDP Is a “New Party of Leftovers”
Tsutsumi
When Shin Kanemaru was being called the mighty secretary-general, a reporter once asked him, “Surely you aim eventually for the office of prime minister, do you not?”
He replied like this.
“Look at my face.
Can you imagine a man like me standing in line at a summit?”（笑）
Kanemaru knew his own measure.
Edano is no good at all.
This is not just a matter of appearances.
As a politician too, he is out of the question.
For example, during the days of the Democratic Party, Edano wrote in Bungei Shunju (October 2013 issue) a private proposal for constitutional revision under the title “Article 9 of the Constitution: How I Would Change It.”
If you read it, he partially recognizes the right of collective self-defense, and there is not much difference from Abe’s security legislation.
What is more, he also wrote, “To speak of the right of self-defense itself in the binary terms of individual or collective is strange.
The only people engaged in that kind of debate are Japanese politicians and scholars.”
That was something I had been saying for a long time, and I thought, “Oh, has this man finally started to understand a little?”
But the moment he became leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party, he withdrew that private proposal and everything reverted to square one.
He hardly explained the reason for withdrawing it.
He has no settled views at all.
And to top it off, he keeps shouting, “We will not let Abe revise the Constitution.”
It is utterly incoherent.
Kubo
If you trace it back, the one who made fellows who do not even know the ABCs of politics get carried away like that was Yuriko Koike（笑）。
Tsutsumi
When the Democratic Party decided to merge into the Party of Hope, Edano and the others were excluded, and so, having no choice, they created the Constitutional Democratic Party.
At first they had given then-leader Maehara a blank check and hoped to migrate into the Party of Hope, but Koike selected and excluded them, so they were, as it were, people who failed even to become hermit crabs.
I said it at the time:
“They are not a Constitutional Democratic Party at all.
They are a ‘new party of leftovers.’”（笑）
Yet for some reason, they came to be praised as people who had upheld principle, and that is how matters stand today.
Principle, my foot.
All that happened was that they failed to crawl under Koike’s skirt.
And the leader of such a party says, “I am post-Abe”?
One wants to ask whether he is in his right mind.
That said, “post-Abe” is for the Liberal Democratic Party a serious issue, or if mishandled, even a crisis.
Once, when people were wondering whether Shigeru Yoshida’s successor would be Hayato Ikeda or Eisaku Sato, an Asahi reporter asked Yoshida directly about it.
Yoshida replied,
“The most important thing in Japan from here on is the economy.
Ikeda understands the economy, so Ikeda is next.
Sato comes after that.”
This was what they call an off-the-record remark, and there had been a promise not to make it public, but that reporter wrote it anyway.
I have heard he was then banned from entering the Yoshida residence for a while（笑）。
Kubo
Any political reporter who heard that and did not write it would be unfit for the job.
That was splendid（笑）。