The people of Japan are in a state of shock after the violent death of the former prime minister Shinzo Abe, the country’s most influential politician of recent decades, who was shot while making a campaign speech in the western city of Nara on Friday.
Japan’s longest-serving leader will be remembered primarily for his political staying power, having returned to office in 2012, six years after being forced out by scandal and poor health.
His signature “Abenomics” policy, which sought to lift the world’s third-biggest economy out of decades of stagnation, attracted more international attention than is usually reserved for Japanese leaders. On the foreign policy front, his support for a more prominent role for Japan’s military to counter growing threats from North Korea and a more assertive China won praise in Washington but engendered suspicion in Beijing.
A conservative from a family with a strong political pedigree, Abe believed Japan should end decades of “masochistic” reflection over its role in the second world war – a revisionist approach that led to a dramatic deterioration in ties between Japan and South Korea.
Abe was 52 when he became Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister in 2006. Some viewed him as a symbol of change but others regarded him as a product of the Japanese elite – a third-generation politician who had been groomed for leadership from a young age.
His brief first term was plagued by scandals and discord, and capped by an abrupt resignation. While he cited a chronic bowel complaint as the reason for stepping down, critics believed the political turmoil of the previous 12 months had been largely responsible for his downfall.
Abe was down, but not out. In late 2012 he was given a rare second chance as prime minister after newly available drugs helped him to manage his symptoms. He pledged to revive a stagnant economy, revise the postwar “pacifist” constitution to give the military a bigger role, and instil conservative values in education. His return marked an end to a period of revolving-door politics during which Japanese leaders were sometimes replaced at a rate of one a year.
His Abenomics programme involved vast government spending, massive monetary easing and cutting red tape – an approach that contrasted with the austerity measures being introduced in other liberal democracies. He failed to boost the low birthrate, but he oversaw changes to the labour market that vastly increased the number of women and foreigners in the workplace, albeit largely in temporary jobs with low pay.
He pushed through controversial consumption tax hikes to help finance nurseries and plug gaps in Japan’s overstretched social security system. While there was some progress with reform, the economy’s bigger structural problems were passed on to his successor, Yoshihide Suga, and the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida.
Abe was instrumental in winning the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo after convincing officials at the International Olympic Committee in 2013 that the nuclear accident at Fukushima Daiichi was under control, two years after a triple meltdown at the power plant. Millions who tuned in to the handover ceremony at the 2016 Rio Games will remember his cameo as the Nintendo video game character Mario.
On the foreign policy front, Abe oversaw a slight thaw in relations with China, which had reached an historical low over competing claims to the disputed Senkaku islands in the East China Sea. But he left office with relations between Japan and South Korea in tatters after the two countries failed to resolve historical disputes over wartime sex slaves and forced labourers.
There was intransigence on both sides, but Abe’s critics pointed to his denials of claims – including by victims – that Japanese troops coerced Korean woman and girls into working in wartime brothels during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.
Abe went further than any other leader of a major economy to endear himself to the former US president Donald Trump, using their shared love of golf to underline the importance of Washington’s security commitments to Japan in the face of a more assertive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.
He became Japan’s longest-serving prime minister in November 2019, but by the summer of the following year public support had been eroded by his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and a series of political scandals, including the arrest of his former justice minister.
Citing the return of the illness that had contributed to the premature end to his first term in office, Abe resigned without presiding over the Tokyo Games, which had been postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic.
His greatest regret as a politician was that he had been unable to fulfil his lifetime ambition of revising Japan’s pacifist constitution, which prohibits the country from using force to resolve international disputes. In recent weeks he had voiced support for significant increases to Japan’s defence budget, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a warning that Japan should stay vigilant in case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. There was even talk of yet another comeback and a third term as prime minister.
While the text of the US-authored constitution remains unchanged, Abe used his party’s dominance in parliament to push through a law in 2015 that allows the armed forces to engage in collective self-defence – the right to come to the aid of an ally even when Japan itself is not attacked.
