HEREDITARY monarchy has gone out of vogue, but in much of Asia, political leadership remains a family business. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are all, formally or in practice, led by the son, daughter, widow, widower or sister of an earlier leader.

1. The Crown Capital
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Grandfathers’
footsteps

2. HEREDITARY monarchy has gone out of vogue, but
in much of Asia, political leadership remains a family
business. India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Thailand are all, formally or
in practice, led by the son, daughter, widow, widower
or sister of an earlier leader.
It is in North-East Asia, however, that the persistence
of the hereditary principle in politics has the most
intriguing implications. At the root of the region‟s
tensions are contested versions of history. The
outcomes of elections in Japan and South Korea last
month mean that they, along with China and North
Korea, are now all led by the children or grandchildren
of men who played big parts in that history. How they
interpret their ancestral duties will help determine how
the tensions play out.

3. Shinzo Abe, elected for a second time as Japan‟s prime
minister, certainly feels a sense of filial duty. Following
his victory last month he went to pray at the graves of
his father, a former foreign minister, and grandfather,
Nobusuke Kishi, a former prime minister and Mr Abe‟s
political hero. He has recalled sitting on his grandfather‟s
knee in 1960, as crowds outside his house called for his
resignation. Now, like Kishi, he wants to “change the
post-war regime” in Japan. What that means is to make
the country strong and proud again.
The fealty to Grandpa Kishi is worrying for Japan‟s
neighbours. He was a member of the Japanese cabinet
that declared war on America, and spent over three years
in jail after Japan‟s defeat as a suspected war criminal,
although he was never charged. Between 1936 and 1939
he was the most senior bureaucrat in Manchukuo, the
puppet state Japan set up after occupying Manchuria in
north-east China.

4. The Japanese occupation also played a formative role in
the life of the father of Park Geun-hye, the president-
elect of South Korea. When Korea was a Japanese
colony, Park Chung-hee joined the Manchukuo Imperial
Army, and fought in Manchuria in the 1940s. The life of
Kim Il Sung, grandfather of North Korea‟s juvenile
despot, Kim Jong Un, is hard to disentangle from the
myths built up around him. But he too fought in
Manchuria, having earlier joined the anti-Japanese
resistance and the Chinese Communist Party. And to
complete a quartet of family wartime histories, Xi
Zhongxun, father of Xi Jinping, China‟s new leader, was
in the 1930s already a leading figure in the party,
fighting the Japanese occupation, though from north-
west China rather than in Manchuria.

5. After the war Xi rose to become a deputy prime minister,
though like so many of Mao Zedong‟s comrades he and
his family suffered during the Cultural Revolution in the
1960s. By then Kim Il Sung was firmly ensconced in
Pyongyang, ceding power on his death in 1994 to his son,
the present ruler‟s father, Kim Jong Il. Park Chung-hee,
meanwhile, switched to the army of the newly
independent Republic of Korea, lived down his past as a
collaborator, rose through the ranks, seized power in 1961
and ruled until his assassination in 1979. Before her
election Ms Park disavowed her father‟s
authoritarianism. But that his rule saw a phenomenal
economic boom, and that she is his daughter, was part of
her appeal.
The most startling of the post-war life stories is that of
Nobusuke Kishi. For one historian of the post-war period,
Kishi‟s remarkable rehabilitation made him “the epitome
of Japan‟s pre-war and post-war political „continuity‟—

6. Japan‟s failure, in other words, to perform a thorough
political housecleaning after the war.”That perceived
failure is a constant source of friction with Japan‟s
neighbours. China sees evidence of it in Japan‟s refusal to
acknowledge the disputed status of the uninhabited
Senkaku islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese). One Chinese
spokesman has accused Japan of “attempting to negate
the outcome of the war”.
Mr Abe campaigned for election as a man who would
stand up to China, as Kishi would surely have wanted.
Already, China is testing his mettle. This week his
government had to summon the Chinese ambassador to
complain about an unusually long visit to the islands‟
waters by Chinese surveillance ships. An even more direct
challenge to the accepted historical record would be any
suggestion that Japan under Mr Abe might revoke a 20-
year-old government statement admitting official
involvement in the enslavement of women for sex during
the country‟s imperialist phase.

7. For now, Mr Abe is merely suggesting the statement
should be reviewed.
In fact, Mr Abe has started this term in office, as he did
his first short stint from 2006, by appearing quite
conciliatory to Japan‟s neighbours. It has been a slight
relief both to them and to America, which, having a
treaty obligation to defend Japan, is nervous about its
spat with China. America has also been aghast at the
deterioration in Japan‟s relations with its other big ally,
South Korea, over the Japanese-claimed Dokdo
(Takeshima) islands. The hope is that, as in 2006, the
realities of office temper the nationalist zeal of the
campaign trail. Or perhaps, as Michael Cucek, author
of Shisaku, an astute blog on Japanese politics, has
suggested, Mr Abe is biding his time until the election for
the upper house of the Diet, or parliament, in July. In
2007 defeat in such an election helped end his first prime
ministership.

8. Legacy issues
After all, Mr Abe has not been shy about his wish for
radical nationalist reform to Japan‟s pacifist constitution,
to its security treaty with America and to the education
system to bolster its “patriotic” content. If he makes
progress, the graves of his father and grandfather will be
duly honoured. But in China and Korea, where the
suffering and humiliation of Japanese occupation remain
vivid political issues, it would be taken as fresh evidence
of Japan‟s refusal to confront the past. And their leaders
might feel their own forebears urging them to resist.