Abe’s rejig cabinet to focus on economy but exhausted rhetoric — News Analysis

Nine ministers were replaced in the reshuffle Wednesday, while key posts, including the foreign, defence and finance ministers, were unchanged.

Abe pushed through unpopular security legislation last month and is refocusing on the economy.

Abe said it was with this in mind that he promoted his Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato, 59, to a newly created portfolio charged with encouraging greater workforce participation.

Political watchers said following the announcement of the new lineup that the changes were largely in line with expectations with one or two new additions added to the mix in a bid to possibly curry favor from a skeptical public, still irate at the cabinet’s unilateral decision to reinterpret a key clause of Japan’s war-renouncing Constitution that paved the way for Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party-led coalition to steamroll publicly denounced war bills through parliament. Hiroshi Hase, a colourful 54-year-old professional wrestler-turned-politician, will also be given the education portfolio, local media said.

Shimomura had said he would stand down over missteps that forced the scrapping of plans for a new national stadium as the centerpiece of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.

With a poll published by Japan News Network recently showing that just under 90 percent of respondents here feel that” Abenomics ” has not delivered the positive effects such as higher incomes and standards of living as promised, and with small and medium-sized firms consistently disclosing that the economic policies instituted since Abe came to the helm have had negligible effects on their balance sheets, Imori and Muramatsu both concurred that Abe’s cabinet and government in general are now under increasing pressure to turn exhausted rhetoric into real results.

Indeed, each country has to have its government ratify the deal, and leading economists are already suggesting that the pact is more about managed trade rather than free trade and have questioned the lack of transparency of the overall process, which may be a sizable sticking point for the public too, when details of the agreement are released prior to them being sent for ratification. However, the Cabinet lost one female member in the reshuffle, with three women now among the 19 ministers.

At a press conference Tuesday morning, Abe announced a plan to set up a comprehensive TPP response headquarters that has all ministers as its members.

Kato is tasked with coordinating policies to try to raise the low fertility rate, reform the creaking social security system and boost growth, targets central to a platform Abe hopes will woo voters ahead of an upper house election next July. Hagiuda, 48, has caused headaches for Abe’s government with outspoken comments on Japan’s wartime past, a topic that often frays ties with China.

Koichi Hagiuda, an LDP aide to Abe, replaces Kato.

Mr Abe has been trying to demonstrate renewed commitment to fixing the stale economy.

Those targets are boosting the fertility rate so Japan can keep its population from falling below 100 million from about 126 million now, eliminating the need to quit work to care for elderly relatives, and growing the economy by one-fifth to 600 trillion yen ($5 trillion) – a goal skeptics doubt can be hit.