At the APARC Japan Program, we are deeply saddened by the news of the assassination of Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan and still an influential political figure domestically and globally. We strongly condemn this senseless act of violence. We also sincerely hope that we will all strive to stop the 21st-century world from conjuring the memories of a pre-World War II days, bringing back the invasion of a sovereign nation for no reason (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), violent attack on democracy based on disinformation (the January 6 uprising in the United States), and assassination of an influential leader of a stable democracy (the death of Abe). Having served longer than any other prime minister in Japanese history, Abe had his admirers and detractors. Regardless of one’s evaluation of his legacy, however, this act of violence needs to be condemned in no uncertain terms, and every effort should be made to prevent similar acts of terror.

Abe was one of the most transformative political leaders in modern Japanese history, whose foreign policy accomplishments made him a leading protector of the liberal international order at a time when China’s authoritarian model and the U.S.’s isolationist tendencies began to threaten the rules-based international order. He consolidated U.S.-Japan relations by deftly handling the polar opposite personalities of Presidents Obama and Trump during his second term. He made lasting contributions to international politics, having invented new influential concepts such as Free and Open Indo-Pacific and Data Free Flow with Trust, which were later embraced by many democratic allies in the region, most notably by the United States.

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Abe's diplomatic prowess was predicated on his domestic power base, evidenced by six straight victories in national elections during his second term. Even after stepping down as Prime Minister, he wielded powerful influence in national politics, particularly in defense and foreign affairs. His passing will change Japanese politics in a number of ways.

Most immediately, internal politics within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will be shaken up. The LDP was poised to win the Upper House election held on Sunday, July 10, but the margin of victory likely grew because of national sympathy for Abe’s death. With this victory, Prime Minister Kishida now has “the Golden Three Years” in which he does not need to hold any national election. This puts him in a position to execute his policy agenda.

In the economic realm, Prime Minister Kishida no longer has to go out of his way to defend Abenomics and emphasize that his economic policy is an extension of Abe’s. He also does not face the same level of internal pressure to increase the defense budget, take a strong stance against China, and work toward a constitutional revision. At the same time, with Abe no longer uniting the conservative constituencies for Kishida, they might become more critical of Kishida, pushing him to pursue Abe’s policy agenda such as constitutional revision.

Abe’s faction is the largest in the LDP, and it will have to find a successor who can keep it together and exert influence within the LDP. Prime Minister Kishida will likely be emboldened to shake up the cabinet and bring in people he finds useful. He no longer needs to consider Abe’s preferences, which he did to a certain extent in forming his first cabinet. This will likely lead to surprising appointments in the next cabinet shuffle such as a long-term partner of Abe’s becoming Kishida’s close ally.

The U.S.-Japan alliance will remain strong, and Americans should not expect any major changes that would impact them directly in the short term. A stable leadership in an important ally is always welcome, and somebody like Kishida who is sensible and careful, if not dynamic, makes for a reliable partner. Abe’s interpersonal skills are hard to replicate but the geopolitical environments will continue to push American and Japanese leaders to work closely and remain friendly.

One concern for Japan is that a copycat event is common after a violent incident like this. The fact that the gun used in the assassination was made by the perpetrator speaks to the efficacy of gun control measures in Japan but it also serves as a warning that others with similar skills and intentions could use hand-made guns for other acts of violence. Japan experienced a wave of political violence in the period leading up to World War II, and the political instability provided fertile ground for the destructive military expansion that resulted in the devastating defeat in 1945. It might seem too early to worry about such dire outcomes, but we can never be too careful in working to preserve our precious democracy. The United States is learning this lesson the hard way, as it has had to deal with all the demagogies and disinformation that seem to persist with no end in sight.

Shinzo Abe was killed while on a campaign trail in the last few days of the Upper House election period. While the assassin’s motivation was more personal than political, it is still alarming that election campaigns were the site of this violent attack. If this can happen in Japan, widely viewed as the least likely place for violence in general and gun violence in particular, then it could happen anywhere to undermine democracy. To honor Abe’s legacy, we all need to reassert our resolve to protect our democracy in Japan, the United States, and all over the world.

This press release was originally published by the University of Tokyo. It discusses a new study, published by Lancet Public Health and co-authored by researchers from the University of Tokyo along with FSI Senior Fellow Karen Eggleston, director of the Asia Health Policy Program at APARC, and Jay Bhattacharya, Professor of Health Policy and director of the Center for Demography and Economics of Health and Aging at Stanford.

A new detailed microsimulation, using a database of 40 million people, has examined the future of Japan’s aging population up to 2043. It projects that more people will live longer, and that overall years spent living with dementia will decrease. However, the model highlighted the diversity of impacts on different segments of the population, as Japanese women with a less than high school education aged 75 and over may be disproportionately affected by both dementia and frailty. Better understanding where health gaps like this exist can help inform public health planning, to minimize future economic costs and support those most in need.

Taking care of the older members of society is a common concern around the world. Japan is famous for its long-lived residents, the number of which continues to rise. In 2020, almost 30% of the Japanese population was aged 65 years or older, and this age group is not projected to peak until 2034. Caring for people with age-related ailments, such as dementia and frailty, poses a challenge both to individuals and public health care systems.

Microsimulation models, which are computer models that can provide detailed analysis on an individual basis, are currently used to project future population health in some countries, such as the U.K. and the U.S. Professor Hideki Hashimoto and researchers at the University of Tokyo, along with researchers from Stanford University in the U.S., wanted to create a new microsimulation model for Japan, which would take into account more diverse conditions than had been considered before.

“We developed a new Japanese microsimulation model that accounts for 13 chronic conditions (including heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression and dependency), as well as frailty and dementia,” explained Hashimoto. “Using an ultralarge data system, we were able to ‘follow’ a virtual cohort of more than 40 million people aged 60 and over from 2016 to 2043.”

According to Hashimoto, projections of aging in Japan usually rely on the “average” status of older people and so don’t consider the diversity of the population. “I believe that problems of aging are a matter of health gaps over the course of people’s lives,” he said. “Our projection brings attention to a widening health gap among older people. It highlighted that women with a less than high school education aged 75 or over are more likely to be affected.”

Identifying where health gaps like this exist could be used to better inform public policy, not only about health care but other influential aspects of life. “Japan’s case may suggest that improvement in educational attainment, as well as population health, could be a key to making a healthier and more manageable aging society,” said Hashimoto.

Positively, this study shows hope for a future where many people live longer and more healthy lives. “People might believe that an increase in cases of dementia is inescapable, given population aging. However, in this study we found that in Japan, despite an aging population, the number of people with dementia is expected to decrease over the next two decades,” said Hashimoto. “Population aging does not necessarily mean an increase of social burden for care, but it does bring a diversity of problems that requires careful study and science-based policy attention, to close the health gap.”

U.S.-based donors and international organizations have long dominated the development sector, but their Asian peers are increasingly challenging Western hegemony in the field, argues APARC Postdoctoral Fellow in Contemporary Asia Mary-Collier Wilks.

Wilks is currently at work on a book project that examines variation in ‘aid chains,’ or the links through which programs travel from donors to international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs), and finally to implementing partners. Her ethnographic research examines two aid chains focused on the delivery of women’s health services in Cambodia. After completing her residency at APARC this summer, she will head to the University of North Carolina Wilmington to start a tenure track position at the Department of Sociology.

In the following Q&A, Wilks discusses her research and fellowship experience at Stanford. The interview was slightly edited for length and clarity.

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Your research centers on meaning-making and power dynamics in international organizations. What drew you to this topic?

Before going to graduate school, I worked at a Cambodian NGO, Social Services of Cambodia, that implemented social welfare programs for women and children. While there, I observed conversations between the foreign director, local staff, donors, and beneficiaries, and noticed how these interactions shaped SSC’s work. I was particularly struck by how differently donors from various nations defined gender empowerment. These questions evolved into a desire to go to graduate school and study how donor differences impact international development programs in Southeast Asia.

You are working on your first book. Can you tell us a bit about what to expect from it?

During my postdoctoral fellowship at APARC, I’m focusing on transforming my dissertation into a book. Learning to write a book is a difficult, unique, and rewarding process in and of itself! It’s still a work in progress, but the book argues that the global development sector is shifting. Donors and international organizations based in the United States, Europe, and Australia have long been dominant actors, producing prevailing global norms around “good development.” However, East Asian nations are increasingly vying for influence and offering new, alternative models for development. As a case study of these transformations, I conduct a multi-sited ethnography of two INGOs, one from the United States and the other from Japan, that implement development programs in Cambodia.

I see Cambodian practitioners render the above geopolitical transformations meaningful in their own lives by discussing two “development imaginaries” or narratives about the best way for society to develop, one “Asian” and the other “Western.” Consequently, I contend Cambodia is a case of a larger phenomenon in which Asian donors and development organizations are playing a more prominent role, challenging Western hegemony in the development sector and producing new development norms. This book is therefore trying to tell a dual story about the macro-level geopolitical transformations taking place in the development space in Cambodia, and Asia more generally, and the micro-level meanings, practices, and contradictions that these changes create in the lives of the people living through them.

You have mentioned your interest in how people encounter international development and foreign aid in their everyday lives. What are some aspects of those encounters that you find revealing about the dynamics of global development?

Cambodia is a nation where international donors have a lot of power. But, that’s never the whole story. Development is never just donor-driven. In my work, I try to center the ways Cambodian practitioners make sense of, adapt, or resist donor visions of their nation’s development.

For instance, during my fieldwork, I met an NGO director who I’ll call Rith and whose career trajectory can provide us with some insights. Rith was born in 1979, at the very end of the Khmer Rouge regime. In his twenties, he decided to become a monk to bring merit to his family. In the late 1990s, Rith started noticing the influx of foreign aid funding and the proliferating numbers of international and local NGOs in his country. In 2000, he decided to quit being a monk to open an NGO. He turned out to be a savvy fundraiser, securing funding for his NGO to implement multiple health, education, and economic empowerment projects. However, when I met him in 2019, Rith told me he thought “it might be time to change paths” because NGO funding from Western donors “is not like it was ten years ago.” Two years later, he became the co-CEO of a private construction and sourcing company that takes advantage of the numerous infrastructure development loans China provides to Cambodia.

You can therefore observe how the larger geopolitical changes Cambodia undergoes play out in a micro-way in Rith’s strategic career choices as he shifts from being a monk to an NGO director to a CEO.

What do you see as some of the biggest challenges to delivering aid via INGOs?

There are several answers to this question floating around in my data. One that immediately comes to mind is synchronization. Despite a shared aim of improving women’s health, INGOs from the United States and Japan implement very different kinds of programs in Cambodia. Japanese INGOs focus on strengthening government-provided maternal health services in Cambodia. In contrast, U.S. organizations are more likely to promote a diverse maternal and reproductive healthcare sector, including private providers and civil society advocacy. I’ve also found that INGOs that originate in the United States and Japan are unaware of each other’s distinctive projects. Often, U.S. INGO directors and donors don’t even know Japanese NGOs exist!

While they work with different stakeholders, I believe that projects that support a strong state and those that encourage the market and nonprofit actors could be synchronized for more effective aid. To start with, U.S.-based INGOs sometimes try to upgrade private clinics, provide education, and refer beneficiaries to women’s health services in the same regions where Japanese INGOs support public clinics. On a basic level, if you could just get the INGO directors from Japan and the U.S. organizations that are working in the same areas to sit down together, U.S. INGO health educators might be able to do things like referring to improved private and public clinics if they know which public clinics the Japanese INGO works with, or collaborate on healthcare provision training for private and public clinic doctors.  

Beyond your book project, what are you working on while at APARC? How has your time here advanced your research?

The main thing a postdoctoral fellowship affords is the privilege of time to read and write. Outside of the book project, I have been able to work on two other papers while here at Stanford. One article proposes to theorize the process of “script decoupling” and why INGOs might formally adopt the same global script but enact it very differently in implementation. The second paper investigates how the meanings of aid money in NGOs is shaped by the business cultures of donor and recipient nations. I plan to have both papers under review before I leave APARC at the end of July.

Being at APARC has provided me with numerous opportunities to discover insightful, new perspectives on my research projects and career prospects from my postdoctoral advisor, Kiyoteru Tsutsui, as well as various other faculty, fellows, and associates here. For instance, Kiyo is starting a Japanese studies lunch-and-learning session where fellows get to meet and discuss their research. I’m particularly interested in the policy-oriented lectures and learning how to articulate that side of my research since that’s something I wasn’t taught to do in graduate school. Overall, my time at Stanford has been invigorating for my research and writing process. I’ve enjoyed being part of the learning community at FSI and the university at large, and have greatly benefited from connecting with different scholars and working groups across campus.

Has the Covid-19 pandemic affected your ability to travel and do research? How have you adapted?

I was incredibly lucky because I completed my international fieldwork in the fall of 2019. So I was able to collect all the data I needed for my dissertation before the pandemic hit us hard. But, due to Covid, I was not able to do the follow-up field visits that I wanted to do in order to find out what happened when the two INGOs I studied completed their projects. Also, continuing connections in the field for new ideas and the next research project is important for an ethnographer. I have done what I could to catch up with Cambodian friends and practitioners over Zoom. Now that Cambodia has lifted its quarantine requirements, I may be able to return this summer. 

What is on the horizon for you? What's next?

As I have wanted to be a college professor since I was 19 (after I gave up my dream of being a pop singer), I’m extremely happy to share I was offered a tenure track position in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington! I’ll be starting there in the fall and continuing my research on international development and Southeast Asia.