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
Management International
Relations 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. Post-Mortem
By Department

7. Project Planning
How Was the Project Planned?
• Who was responsible for original plans?
− How did that work? Right set of people?
• Was project well defined from beginning?
− Was there an actual written plan?
− How was project plan communicated?
− How well did that work?

8. 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.

9. 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.

10. 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.

11. 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‟—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”.

12. 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. For now, Mr Abe is
merely suggesting the statement should be reviewed.

13. 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.

14. 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 minister

15. 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.