Reckless words, policies catch up with Abe

In this year of sobering historical reminders, Aug 15 marks the 69th anniversary of Japan's announcement of surrender in World War II. That date is unlikely to bring inspiration or comfort to Japan's increasingly beleaguered Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

This year Abe has been trying to turn the popularity he earned for trying to revive Japan's long-moribund domestic economy into support for his rearmament and increasingly assertive foreign policies. But these typically bold moves have backfired on him. Support for Abe is falling fast. About 46 percent of Japanese now disapprove of his economic policies according to a poll conducted by the pro-Abe Sankei newspaper. His general support now runs at 48 percent and is plunging fast according to another poll, published in Nikkei newspaper, a far cry from his 76 percent approval rating after his first six months in office.

It was already clear that Abe's shift in focus from economic reform to military and foreign affairs was worrying Japan's neighbors. It is now also clear that these moves have alarmed the Japanese people too.

Abe tried to clothe his radical new directions in military and foreign policy as simply trying to bring Japan in line with the norms of international behavior and security obligations. But his extraordinary efforts to whitewash the appalling war crimes of the imperial Japanese military from 1937 to 1945 tell a different story.

Abe has repeatedly shocked Asia by his brazen efforts to turn the clock back and smother any free and open debate in the Japanese media and education system about those years. These efforts amount to an Asian equivalent of Holocaust denial in Europe. No wonder, therefore, that people in countries such as China and South Korea, which suffered the most from Japanese occupation, were outraged. Abe never grasped that any normal country's leaders would express horror and remorse at Japan's war crimes, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel continues to do.

None of this anger has had the slightest effect on Abe. On the contrary, he appears to have reveled in it. But now the Japanese people themselves are rejecting his adventurism and risk taking.