Shinzo Abe (21 September 1954 – 8 July 2022) was a Japanese politician who served as
Prime Minister of Japan
The is the head of government of Japan. The prime minister chairs the Cabinet of Japan and has the ability to select and dismiss its ministers of state. The prime minister also serves as the commander-in-chief of the Japan Self-Defense Force ...
and
President of the Liberal Democratic Party (
LDP) from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. He was the
longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, serving for nearly nine years in total.
Born in Tokyo, Abe was a member of the
Satō–Kishi–Abe family as the son of LDP politician
Shintaro Abe and grandson of prime minister
Nobusuke Kishi
was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan, prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. He is remembered for his exploitative economic management of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in China in the 1930s, ...
. He graduated from
Seikei University and briefly attended the
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
before working in industry and party posts, and was first elected to the
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...
in
1993
The United Nations General Assembly, General Assembly of the United Nations designated 1993 as:
* International Year for the World's Indigenous People
The year 1993 in the Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands had only 364 days, since its ...
. Abe was LDP secretary-general from 2003 to 2004 and
Chief Cabinet Secretary under
Junichiro Koizumi
Junichiro Koizumi ( ; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a Japanese retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ...
from 2005 to 2006, when he replaced Koizumi as prime minister. Abe became Japan's youngest post-war premier, and the first born after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
. A staunch
conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civiliza ...
and member of the
Nippon Kaigi organization, which holds
negationist views on Japanese history, Abe took strong right-wing stances including downplaying atrocities in textbooks, denying government coercion in the recruitment of
comfort women
Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term ''comfort women'' is a translation of the Japanese , a euphemism ...
during the war, and seeking revision of
Article 9 of the Constitution. In 2007, he initiated the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
The Quad is a grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States that is maintained by talks between member countries. The grouping follows the "Tsunami Core Group" and its "new type of diplomacy" developed in response to the 2004 2004 ...
with the U.S., Australia, and India, aimed at resisting
China's rise as a superpower. He resigned as premier that year due to his government's unpopularity and illness.
After recovering from the illness, Abe staged an unexpected political comeback in 2012, when he was again elected LDP president and led it to a landslide victory in
that year's election. He became the first former prime minister to return to office since
Shigeru Yoshida
was a Japanese diplomat and politician who served as prime minister of Japan from 1946 to 1947 and again from 1948 to 1954, serving through most of the country's occupation after World War II. Yoshida played a major role in determining the cour ...
in 1948. Abe attempted to counter Japan's
economic stagnation with "
Abenomics", with mixed results. He was also credited with reinstating the
Trans-Pacific Partnership with
a new agreement in 2018. In 2015, he passed
military reforms which allowed deployment of the
Japan Self-Defense Forces
The are the military forces of Japan. Established in 1954, the JSDF comprises the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. They are controlled by the Ministry of Defense ...
overseas, which was highly controversial and met with
protests. Abe led the LDP to further victories in the
2014
The year 2014 was marked by the surge of the Western African Ebola epidemic, West African Ebola epidemic, which began in 2013, becoming the List of Ebola outbreaks, most widespread outbreak of the Ebola, Ebola virus in human history, resul ...
and
2017 elections, becoming Japan's longest-serving prime minister. In 2020, he again resigned as prime minister, citing a relapse of his illness, and was succeeded by
Yoshihide Suga.
In 2022,
Abe was assassinated in
Nara
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States government within the executive branch, charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also task ...
while delivering a campaign speech for the
upper house elections. The suspect,
Tetsuya Yamagami, confessed that the assassination was motivated by Abe's ties with the
Unification Church
The Unification Church () is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists or sometimes informally Moonies. It was founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon in Seoul, South Korea, as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unificatio ...
. This was the first assassination of a former Japanese prime minister
since 1936. A polarizing figure in Japanese politics, Abe was praised by his supporters for strengthening Japan's security and international stature, while opponents criticized him for his nationalistic policies and
historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of a historical account. It usually involves challenging the orthodox (established, accepted or traditional) scholarly views or narratives regarding a historical event, timespa ...
, which they view as threatening Japanese
pacifism
Pacifism is the opposition to war or violence. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaigner Émile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress in Glasgow in 1901. A related term is ...
and damaging relations with
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
and
South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
.
Early life
Family
Shinzo Abe was born on 21 September 1954 to a prominent political family in
Shinjuku
, officially called Shinjuku City, is a special ward of Tokyo, Japan. It is a major commercial and administrative center, housing the northern half of the busiest railway station in the world ( Shinjuku Station) as well as the Tokyo Metropol ...
, Tokyo.
Although as a boy he aspired to become a filmmaker, Abe's family history led him upon a political path.
His father
Shintaro Abe served in the
House of Representatives
House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entities. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often ...
from 1958 to 1991, with stints as
Chief Cabinet Secretary,
Minister for International Trade and Industry, and
Minister for Foreign Affairs. During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
, Shintaro volunteered to be a
kamikaze pilot but the war ended before he completed training.
Abe's maternal grandfather,
Nobusuke Kishi
was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan, prime minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. He is remembered for his exploitative economic management of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in China in the 1930s, ...
, was the ''de facto'' "economic king" of occupied China and
Manchukuo
Manchukuo, officially known as the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of Great Manchuria thereafter, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China that existed from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945. It was ostens ...
, a Japanese puppet state in Northern China established after the
Japanese invasion of Manchuria
The Empire of Japan's Kwantung Army invaded the Manchuria region of the Republic of China on 18 September 1931, immediately following the Mukden incident, a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext to invade. At the ...
in the lead-up to the
Second Sino-Japanese War
The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...
and World War II. During the war, Kishi served as Vice Minister of Munitions in the cabinet of Prime Minister
Hideki Tojo
was a Japanese general and statesman who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1941 to 1944 during the Second World War. His leadership was marked by widespread state violence and mass killings perpetrated in the name of Japanese nationalis ...
.
At the end of the war, Kishi was imprisoned as a suspected
"Class-A" war criminal by the
US military occupation of Japan, but was released and later de-purged as part of the Occupation's "
reverse course" due to the
Cold War
The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...
.
Kishi helped found the
Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 and served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 until his 1960 resignation following the
Anpo protests. The
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
speculated that Abe's aversion to protests may have originated as a result.
Abe viewed Kishi as his "No 1 role model" and was influenced by many of his beliefs, like Kishi's hawkish stance on China.
Regarding Kishi, Abe later wrote: "Some people used to point to my grandfather as a 'Class-A war criminal suspect,' and I felt strong repulsion. Because of that experience, I may have become emotionally attached to 'conservatism,' on the contrary".
His mother
Yōko was a noted
calligrapher.
Abe's paternal grandfather,
Kan Abe, was a
Yamaguchi landowner who served in the House of Representatives during World War II. In contrast to Kishi, Kan Abe was a stalwart pacifist who opposed the Tojo government and war in East Asia.
Education and early career
Abe attended and (成蹊中学校・高等学校). He studied
public administration
Public administration, or public policy and administration refers to "the management of public programs", or the "translation of politics into the reality that citizens see every day",Kettl, Donald and James Fessler. 2009. ''The Politics of the ...
and graduated with a
bachelor's degree
A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...
in
political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...
from
Seikei University in 1977. From 1978 to 1979, Abe attended the
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...
where he studied English as a visiting student. After taking courses in history, international relations, and political science for three semesters, Abe left. Abe is reported to have been an average student.
In April 1979, Abe began working for
Kobe Steel.
He left the company in 1982 and pursued a number of government positions including executive assistant to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, private secretary to the chairperson of the LDP General Council, and private secretary to the LDP secretary-general.
Abe worked as a secretary for his father who visited 81 countries in the 1980s. These travels imparted to Abe the importance of building relations with foreign leaders.
Member of the House of Representatives
After his father's death in 1991, Abe was elected to the in 1993 winning the most votes of the four Representatives elected in the
SNTV multi-member district. Abe joined the
Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai, a
faction in the Liberal Democratic Party. Shintaro Abe had headed the faction from 1986 until his death. Yoshirō Mori and Junichiro Koizumi were seniors in the faction. In 1999, Abe became Director of the LDP Social Affairs Division.
In 2000, Abe's home and the office of his supporters in
Shimonoseki
file:141122 Shimonoseki City Hall Yamaguchi pref Japan01s3.jpg, 260px, Shimonoseki city hall
is a Cities of Japan, city located in Yamaguchi Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 248,193 in 128,762 households and a pop ...
, in Yamaguchi Prefecture, were attacked with
Molotov cocktail
A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see '') is a hand-thrown incendiary weapon consisting of a frangible container filled with flammable substances and equipped with a Fuse (explosives), fuse (typically a glass bottle filled wit ...
s on numerous occasions. The perpetrators were several
yakuza
, also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...
belonging to the
Kudo-kai, a
Kitakyushu
is a Cities of Japan, city located in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of June 1, 2019, Kitakyushu has an estimated population of 940,978, making it the second-largest city in both Fukuoka Prefecture and the island of Kyushu after the city of Fuk ...
-based designated bōryokudan syndicate. The reason for the attacks was believed to be that Abe's local aide refused to give cash to a Shimonoseki real estate broker in return for supporting a Shimonoseki mayoral candidate in 1999.
Abe was
Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary
The is an official in the Japanese government who assists the Chief Cabinet Secretary. Since July 1998 there have always been three Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries at any given time.
Role
The Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretaries are customarily ...
in the
Yoshirō Mori and
Junichiro Koizumi
Junichiro Koizumi ( ; , ''Koizumi Jun'ichirō'' ; born 8 January 1942) is a Japanese retired politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), president of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) ...
Cabinets from 2000 to 2003, after which he was appointed Secretary-General of the Liberal Democratic Party. Abe was the chief
negotiator for the
Japanese government
The Government of Japan is the central government of Japan. It consists of legislative, executive and judiciary branches and functions under the framework established by the Constitution of Japan. Japan is a unitary state, containing forty- ...
on behalf of the families of
Japanese abductees taken to North Korea. As a part of the effort, he accompanied Koizumi to meet
Kim Jong Il
Kim Jong Il (born Yuri Kim; 16 February 1941 or 1942 – 17 December 2011) was a North Korean politician who was the second Supreme Leader (North Korean title), supreme leader of North Korea from Death and state funeral of Kim Il Sung, the de ...
in 2002. He gained national popularity when he demanded that Japanese abductees visiting Japan remain in the country, in defiance of North Korea.
Abe was the leader of a project team within the LDP that conducted a survey on "excessive sexual education and gender-free education". Among the items to which this team raised objections were
anatomical dolls and other curricular materials "not taking into consideration the age of children", school policies banning traditional boys' and girls' festivals, and mixed-gender
physical education
Physical education is an academic subject taught in schools worldwide, encompassing Primary education, primary, Secondary education, secondary, and sometimes tertiary education. It is often referred to as Phys. Ed. or PE, and in the United Stat ...
. The team sought to provide a contrast to the
Democratic Party of Japan
The was a Centrism, centristThe Democratic Party of Japan was widely described as centrist:
*
*
*
*
*
*
* to Centre-left politics, centre-left, Liberalism, liberal or Social liberalism, social-liberal List of political parties in Japan, ...
(DPJ), which it alleged supported such policies.
[''Kodomo wa shakai no takara, kuni no takara desu''](_blank)
jimin.jp (LDP site)
On 20 September 2006, Abe was elected to succeed Koizumi as the president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
[Shinzo Abe to Succeed Koizumi as Japan's Next Prime Minister](_blank)
Bloomberg L.P. His chief competitors for the position were
Sadakazu Tanigaki
is a Japanese politician who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1983 to 2017, as Minister of Finance from 2003 to 2006, as President of the Liberal Democratic Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2009 to 2012, as Minis ...
and
Tarō Asō.
Yasuo Fukuda
is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2007 to 2008. He was previously the longest-serving Chief Cabinet Secretary in Japanese history, serving in that role from 2000 to 2004 under Prime Ministers Yoshirō Mori an ...
was a leading early contender but ultimately chose not to run. Former prime minister Yoshirō Mori, to whose faction both Abe and Fukuda belonged, stated that the faction strongly leant toward Abe.
[Mori faction unease mounts / Ex-premier stumped over Abe, Fukuda and party leadership race](_blank)
Daily Yomiuri
First premiership (2006–2007)
First Cabinet
On 26 September 2006, Abe was inaugurated as Japanese prime minister.
Elected at age 52, he was the youngest prime minister since
Fumimaro Konoe
was a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1937 to 1939 and from 1940 to 1941. He presided over the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and breakdown in relations with the United States, which shortly after his t ...
in 1941.
He was also the first prime minister born
after World War II. Abe's
first cabinet was announced on 26 September 2006. The only minister retained in his position from the previous Koizumi cabinet was Foreign Minister Tarō Asō, who had been one of Abe's competitors for the LDP presidency. In addition to the cabinet positions existing under Koizumi, Abe created five new "advisor" positions. He reshuffled his cabinet on 27 August 2007. Commentators noted that these changes seemed to be an effort by Abe to organize the Prime Minister's office into something more akin to the
White House
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest (Washington, D.C.), NW in Washington, D.C., it has served as the residence of every U.S. president ...
.
''The New York Times'' observed that his cabinet appeared to place a larger emphasis on foreign policy and national security instead of domestic concerns like economic policy. It also speculated that Abe's primary goal may have been to revise the pacifist constitution.
Domestic policy
Abe expressed a general commitment to the reforms instituted by his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi.
He took some steps toward balancing the Japanese budget, such as appointing a tax policy expert,
Kōji Omi, as Minister of Finance. Omi previously supported increases in the national
consumption tax
A consumption tax is a tax levied on consumption spending on goods and services. The tax base of such a tax is the money spent on Consumption (economics), consumption. Consumption taxes are usually indirect, such as a sales tax or a value-added ta ...
, although Abe distanced himself from this policy and sought to achieve much of his budget-balancing through spending cuts.
["Japan's Abe Unexpectedly Names Omi Finance Minister"]
, Bloomberg L.P., 26 September 2006.
Since 1997, as the bureau chief of the "Institute of Junior Assembly Members Who Think About the Outlook of Japan and History Education", Abe supported the controversial
Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform and the ''New History Textbook''. In March 2007, Abe, along with right-wing politicians, proposed a bill to encourage nationalism and a "love for one's country and hometown" among the Japanese youth (specific wording from the revised "Fundamental Law of Education" , which was revised to include "love of country").
In March 2007, Abe stated that there was no evidence that the
Japanese military had forced women into sexual slavery during World War II, which the Japanese government had admitted and apologized for in the 1992
Kono Statement
The Kono Statement refers to a statement released by Chief Cabinet Secretary Yōhei Kōno on August 4, 1993, after the conclusion of the government study that found that the Japanese Imperial Army had forced women, known as comfort women, to wor ...
.
Responding to a potential motion by the US Congress encouraging Japan to acknowledge the atrocity, Abe stated that the Japanese government would not apologize again.
Abe held conservative views in the
Japanese succession controversy. Shortly after the birth of
Prince Hisahito of Akishino, he abandoned a proposed legislative amendment to permit women to inherit the
Chrysanthemum Throne
The is the throne of the Emperor of Japan. The term also can refer to very specific seating, such as the throne in the Shishin-den at Kyoto Imperial Palace.
Various other thrones or seats that are used by the Emperor during official functions ...
.
Foreign policy
North Korea
Abe generally took a hard-line stance on
North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
, especially regarding the
North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens
Abductions of Japanese citizens from Japan by agents of the North Korean government took place during a period of six years from 1977 to 1983. Although only 17 Japanese citizens (eight men and nine women) are officially recognized by the Japanes ...
. In 2002 negotiations between Japan and North Korea, Prime Minister Koizumi and general secretary Kim Jong-il agreed to give abductees permission to visit Japan. A few weeks into the visit, the Japanese government decided that the abductees would be restricted from returning to North Korea where their families live. Abe took credit for this policy decision in his bestselling book, . North Korea criticized this Japanese decision as a breach of a diplomatic promise, and the negotiations were aborted.
East and Southeast Asia
Abe publicly recognized the need for improved relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and, along with Foreign Minister Tarō Asō, sought an eventual summit meeting with PRC paramount leader
Hu Jintao
Hu Jintao (born 21 December 1942) is a Chinese retired politician who served as the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from 2002 to 2012, the president of China from 2003 to 2013, and chairman of the Central Military Comm ...
.
Abe also said that
China–Japan relations should not continue to be based on "emotions".
[Japan's Abe Says Talks Needed to Improve Ties With China, South Korea](_blank)
VOA News
Abe was respected among some
politicians in the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan), most notably those who are part of the
Pan-Green Coalition
The Pan-Green coalition, Pan-Green force or Pan-Green groups is a nationalist political coalition in Taiwan (Republic of China), consisting of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Taiwan Statebuilding Party (TSP), Social Democratic Party ...
seeking
Taiwanese independence
The Taiwan independence movement is a political movement which advocates the formal declaration of an Independence, independent and Sovereign state, sovereign Taiwanese state, as opposed to Chinese unification or the status quo in Cross-Stra ...
.
Chen Shui-bian
Chen Shui-bian ( zh, t=陳水扁; born 12 October 1950) is a Taiwanese former politician and lawyer who served as the fifth president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2000 to 2008. Chen was the first president from the Democratic Progres ...
welcomed Abe's ministership.
Part of Abe's appeal in Taiwan was historical; his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was an
anti-communist
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communist beliefs, groups, and individuals. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when th ...
who supported
Chiang Kai-shek's government after the government
retreated to the island, and his great-uncle
Eisaku Satō was the last prime minister to visit Taiwan while in office.
Abe expressed the need to strengthen political, security, and economic ties with Southeast Asian countries. Although the PRC is not within the Southeast Asian region, Japan has also sought its support. However, relations with the PRC and the ROC continue to be tarnished by the
Senkaku Islands dispute and Abe's visits to the
Yasukuni Shrine
is a Shinto shrine located in Chiyoda, Tokyo. It was founded by Emperor Meiji in June 1869 and commemorates those who died in service of Empire of Japan, Japan, from the Boshin War of 1868–1869, to the two Sino-Japanese Wars, First Sino-Japane ...
.
India
Abe, in his four terms as the prime minister of Japan, sought to upgrade the strategic Japan–India relationship. Abe initiated the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue
The Quad is a grouping of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States that is maintained by talks between member countries. The grouping follows the "Tsunami Core Group" and its "new type of diplomacy" developed in response to the 2004 2004 ...
between Japan, the United States, Australia, and India in 2007, which was seen as a counter to China's rising power. His three-day visit to India in August 2007 inaugurated a new bilateral Asian alliance, building on the long history of friendly
bilateral relations between India and Japan. Abe's initiative was to establish the "fifth" bilateral link in an emerging scenario, whereby, the US–Australia, US–Japan, Japan–Australia, and the US–India links are supportive strategic alignments. A sixth link of India-Australia would be the logical corollary, formalized as a new quadrilateral of a strategic bulwark. The eventual expansion to include Vietnam, South Korea, the Philippines, and Indonesia in this arrangement has been speculated in the media of those states. Chinese strategic experts have labeled the evolving geo-strategic paradigm, the "
Asian NATO". Abe's pragmatic India foreign policy was to boost Japan's resurgent economic indicators while gaining a crucial partner in Asia.
Defense
Abe sought to revise or broaden the interpretation of
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution
is a clause in the Constitution of Japan outlawing war as a means to settle international disputes involving the state. The Constitution was drafted following the surrender of Japan in World War II. It came into effect on 3 May 1947 during the oc ...
in order to permit Japan to maintain
de jure
In law and government, ''de jure'' (; ; ) describes practices that are officially recognized by laws or other formal norms, regardless of whether the practice exists in reality. The phrase is often used in contrast with '' de facto'' ('from fa ...
military forces. He stated that "we are reaching the limit in narrowing down differences between Japan's security and the interpretation of our constitution".
[New Japanese Leader Looks to Expand Nation's Military]
, ''NewsHour'', 20 September 2006. During his first period as prime minister, he upgraded the Japan Defense Agency to
full ministry status.
[BBC websit]
Japan upgrades its defence agency
, BBC, 9 January 2007. Like his predecessors, he supported the Japanese alliance with the United States.
[ Abe supported the US-led ]Iraq War
The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...
.
Resignation
In the lead-up to the July election, Abe's Agriculture Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka committed suicide following a series of political funding scandals. He was the first cabinet member to commit suicide since World War II. Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party suffered great losses in the upper house election, losing control for the first time in 52 years. Agricultural minister, Norihiko Akagi, involved in a political funding scandal, resigned after the election. Additionally, Abe's rejection of a possible female Japanese monarch, which led to the Japanese succession controversy, diminished his support base. In an attempt to revive his administration, Abe announced a new cabinet in August 2007. Support for Abe rose by 10 percent as a result; however, the new agricultural minister Takehiko Endo, involved in a finance scandal, resigned only seven days later.
On 12 September 2007, only three days after a new parliamentary session had begun, Abe announced his intention to resign his position as prime minister at an unscheduled press conference. The announcement came just minutes before opposition leaders were scheduled to question him in Parliament and shocked many. Abe had described himself as a "politician who fights" and previously pledged not to resign. Abe explained that his unpopularity was hindering the passage of an anti-terrorism law, involving among other things Japan's continued military presence in Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...
. Party officials also said the embattled prime minister was suffering from poor health.
Out of office (2007–2012)
Abe remained in the National Diet following his resignation as prime minister. He was re-elected to his Yamaguchi 4th district
Yamaguchi 4th district (山口県第4区 ''Yamaguchi-ken dai-yon-ku'') was a single-member electoral district for the House of Representatives, the lower house of the National Diet of Japan. It was located in Western Yamaguchi Prefecture and cons ...
seat in the 2009 election, when the Liberal Democratic Party lost power to the DPJ. On 15 October 2010, Abe delivered a speech in Washington DC to the Hudson Institute
Hudson Institute is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation.
Kahn ...
on US-Japan relations. Japan had recently been surpassed by China as the number two economy in the world, a position that it had held for the previous 40 years. Abe said: "It appears that China hopes to gain control not only over Taiwan, but also over the South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean. It is bounded in the north by South China, in the west by the Indochinese Peninsula, in the east by the islands of Taiwan island, Taiwan and northwestern Philippines (mainly Luz ...
, the East China Sea
The East China Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean, located directly offshore from East China. China names the body of water along its eastern coast as "East Sea" (, ) due to direction, the name of "East China Sea" is otherwise ...
and, indeed, the entire Western Pacific... China's military strategy has rested on the concept of a 'strategic frontier'. In a nutshell, this very dangerous idea posits that borders and exclusive economic zones
An exclusive economic zone (EEZ), as prescribed by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, is an area of the sea in which a sovereign state has exclusive rights regarding the exploration and use of marine resources, including e ...
are determined by national power, and that as long as China's economy continues to grow, its sphere of influence will continue to expand. Some might associate this with the German concept of 'lebensraum
(, ) is a German concept of expansionism and Völkisch movement, ''Völkisch'' nationalism, the philosophy and policies of which were common to German politics from the 1890s to the 1940s. First popularized around 1901, '' lso in:' beca ...
'." Abe saw in the ASEAN countries a counterbalance to Chinese expansionism. Abe feared the Finlandization
Finlandization () is the process by which one powerful country makes a smaller neighboring country refrain from opposing the former's foreign policy rules, while allowing it to keep its nominal independence and its own political system. The term ...
of Japan with respect to China, and saw the reaction of the Kan Cabinet to the September 2010 Senkaku boat collision incident as "a very foolish move" and "frighteningly naive". He stated the "imperative that Japan conduct a review of its Three Principles on Arms Exports."
While serving as a member of the Japanese Diet, Abe visited Taiwan in 2010 and 2011. There he met with president Ma Ying-jeou
Ma Ying-jeou ( zh, t=馬英九; pinyin: ''Mǎ Yīngjiǔ''; ; born 13 July 1950) is a Taiwanese politician, lawyer, and legal scholar who served as the sixth president of the Republic of China from 2008 to 2016. A member of the Kuomintang (KMT ...
, former president Lee Teng-hui
Lee Teng-hui (; pinyin: ''Lǐ Dēnghuī''; 15 January 192330 July 2020) was a Taiwanese politician and agricultural scientist who served as the fourth president of the Republic of China, president of the Taiwan, Republic of China (Taiwan) unde ...
and future president Tsai Ing-wen
Tsai Ing-wen (; pinyin: ''Cài Yīngwén''; born 31 August 1956) is a Taiwanese politician and legal scholar who served as the seventh president of the Republic of China (Taiwan) from 2016 to 2024. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party ...
, who was then the leader of the Democratic Progressive Party
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is a centre to centre-left Taiwanese nationalist political party in Taiwan. As the dominant party in the Pan-Green Coalition, one of the two main political camps in Taiwan, the DPP is currently the ...
. Ma described Abe as "the ROC's best friend" and said Abe was the third generation of his family to have close ties with the Republic of China. Abe also visited the National Revolutionary Martyrs' Shrine, a shrine dedicated to the war dead of the Republic of China, including those who died in the Second Sino-Japanese War. Abe later revealed that the illness that contributed to ending his first term as prime minister was ulcerative colitis
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is one of the two types of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with the other type being Crohn's disease. It is a long-term condition that results in inflammation and ulcers of the colon and rectum. The primary sympto ...
, but that he recovered due to access to a drug, Asacol, that was previously unavailable in Japan.
Second LDP presidency and 2012 general election
Following the resignation of LDP president Sadakazu Tanigaki, Abe was re-elected as president of the party on 26 September 2012, coming in second out of five candidates in the first round of voting, but defeating former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba
Shigeru Ishiba (born 4 February 1957) is a Japanese politician who has served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 2024. He has been a member of ...
in a runoff vote by 108 votes to 89.
Abe returned to the LDP leadership at a time of political turmoil, as the governing DPJ had lost its majority in the lower house due to party splits over nuclear policies and the cabinet's move to raise the consumption tax
A consumption tax is a tax levied on consumption spending on goods and services. The tax base of such a tax is the money spent on Consumption (economics), consumption. Consumption taxes are usually indirect, such as a sales tax or a value-added ta ...
from 5 to 10 percent. Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda
is a Japanese politician. He is the current leader of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (CDP), and has been a member of the House of Representatives since 2000. From 2011 to 2012, he was the Prime Minister of Japan.
Noda entered po ...
was forced to rely on the LDP to pass the consumption tax bill and in return was pressured by Abe and the opposition parties to hold a snap general election. Noda agreed to this on the conditions that the LDP passed a bond-financing bill and would support a commission to reform the social security system and address electoral malapportionment in the next diet session.
On 16 November 2012, Prime Minister Noda announced the dissolution of the lower house and that the general election
A general election is an electoral process to choose most or all members of a governing body at the same time. They are distinct from By-election, by-elections, which fill individual seats that have become vacant between general elections. Gener ...
would be held on 16 December. Abe campaigned using the slogan ''"Nippon o Torimodosu"'' (''"''Take back Japan''"''), promising economic revival through monetary easing, higher public spending and the continued use of nuclear energy, and a tough line in territorial disputes. In the elections on 16 December 2012, the LDP won 294 seats in the 480-seat House of Representatives. Together with the New Komeito Party (which partnered with the LDP since the late 1990s), Abe was able to form a coalition government that controlled a two-thirds majority in the lower house, allowing it to override the upper house's veto.
Second premiership (2012–2020)
Second Cabinet (2012–2014)
On 26 December 2012, Abe was formally elected as prime minister by the Diet, with the support of 328 out of 480 members of the House of Representatives. He and his second cabinet, which he called a "crisis-busting cabinet", were sworn in later that day. The new government included LDP heavyweights such as former prime minister Tarō Asō as Deputy Prime Minister
A deputy prime minister or vice prime minister is, in some countries, a Minister (government), government minister who can take the position of acting prime minister when the prime minister is temporarily absent. The position is often likened to th ...
and Finance Minister, Yoshihide Suga as Chief Cabinet Secretary and Akira Amari
is a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (Japan), Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and a former member of the House of Representatives of Japan, lower house.
Personal life
Amari is a native of Atsugi, Kanagawa, where he attende ...
as Economy Minister. Following his victory, Abe said, "With the strength of my entire cabinet, I will implement bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy that encourages private investment, and with these three policy pillars, achieve results."
In February 2013, Abe gave an address at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies
The Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a non-profit organization based in Indonesia which has served as a think tank on social, international, political and economical issues. CSIS was founded on Sept 1, 1971 by a group o ...
in Washington, D.C., in which he explained his economic and diplomatic objectives, and that he had returned to the prime ministership to prevent Japan becoming a "Tier Two Nation", declaring that "Japan is back".
Economic policy
The Second Abe cabinet revived the Council on Economic and Fiscal Policy (CEFP) that had played a key role in formulating economic policy during the Koizumi cabinet, but had been abandoned by the 2009–2012 DPJ administrations.
Abe declared in his January 2013 policy speech to the Diet that economic revival and escaping deflation
In economics, deflation is a decrease in the general price level of goods and services. Deflation occurs when the inflation rate falls below 0% and becomes negative. While inflation reduces the value of currency over time, deflation increases i ...
was "the greatest and urgent issue" facing Japan. His economic strategy, referred to as Abenomics, consisted of the so-called "three arrows" (an allusion to an old Japanese story) of policy. The first arrow was monetary expansion aimed at achieving a 2% inflation target, the second a flexible fiscal policy to act as an economic stimulus in the short term, then achieve a budget surplus, and the third a growth strategy focusing on structural reform and private sector investment to achieve long-term growth.
In 2019, it was reported that 40% of key economic statistics collected from 2005 to 2017 contained errors, casting doubt on the effectiveness of Abe's economic program and the reliability of Japanese economic statistics. It was discovered that the labor ministry did not follow protocol by only surveying about one-third of all the large Japanese businesses it was supposed to survey. The data was eventually corrected, and it was discovered that the faulty data presented Japanese economic statistics more favorably than the corrected data. The faulty data costed 19.7 million people about 53.7 billion yen in unpaid benefits, and costed the Japanese government 650 million yen to correct the error. Opposition politicians criticized the governments response; one lawmaker called Abe's economic program a fraud, with many journalists labeling the event as a data scandal.
"First Arrow": Monetary policy
At the first CEFP meeting in January 2013, Abe declared that the Bank of Japan
The is the central bank of Japan.Louis Frédéric, Nussbaum, Louis Frédéric. (2005). "Nihon Ginkō" in The bank is often called for short. It is headquartered in Nihonbashi, Chūō, Tokyo, Chūō, Tokyo.
The said bank is a corporate entity ...
should follow a policy of monetary easing to achieve a target of 2 percent inflation. Abe maintained pressure on the Bank's governor, Masaaki Shirakawa, who was reluctant to set specific targets, into agreeing to the policy. In February, after Abe publicly speculated that the government could legislate to strip the bank of independence, Shirakawa announced he was leaving office prematurely before his term expired. Abe then appointed Haruhiko Kuroda as governor, who had previously advocated inflation targets, and who has pursued the government's policies of monetary easing.
After the first meeting of the Bank's monetary policy committee after he had taken office in April, Kuroda announced an aggressive program of easing intended to double the money supply and achieve the 2 percent inflation target at "the earliest possible time". Over the first six months of the second Abe Cabinet, the Yen fell from a high of ¥77 to the dollar to ¥101.8, and the Nikkei 225
The Nikkei 225, or , more commonly called the ''Nikkei'' or the ''Nikkei index'' (), is a stock market index for the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE). It is a price-weighted index, operating in the Japanese yen, Japanese Yen (JP¥), and its compone ...
rose by 70 percent.
In a surprise move in October 2014, Kuroda announced that the BOJ would boost the monetary easing program and accelerate asset purchases, the monetary policy committee split by five votes to four but supported the policy. This was interpreted as a response to disappointing economic figures in the aftermath of the increase in the consumption tax to 8 percent, inflation has fallen to 1 percent from its peak of 1.5 percent in April.
"Second Arrow": Fiscal policy
The Abe Cabinet's first budget included a 10.3 trillion yen stimulus package, composed of public works spending, aid for small businesses and investment incentives, that aimed to increase growth by 2 percent. The budget also increased defense spending and manpower while reducing foreign aid.
In Autumn 2013, Abe decided to proceed with the first stage of the increase in the consumption tax from 5 to 8 percent in April 2014 (with a second stage envisaged raising it to 10 percent in October 2015). The bill to raise the tax had been passed under the previous DPJ government, but the final decision lay with the Prime Minister. He and Finance Minister Tarō Asō explained that the tax would be increased to provide a "sustainable" basis for future social spending and to avoid the need to finance future stimulus by issuing government bonds. While this was expected to affect economic growth in the quarter following the rise, Abe also announced a 5-trillion yen stimulus package that aimed to mitigate any effects on economic revival. After the increase in April, Japan fell into recession during the second and third quarters of 2014, leading to Abe delaying the second stage of the tax rise until April 2017 and calling a snap election
A snap election is an election that is called earlier than the one that has been scheduled. Snap elections in parliamentary systems are often called to resolve a political impasse such as a hung parliament where no single political party has a ma ...
. In response to the recession, Aso announced that the government would ask the Diet to pass a supplementary budget to fund a further stimulus package worth 2–3 trillion yen.
There had been some division within the Abe cabinet between "fiscal hawks", such as Finance Minister Aso, who favored fiscal consolidation through spending cuts and tax increases, and deflationists, such as Abe himself, who argued in favor of a "growth first" policy that prioritizes economic expansion and recovery over budget considerations using the slogan "no fiscal health without economic revitalization". Abe's decision to delay the consumption tax increase in November 2014 and his push for a large fiscal deficit in the 2015 budget without social security cuts was interpreted as a victory for this faction within the LDP. The government did, however, commit to a primary surplus by 2020, and pledged to review its strategy in 2018 if the primary deficit had not fallen to 1 percent of GDP by that time.
"Third Arrow": Growth strategy and structural reform
On 15 March 2013, Abe announced that Japan was entering negotiations to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). This was interpreted by analysts as a means through which the government could enact reforms to liberalize certain sectors of the Japanese economy, most notably agriculture, and was criticized by farm lobbies and some sections of the LDP. Economist Yoshizaki Tatsuhiko described the TPP as having the potential to act as the "linchpin of Abe's economic revitalization strategy" by making Japan more competitive through free trade. In February 2015, the Abe government struck a deal to limit the power of the JA-Zenchu body to supervise and audit Japan's agricultural co-operatives, in a move designed to facilitate TPP negotiations, improve the competitiveness of Japan's farming sector and curtail the influence of the agriculture lobby.
Abe revealed the first measures related to the "third arrow" policies in June 2013, which included plans to establish deregulated economic zones and allow the sale of drugs online, but did not include substantial measures related to the labor market or business reform. These measures were less well-received than the first two arrows had been since Abe took office, with the stock market falling slightly and critics arguing that they lacked detail; ''The Economist
''The Economist'' is a British newspaper published weekly in printed magazine format and daily on Electronic publishing, digital platforms. It publishes stories on topics that include economics, business, geopolitics, technology and culture. M ...
'', for example, judged the announcement a "misfire". Analysts did note, however, that Abe was waiting until after the July Upper House
An upper house is one of two Legislative chamber, chambers of a bicameralism, bicameral legislature, the other chamber being the lower house. The house formally designated as the upper house is usually smaller and often has more restricted p ...
elections to reveal further details, to avoid an adverse reaction by voters to potentially unpopular reforms. At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum
The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental organization, international advocacy non-governmental organization and think tank, based in Cologny, Canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German ...
(WEF) in Davos
Davos (, ; or ; ; Old ) is an Alpine resort town and municipality in the Prättigau/Davos Region in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland. It has a permanent population of (). Davos is located on the river Landwasser, in the Rhaetian ...
in 2014, Abe announced that he was ready to act as a "drill bit
A drill bit is a cutting tool used in a drill to remove material to create holes, almost always of circular cross-section. Drill bits come in many sizes and shapes and can create different kinds of holes in many different materials. In orde ...
" to break through the rock of vested interests and "red tape" to achieve structural reforms of the economy. He cited reforms in agriculture, energy and health sectors as evidence of this, and pledged to push forward with the TPP, a Japan–EU trade deal and tax, corporate governance and planning reforms.
Abe announced a package of structural reforms in June 2014, that ''The Economist'' described as "less a single arrow than a 1,000-strong bundle" and compared favorably to the 2013 announcement. These new measures included corporate governance reform, the easing of restrictions on hiring foreign staff in special economic zones, liberalizing the health sector, and measures to help foreign and local entrepreneurs. The plans also included a cut in corporation tax to below 30 percent, an expansion of childcare to encourage women to join the workforce, and the loosening of restrictions on overtime. In December 2015, the government announced corporation tax would be reduced to 29.97 percent in 2016, bringing the cut forward one year ahead of schedule.
In September 2013, Abe called for a "society in which all women can shine", setting a target that 30 percent of leadership positions should be held by women by 2020. Abe cited the "womenomics" ideas of Kathy Matsui that greater participation by women in the workforce, which is relatively low in Japan, especially in leadership roles, could improve Japan's GDP and potentially fertility rates, despite declining population figures. The Abe cabinet introduced measures to expand childcare and legislation to force public and private organizations to publish data on the number of women they employ and what positions they hold.
In November 2013, the Abe cabinet passed a bill to liberalize Japan's electricity market by abolishing price controls, breaking up regional monopolies, and separating power transmission from generation by creating a national grid company. This move was partly in response to the 2011 Fukushima disaster, and the bill faced little opposition in the Diet. By March 2015, more than 500 companies had applied to the Economy Ministry to enter the electricity retail market and the electricity industry was expected to be fully liberalized by 2016, with gas utilities expected to follow suit by 2017. Abe had also said he favored the re-building of Japan's nuclear reactors following the Fukushima disaster (though much of the authority to restart nuclear plants lies with local governments) and planned to strengthen relations with the United States.
In 2013, the Eurekahedge Japan Hedge Fund Index posted a record 28-percent return, which was credited to the unprecedented actions of the Abe government. In July 2015, the IMF
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of la ...
reported that, while the structural reforms had "modestly" improved growth prospects, "further high-impact structural reforms are needed to lift growth" and prevent over-reliance on yen depreciation.
2013 Upper House election
When Abe returned to office, although neither party had controlled the House of Councillors
The is the upper house of the National Diet of Japan. The House of Representatives (Japan), House of Representatives is the lower house. The House of Councillors is the successor to the pre-war House of Peers (Japan), House of Peers. If the t ...
(the upper house of the Diet) since the 2007 election, the opposition DPJ was the largest party. The governing coalition enjoyed a two-thirds majority in the lower house, allowing it to override the upper house's veto, but this requires a delay of 90 days. This situation, known as the "Twisted Diet", had contributed to political gridlock and the "revolving door" of prime ministers since 2007. Abe's campaign for the 2013 election focused on themes of economic revival, asking voters to give him a stable mandate in both houses to pursue reforms, and took a more moderate tone on defense and constitutional matters.
In the 2013 upper house election, the LDP emerged as the largest party with 115 seats (a gain of 31) and the Komeito with 20 (a gain of 1), giving Abe's coalition control of both houses of the Diet, but not the two-thirds majority in the upper house that would allow for constitutional revision. With no national elections due until 2016, this result was described as giving Abe the opportunity of "three golden years" of parliamentary stability in which to implement his policies.
Domestic policy
Abe's return to the prime ministership saw a renewed attempt to downplay Japan's wartime atrocities in school textbooks, an issue that had contributed to his earlier downfall. In 2013, Abe supported the creation of the Top Global University Project program. This is a ten-year program to increase international student attendance in Japanese universities and hire more foreign faculty. There is also funding for selected universities to create English-only undergraduate programs. In 2014, Abe allocated millions of dollars of the fiscal budget to help programs that help single individuals in Japan find potential mates. These programs entitled "Marriage support programs" were started in hopes of raising Japan's declining birthrate, which was half of what it was six decades prior.
Foreign policy
Shortly after taking office Abe signaled a "drastic reshaping" of foreign policy and promised to pursue diplomacy with a global, rather than a regional or bilateral outlook based on "the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law". His choice of Fumio Kishida as foreign minister
In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral r ...
was interpreted as a sign that he would pursue a more moderate line compared to his hawkish stance in the run-up to the general election. His first visit overseas after becoming prime minister once again was to various countries in Southeast Asia. Abe increased its allies in its international campaign to counter a North Korean nuclear threat. Abe often visited countries such as Singapore, Japan's largest Asian investor and vice-versa.
Within weeks of returning to power, the Second Abe cabinet faced the In Amenas hostage crisis
The In Amenas hostage crisis began on 16 January 2013, when al-Qaeda-linked terrorists affiliated with a brigade led by Mokhtar Belmokhtar took expat hostages at the Tigantourine gas facility near In Amenas, Algeria. One of Belmokhtar's sen ...
of 2013 in which 10 Japanese citizens were killed. Abe condemned the killings as "absolutely unforgivable" and confirmed that Japan and Britain had co-operated over the incident. Abe believed that this incident demonstrated the need for the creation of a Japanese National Security Council , and convened a panel to consider its creation soon after the crisis.
Abe was unusually active in the field of foreign affairs for a Japanese prime minister, making visits to 49 countries between December 2012 and September 2014, a number that was described as "unprecedented" (by contrast, his immediate two predecessors Naoto Kan
is a Japanese former politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) from June 2010 to September 2011.
Kan was the first Prime Minister since the resignation of Junichiro Koizumi in 2006 to ...
and Yoshihiko Noda visited a combined total of 18 countries between June 2010 and December 2012). This was interpreted as a means to offset poor relations with the PRC and the Koreas by increasing Japan's profile on the world stage and improving bilateral ties with other countries in the region. Southeast Asian nations, Australia, and India were significant and frequent destinations for Abe, who visited all 10 ASEAN
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations,
commonly abbreviated as ASEAN, is a regional grouping of 10 states in Southeast Asia "that aims to promote economic and security cooperation among its ten members." Together, its member states r ...
countries in his first year in office. The diplomatic tours also functioned as another element of Abenomics by promoting Japan to the international business community and opening up avenues for trade, energy, and defense procurement deals (for example, business executives often travel with Abe on these visits).
In September 2013, Abe intervened to aid Tokyo's bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, giving a speech in English at the IOC session in Buenos Aires, in which he extolled the role of sport in Japan and sought to reassure the committee that any ongoing issues with the Fukushima plant were under control. After the bid was successful, Abe sought to portray the games as symbolic of his Abenomics economic revitalization programme, saying, "I want to make the Olympics a trigger for sweeping away 15 years of deflation and economic decline." In 2014 he said that he hoped a "robot olympics" would be held at the same time, to promote the robotics industry.
Abe's foreign policy moved Japan away from its traditional focus on the "big three" bilateral relationships with the United States, PRC, and South Korea, and sought to increase Japan's international profile by expanding ties with NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
, the European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
, and other organizations beyond the Asia-Pacific region. In 2014, Abe and British prime minister David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron, Baron Cameron of Chipping Norton (born 9 October 1966) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016. Until 2015, he led the first coalition government in the UK s ...
agreed to establish a "2 + 2 framework" of annual consultations between the British and Japanese foreign and defense ministries, with Abe calling for greater co-operation on issues "from peace of the seas to the security of the skies, space and cyberspace
Cyberspace is an interconnected digital environment. It is a type of virtual world popularized with the rise of the Internet. The term entered popular culture from science fiction and the arts but is now used by technology strategists, security ...
". This followed a similar agreement with French ministers in Tokyo earlier in the year. In fact, this followed the Herman Kahn
Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was an American physicist and a founding member of the Hudson Institute, regarded as one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence ...
lecture of 25 September 2013 in which he outlined his foreign policy for the next several years; in fact he was the first non-American to receive this award. In it he championed "the Indo-Pacific century" based on "freedom, democracy, human rights and the rules-based order with the TPP as its backbone". He planned at this time to reshape the interpretation of the constitution away from the narrowness that would see the JSDF
The are the military forces of Japan. Established in 1954, the JSDF comprises the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, and the Japan Air Self-Defense Force. They are controlled by the Ministry of Defense wi ...
handcuffed and unable to help allies in time of need. The new National Security Council of Japan was born in this speech, during which Abe observed that its neighbor had increased its own military budget by at least 10% per annum for more than 20 years. Abe stated that because Japan was one of the most mature democracies he thought it only natural that Japan help ensure the welfare and security of the world, and found it right that his "beloved country ea proactive contributor to peace".
Abe concluded the Japan–Australia Economic Partnership Agreement
The Japan–Australia Economic Partnership Agreement (JAEPA) is a trade agreement between Australia and Japan. The negotiations for the agreement were concluded in 2014 and it took effect on January 15, 2015.
Background
Australia's negotiation ...
with Australia's Abbott government
The Abbott government was the federal executive government of Australia led by the 28th Prime Minister Tony Abbott. The government was made up of members of the Liberal–National Coalition. The Leader of The Nationals, Warren Truss, served ...
in 2014 and addressed a joint sitting of the Australian Parliament
The Parliament of Australia (officially the Parliament of the Commonwealth and also known as the Federal Parliament) is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Monarchy of Australia, monarch of Australia (repr ...
in July. In heralding the agreement, he also offered condolences for the suffering of Australians during World War II – singling out the Kokoda Track campaign
The Kokoda Track campaign or Kokoda Trail campaign was part of the Pacific War of World War II. The campaign consisted of a series of battles fought between July and November 1942 in what was then the Australian Territory of Papua. It was primar ...
and Sandakan Death Marches.
He was the first Japanese PM to address the Australian parliament.
In January 2014, Abe became the first Japanese leader to attend India's Republic Day Parade
The Delhi Republic Day parade is the largest and most important of the parades marking the Republic Day celebrations in India. The parade takes place every year on 26 January at Kartavya Path, New Delhi. It is the main attraction of India's R ...
in Delhi as chief guest, during a three-day visit where he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh
Manmohan Singh (26 September 1932 – 26 December 2024) was an Indian economist, bureaucrat, academician, and statesman, who served as the prime minister of India from 2004 to 2014. He was the fourth longest-serving prime minister after Jaw ...
agreed to increase co-operation over economic, defense and security issues and signed trade agreements related to energy, tourism and telecoms. A close relationship was anticipated between Abe and Narendra Modi after the latter's election as Prime Minister of India
The prime minister of India (ISO 15919, ISO: ) is the head of government of the Republic of India. Executive authority is vested in the prime minister and his chosen Union Council of Ministers, Council of Ministers, despite the president of ...
in May 2014, when it was noted that they had established ties from at least seven years previously when Modi was still Chief Minister of Gujarat
The chief minister of Gujarat is the head of government, chief executive of the government of the Indian state of Gujarat. The governor appoints the chief minister, whose Cabinet (government), council of ministers are Cabinet collective respons ...
and that Modi was one of three people Abe "followed" on Twitter. The two men exchanged congratulatory messages after the election. Modi made his first major foreign visit to Japan in autumn of 2014, where during the visit Abe invited Modi to become the first Indian leader to stay at the Imperial State Guest House in Kyoto
Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
. The two leaders discussed agreements on nuclear co-operation, rare-earth element
The rare-earth elements (REE), also called the rare-earth metals or rare earths, and sometimes the lanthanides or lanthanoids (although scandium and yttrium, which do not belong to this series, are usually included as rare earths), are a set o ...
s, and joint maritime exercises.
On 30 May 2014, Abe told officials from the ASEAN countries, the United States, and Australia, that Japan wanted to play a major role in maintaining regional security, a departure from the passiveness it has displayed since World War II. He offered Japan's support to other countries in resolving territorial disputes.
Relations between Japan and its immediate neighbors, the PRC and South Korea, remained poor after Abe's return to office. While he declared that the "doors are always open on my side", no bilateral meetings between Abe and the PRC leadership took place for the first 23 months of his second term. Neither did Abe hold any meetings with President Park Geun-hye
Park Geun-hye (; ; born 2 February 1952) is a South Korean politician who served as the 11th president of South Korea from 2013 until Impeachment of Park Geun-hye, she was removed from office in 2017. Park was the first and to date only woman ...
of South Korea during his 2012 to 2014 term of office. Both countries criticized Abe's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in December 2013, with the PRC'S Foreign Minister describing the action as moving Japan in an "extremely dangerous" direction. In addition the PRC continued to criticize Abe's defense reform policies, warning that Japan should not abandon its post-war policy of pacifism. Abe's speech at the WEF in 2014 was interpreted as a criticism of PRC foreign and defense policy when he said that "the dividends of growth in Asia must not be wasted on military expansion" and called for greater preservation of the freedom of the seas
Freedom of the seas is a principle in the law of the sea. It stresses freedom to navigate the oceans. It also disapproves of war fought in water. The freedom is to be breached only in a necessary international agreement.
This principle was on ...
under the rule of law
The essence of the rule of law is that all people and institutions within a Body politic, political body are subject to the same laws. This concept is sometimes stated simply as "no one is above the law" or "all are equal before the law". Acco ...
, although he did not specifically refer to any one country during his remarks.
In November 2014, Abe met PRC president Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...
at the APEC meeting in Beijing for the first time since either had taken office, after a photocall that was described as "awkward" by the press. Abe later told reporters that during the meeting he suggested establishing a hotline between Tokyo and Beijing to help resolve any maritime clashes and that the "first step" had been taken to improve relations.
Defense and security policy
Abe tried to centralize security policy in the Prime Minister's office by creating the National Security Council
A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
to better coordinate national security policy, and by ordering the first National Security Strategy in Japan's history. Based upon the American body of the same name, the law to create the NSC was passed in November 2013 and began operating the following month when Abe appointed Shotaro Yachi as Japan's first National Security Advisor.
In December 2013, Abe announced a five-year plan of military expansion. He described this as "proactive pacificism", with the goal of making Japan a more "normal" country, able to defend itself. This was in reaction to a PRC buildup and a decreased American influence in the region.
In the same month, the Diet passed the Abe cabinet's State Secrecy Law The State Secrecy Law, officially the , Act No. 108 of 2013, is a law in Japan allowing the government to designate defense and other sensitive information as "special secrets" that are protected from public disclosure.
History
Prior to the passag ...
, which took effect in December 2014. The law expanded the scope for the government to designate what information constitutes a state secret and increased penalties for bureaucrats and journalists who leak such information to up to 10 years in prison and a 10-million-yen fine. The passage of the law proved controversial, with thousands protesting the bill in Tokyo and the cabinet's approval rating falling below 50 percent for the first time in some polls. Detractors argued that the law was ambiguous and therefore gave the government too much freedom to decide which information to classify, that it could curtail freedom of the press, and that the cabinet had rushed the legislation without including any corresponding freedom of information guarantees. Abe argued that the law was necessary and applied only in cases of national security, diplomacy, public safety and counter-terrorism, saying, "If the law prevents films from being made, or weakens freedom of the press, I'll resign." However he did concede that, in retrospect, the government should have explained the details of the bill more carefully to the public.
In July 2014, the Abe cabinet decided to re-interpret Japan's constitution to allow for the right of "Collective Self-Defense". This would allow the Self Defense Forces to come to the aid of, and defend, an ally under attack, whereas the previous interpretation of the constitution was strictly pacifist and allowed for the force to be used only in absolute self-defence. The decision was supported by the United States, which has argued for greater scope for action by Japan as a regional ally, and led to a revision of the US-Japan defense cooperation guidelines in 2015. In response the PRC Foreign Ministry said the decision "raised doubts" about Japan's commitment to peace, and argued that the Japanese public is opposed to the concept of collective self-defense. Abe argued that the move would not lead to Japan becoming involved in "foreign wars" such as the Gulf
A gulf is a large inlet from an ocean or their seas into a landmass, larger and typically (though not always) with a narrower opening than a bay (geography), bay. The term was used traditionally for large, highly indented navigable bodies of s ...
or Iraq War
The Iraq War (), also referred to as the Second Gulf War, was a prolonged conflict in Iraq lasting from 2003 to 2011. It began with 2003 invasion of Iraq, the invasion by a Multi-National Force – Iraq, United States-led coalition, which ...
, but instead would secure peace through deterrence. This led to the introduction of the 2015 security legislation to give legal effect to the cabinet's decision .
2014 cabinet reshuffle
The cabinet inaugurated in December 2012 was the longest-serving and most stable in post-war Japanese history, lasting 617 days without a change in personnel until Abe conducted a reshuffle in September 2014, with the stated aim of promoting more women into ministerial posts. The reshuffled cabinet tied the record of five women ministers set by the first Koizumi cabinet. Most key figures, such as Deputy Prime Minister Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga, were kept in their posts although Abe moved Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki out of the cabinet to become Secretary-General of the LDP. However, on 20 October two of the women promoted in the reshuffle, Justice Minister Midori Matsushima and Trade Minister Yūko Obuchi, were forced to resign in separate election finance scandals. Abe told the press, "As prime minister, I bear full responsibility for having appointed them, and I apologize deeply to the people of Japan."
2014 general election
In November 2014, while Abe was attending the APEC forum meeting in the PRC and the G20 Summit in Australia, rumors began appearing in the press that he was planning to call a snap election in the event that he decided to delay the second stage of the consumption tax increase. It was speculated that Abe planned to do this to "reset" Diet business after it had become gridlocked due to the fallout from ministerial resignations in October, or because the political situation would be less favorable to re-election in 2015 and 2016.
On 17 November, GDP figures were released that showed Japan had fallen into recession as per the two-quarters of negative growth following the first stage of the consumption tax rise in April. Abe held a press conference on 21 November and announced that he was delaying the rise in the consumption tax by 18 months, from October 2015 to April 2017, and calling a snap general election for 14 December. Abe described the election as the "Abenomics Dissolution" and asked the voters to pass judgment on his economic policies. Abe's popularity fell slightly with the announcement and he declared that he would resign if his coalition did not win a simple majority, though analysts agreed this was highly unlikely due to the weak state of the opposition. The opposition parties attempted to field a united front in opposition to Abe's policies, but found themselves divided on them.
In the 2014 general election, the LDP won 291 seats, a loss of 3, but the Komeito
, formerly New Komeito (NKP) and commonly referred to as simply Komei, is a political party in Japan founded by the leader of Soka Gakkai, Daisaku Ikeda, in 1964. It is generally considered centrist and socially conservative. Since 2012, i ...
gained 4 to win 35. Therefore, the governing coalition maintained its two-thirds majority in a slightly reduced lower house of 475.
Third Cabinet (2014–2017)
On 24 December 2014, Abe was re-elected to the position of Prime Minister by the House of Representatives. The only change he made when introducing his third cabinet was replacing defense minister Akinori Eto, who was also involved in a political funding controversy, with Gen Nakatani
is a Japanese politician who was Director General of the Japan Defense Agency (now Japan Ministry of Defense) in the first cabinet of former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in 2001-2002 and was appointed the Minister of Defense by former Pri ...
. In his February policy speech, as the Cabinet weathered a Moritomo Gakuen school scandal, Abe called upon the new Diet to enact "most drastic reforms since the end of World War II" in the sectors of the economy, agriculture, healthcare and others.
Foreign policy
On a tour of the Middle East in January 2015, Abe announced that Japan would provide 200 million dollars in non-military assistance to countries fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and Daesh, is a transnational Salafi jihadist organization and unrecognized quasi-state. IS occupied signi ...
as part of a 2.5-billion-dollar aid package. Shortly after this, ISIL released a video in which a masked figure (identified as Mohammed Emwazi or " Jihadi John") threatened to kill two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, in retaliation for the move unless Abe's government paid 200 million dollars of ransom money. Abe cut short his trip to deal with the crisis, declared that such acts of terrorism
Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of violence against non-combatants to achieve political or ideological aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violence during peacetime or in the context of war aga ...
were "unforgivable" and promised to save the hostages while refusing to pay the ransom. The Abe cabinet worked with the Jordanian government to attempt to secure the release of both hostages, after further videos were released by ISIL linking their fate to that of the pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh, with deputy foreign minister Yasuhide Nakayama conducting negotiations in Amman
Amman ( , ; , ) is the capital and the largest city of Jordan, and the country's economic, political, and cultural center. With a population of four million as of 2021, Amman is Jordan's primate city and is the largest city in the Levant ...
. Both hostages were killed with ISIL releasing news of Yukawa's death on 24 January and Goto's on 31 January. Abe condemned the killings as a "heinous act", declared that Japan would "not give in to terrorism" and pledged to work with the international community to bring the killers to justice. There was some criticism of Abe for his move to pledge aid against ISIL while they were holding Japanese citizens hostage, but polls showed support for his administration increasing in the aftermath of the crisis. He later used the example of the hostage crisis to argue the case for the collective self-defense legislation that his government introduced in the summer of 2015 .
In April 2015, Abe addressed a joint session of the United States Congress
A joint session of the United States Congress is a gathering of members of the two chambers of the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States: the Senate and the House of Representatives. Joint sessions can be held on ...
, the first Japanese prime minister to do so. In his speech he referred to the Japan–US Alliance as the "Alliance of Hope", promised that Japan would play a more active security and defense role in the alliance and argued that the TPP would bring both economic and security benefits to the Asia-Pacific region.[Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Address by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to a Joint Meeting of the U.S. Congress "Toward an Alliance of Hope" (April 29, 2015)](_blank)
Retrieved 4 May 2015 The address served as part of a state visit to the United States, the eighth of the Obama Presidency, which President Obama referred to as a "celebration of the ties of friendship" between America and Japan. During the visit, Abe attended a state dinner at the White House.
Like his predecessors Tomiichi Murayama
is a Japanese politician who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1994 to 1996. He was the country's first socialist premier since Tetsu Katayama in 1948, and is best remembered for the Murayama Statement on the 50th anniversary of the end of ...
and Junichiro Koizumi, Abe issued a statement commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II on 14 August 2015. This statement had been widely anticipated, with some commentators expecting Abe to amend or even refuse to repeat the previous leaders' apologies for Japan's role in the war. In the statement, Abe committed to upholding the previous apologies and expressed "profound grief and eternal, sincere condolences" for the "immeasurable damage and suffering" Japan had caused for "innocent people" during the conflict. He also argued that Japan should not be "predestined to apologize" forever, noting that more than eighty percent of Japanese people alive today were born after the conflict and played no part in it. The governments of both China and South Korea responded with criticism of the statement, but analysts noted that it was muted and restrained in tone, in comparison to the harsher rhetoric than had been employed previously. A representative of the US National Security Council
The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the national security council used by the president of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part ...
welcomed the statement and referred to Japan as having been a "model for nations everywhere" in its record on "peace, democracy, and the rule of law" since the war's end. Professor Gerald Curtis of Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...
argued that the statement "probably satisfies no constituency" either in Japan or abroad, but that by repeating the words "aggression", "colonialism", "apology" and "remorse" used in the Murayama Statement
The Murayama Statement (村山談話, ''Murayama Danwa'') was a political statement released by former Prime Minister of Japan Tomiichi Murayama on August 15, 1995, officially titled "On the Occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the War's End" (戦� ...
of 1995, it was likely to be enough to improve relations with China and Korea.
In December 2015, Abe and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi signed deals in which India agreed to buy ''Shinkansen
The , colloquially known in English as the bullet train, is a network of high-speed railway lines in Japan. It was initially built to connect distant Japanese regions with Tokyo, the capital, to aid economic growth and development. Beyond lon ...
'' technology from Japan (financed in part by a loan from the Japanese government), and for Japan to be raised to full partner status in the Malabar naval exercises. Also agreed at the talks was a proposal for Japan to sell non-military nuclear technology to India, to be formally signed once technical details were finalized. Demonstrating their close relationship, Abe described Modi's policies as "like ''Shinkansen''—high speed, safe and reliable while carrying many people along". In return, Modi complimented Abe as a "phenomenal leader", noted how India–Japan relations had a "wonderful human touch" and invited him to attend the ''Ganga aarti'' ceremony at Dashashwamedh Ghat in his Varanasi
Varanasi (, also Benares, Banaras ) or Kashi, is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world.*
*
*
* The city has a syncretic tradition of I ...
constituency. Analysts described the nuclear deal as part of Japan and India's efforts to respond to the growing power of the PRC in the Asia-Pacific region.
In Seoul in November 2015, Abe attended the first China–Japan–South Korea trilateral summit held for three years with Korean president Park Geun-hye and PRC premier Li Keqiang
Li Keqiang ( zh, s=李克强, p=Lǐ Kèqiáng; 3 July 1955 – 27 October 2023) was a Chinese economist and politician who served as the seventh premier of China from 2013 to 2023. He was also the second-ranked member of the Politburo Standing ...
. The summits had been suspended in 2012 due to tensions over historical and territorial issues. The leaders agreed to restore the summits as annual events, negotiate a trilateral free trade agreement, and work to check North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. They also announced that trilateral co-operation had been "completely restored".
Japan's relations with South Korea improved somewhat during Abe's third term, in the aftermath of Abe's war anniversary statement. Abe and South Korea's President Park Geun-hye held their first bilateral meeting in November 2015, where they agreed to resolve the "comfort women
Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term ''comfort women'' is a translation of the Japanese , a euphemism ...
" dispute, which Park described as the biggest obstacle to closer ties. In late December 2015, foreign ministers Fumio Kishida and Yun Byung-se announced in Seoul that a deal had been reached to resolve the comfort women dispute, in which Japan agreed to pay 1 billion yen (US$8.3 million) into a fund to support the 46 surviving victims, and issued a statement that contained Abe's "most sincere apologies and remorse". Abe later telephoned Park. In return, the South Korean government agreed to consider the matter "finally and irreversibly resolved" and work to remove a statue in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul. Both sides agreed to refrain from criticizing each other over the issue in the future. President Park stated that the agreement would be a "new starting point" for relations between the two countries, although both leaders received some domestic criticism: Abe for issuing the apology, and Park for accepting the deal.
On 27 May 2016, Abe accompanied Barack Obama when he became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima
is the capital of Hiroshima Prefecture in Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 1,199,391. The gross domestic product (GDP) in Greater Hiroshima, Hiroshima Urban Employment Area, was US$61.3 billion as of 2010. Kazumi Matsui has b ...
, 71 years after the US atomic bombing of the city towards the end of World War II. The two paid tribute to the victims of the bombing at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is a museum located in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in central Hiroshima, Japan, dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II.
The museum was established in August 1955 with the ...
, during the visit both leaders pledged to promote nuclear disarmament
Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term ''denuclearization'' is also used to describe the pro ...
. On 27 December 2016, Abe paid a reciprocal visit to USS ''Arizona'' Memorial, Honolulu. The Abe government and the Japanese public mistakenly thought Abe's visit of Honolulu was unprecedented. Abe's visit drew public attention for the first time to the three quiet visits to Honolulu by Japanese prime ministers in 1951, 1956, and 1957.
Shortly after Donald Trump had won the US presidential election, Abe cut short his presence at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit being held in Lima, Peru
Lima ( ; ), founded in 1535 as the Ciudad de los Reyes (, Spanish for "City of Biblical Magi, Kings"), is the capital and largest city of Peru. It is located in the valleys of the Chillón River, Chillón, Rímac River, Rímac and Lurín Rive ...
, in order to have an informal, impromptu meeting with the then president-elect at the Trump Tower
Trump Tower is a 58-story, mixed-use condominium skyscraper at 721–725 Fifth Avenue in the Midtown Manhattan neighborhood of New York City, between East 56th and 57th Streets. The building contains the headquarters for the Trump Organiza ...
. After Trump's inauguration, they had a formal meeting at Mar-a-Lago
Mar-a-Lago ( , ) is a resort and National Historic Landmark on a barrier island in Palm Beach, Florida, United States. It spans 126 rooms and built on of land. Since 1985, it has been owned by Donald Trump, the 45th and 47th president of t ...
in Palm Beach, Florida
Palm Beach is an incorporated town in Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. Located on a barrier island in east-central Palm Beach County, the town is separated from West Palm Beach, Florida, West Palm Beach and Lake Worth Beach, Florida, ...
, at which they discussed security in light of a North Korean threat, with Abe stating that Japan would be more committed to Japan–United States relations
International relations between Japan and the United States began in the late 18th and early 19th century with the diplomatic but Unequal treaty#Japan and Korea, force-backed missions of U.S. ship captains James Glynn and Matthew C. Perry to the ...
. They also golfed alongside South African professional golfer Ernie Els
Theodore Ernest Els (; born 17 October 1969) is a South African professional golfer. A former , he is nicknamed "the Big Easy" due to his physical stature along with his fluid golf swing. Among his more than 70 career victories are four major ...
.
Security and defense issues
In his April speech to the US Congress, Abe announced that his government would "enact all necessary bills by this coming summer" to expand the Self-Defense Forces' capacity for operations and to give effect to the cabinet's July 2014 decision to re-interpret the constitution in favor of collective self-defense. The Abe cabinet then introduced 11 bills making up the "Peace and Security Preservation Legislation" into the Diet in May 2015, which pushed for a limited expansion of military powers to fight in a foreign conflict. The principal aims of the bills were to allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of allied nations under attack (even if Japan itself was not), to expand their scope to support international peacekeeping operations, and to allow for Japan to take on a greater share of security responsibilities as part of the US-Japan Alliance.
To allow for enough time to pass the bills in the face of lengthy opposition scrutiny, the Abe cabinet extended the Diet session by 95 days from June into September, making it the longest in the post-war era. The bills passed the House of Representatives on 16 July with the support of the majority LDP-Komeito coalition. Diet members from the opposition Democratic, Innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or service (economics), services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a n ...
, Communist
Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...
, and Social Democratic
Social democracy is a Social philosophy, social, Economic ideology, economic, and political philosophy within socialism that supports Democracy, political and economic democracy and a gradualist, reformist, and democratic approach toward achi ...
parties walked out of the vote in protest at what they said was the government's move to force the bills through without sufficient debate and ignore "responsible opposition parties". Abe countered by arguing that the bills had been debated for "as many as 113 hours" before the vote. While common practice in many other parliamentary democracies
A parliamentary system, or parliamentary democracy, is a form of government where the head of government (chief executive) derives their democratic legitimacy from their ability to command the support ("confidence") of a majority of the legisl ...
, a government using its majority to "railroad" controversial bills through the Diet in the face of political and public opposition is a subject of criticism in Japan.
As a result of these moves, Abe faced a public backlash, and opinion polls showed that his approval ratings fell into negative figures for the first time since he returned to power in 2012, with 50 percent disapproving and 38 percent approving of the cabinet according to one Nikkei survey taken at the beginning of August. Many protested outside the Diet buildings, denouncing what was referred to as "war bills" by opponents. Organizers of the protests estimated that up to 100,000 protesters marched against the bills' passage of the lower house in July. During Diet committee hearings on the bills, constitutional scholars (some of whom had been invited by the ruling parties) and a former Supreme Court justice argued that the legislation was unconstitutional. Abe was publicly criticized by atomic bomb survivor Sumiteru Taniguchi in his speech at the Nagasaki memorial ceremony on 9 August, when he stated that the defense reforms would take Japan "back to the wartime period". Members of the Abe cabinet said that they would make a greater effort to explain the contents of and the reasons for the security legislation to the public, with the LDP releasing an animated cartoon commercial, and Abe appearing live on television and internet chat streams to make the case for the legislation and take questions from members of the public.
The security bills were finally approved by the House of Councillors, 148 votes to 90, and became law on 19 September. This followed opposition attempts using delaying tactics as well as physical altercations, in which some Diet members attempted to stop the relevant chairman from calling the vote to move the bill out of committee and to a general vote. After the vote, Abe issued a statement saying that the new laws "will fortify our pledge to never again wage war", and that the legislation, rather than being "war bills", was instead "aimed at deterring war and contributing to peace and security". He also pledged to continue to explain the legislation to try to gain "greater understanding" from the public on the issue. Following the bills' passage, Abe was expected to once again return his focus to economic issues.
On 18 October 2015 Abe presided over the triennial fleet review of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force
The , abbreviated , also simply known as the Japanese Navy, is the maritime warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, tasked with the naval defense of Japan. The JMSDF was formed following the dissolution of the Imperial Japanese Navy ( ...
(JMSDF) in his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Self-Defense Forces. In his speech to personnel on board the destroyer ''Kurama'', he announced that "by highly hoisting the flag of 'proactive pacifism,' I'm determined to contribute more than ever to world peace and prosperity". Later that day he went aboard the , becoming the first Japanese prime minister to set foot on an American warship.
In December 2015, the Abe government announced the creation of a new intelligence unit, the , to aid counter-terrorism operations, to be based in the Foreign Ministry but led by the Prime Minister's Office. This was reported as being part of efforts to step up security measures in preparation for the 2016 G7 Summit in Shima, Mie, and 2020 Olympics
The officially the and officially branded as were an international multi-sport event that was held from 23 July to 8 August 2021 in Tokyo, Japan, with some of the preliminary sporting events beginning on 21 July 2021. Tokyo ...
in Tokyo. In the same month the cabinet approved Japan's largest-ever defense budget, at 5.1 trillion yen (US$45 billion), for the fiscal year beginning in April 2016. The package included funding intended for the purchase of three "Global Hawk" drones, six F-35 fighter jets, and a Boeing KC-46A midair refueling aircraft.
Re-election as LDP president and "Abenomics 2.0"
In September 2015, Abe was re-elected as president of the LDP in an uncontested election after LDP Diet member Seiko Noda failed to garner enough support to stand as a candidate. Following this Abe carried out a cabinet reshuffle, once again keeping the key ministers of Finance
Finance refers to monetary resources and to the study and Academic discipline, discipline of money, currency, assets and Liability (financial accounting), liabilities. As a subject of study, is a field of Business administration, Business Admin ...
, Economy, Foreign Affairs, and the Chief Cabinet Secretary in post. He also created a new ministerial position for the coordination of policies related to the economy, population decline, and social security reform, which was filled by Katsunobu Katō.
At a press conference after his official re-election as LDP president, Abe announced that the next stage of his administration would focus on what he called "Abenomics 2.0", the aim of which was to tackle issues of low fertility and an aging population and create a society "in which each and every one of Japan's 100 million citizens can take on active roles". This new policy consisted of targets which Abe referred to as "three new arrows"; to boost Japan's GDP to 600 trillion yen by 2021, to raise the national fertility rate from an average of 1.4 to 1.8 children per woman and stabilize the population at 100 million, and to create a situation where people would not have to leave employment to care for elderly relatives by the mid-2020s. Abe explained that the government would take measures to increase wages, boost consumption, and expand childcare, social security and care services for the elderly to meet these goals.
This new iteration of Abenomics was met with some criticism by commentators, who argued that it was not yet clear if the first three arrows had succeeded in lifting Japan out of deflation (inflation was some way below the 2 percent target), that the new arrows were merely presented as targets without the necessary policies to meet them, and that the targets themselves were unrealistic. However, opinion polls during the final months of 2015 showed the Abe cabinet's approval ratings once again climbing into positive figures after the change in emphasis back to economic issues.
At the conclusion of the Trans-Pacific Partnership talks in early October 2015, Abe hailed the agreement for creating an "unprecedented economic zone" and opening up possibilities for an even wider Asia-Pacific free trade deal and Japanese trade with Europe. He also promised to mitigate any negative effects on the Japanese agricultural sector. GDP figures released in November 2015 initially appeared to show that Japan had entered a second recession since the implementation of Abenomics. However, these figures were subsequently revised to show that the economy had grown by 1 percent in the third quarter, thus avoiding recession.
In December 2015, the two parties making up Abe's governing coalition agreed to introduce a reduced rate of consumption tax for food when the anticipated tax increase from 8 to 10 percent takes place in April 2017. This deal was reached after Abe was seen to come down strongly in favor of the position held by his junior coalition partner, the Komeito, that the tax rate should be reduced, which prompted some disagreement from members of his party who favored a policy of greater fiscal consolidation through taxes. Abe dismissed the chairman of the LDP's tax panel Takeshi Noda (who opposed the reduction), and appointed Yoichi Miyazawa, who was more favorable to the policy, as his replacement. Abe declared the tax deal to be "the best possible result" of the negotiations.
Constitutional revision
At the 2016 election to the House of Councillors, the first that allowed Japanese citizens 18 and over to vote, Abe led the LDP–Komeito pact to victory, with the coalition being the largest in the House of Councillors since it was set at 242 seats. The election's results opened the debate on constitutional reform, particularly in amending Article 9 of Japan's pacifist constitution, with pro-revisionist parties gaining the two-thirds majority being necessary for reform, alongside a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, which would ultimately lead to a nationwide referendum.
Abe remained relatively quiet on the issue for the remainder of the year, but in May 2017, announced that the constitutional reform would be in effect by 2020.
Fourth Cabinet (2017–2020)
The 2017 general election was held on 22 October. Prime Minister Abe called the snap election on 25 September, while the North Korea crisis was prominent in the news media. Political opponents of Abe say the snap election was designed to evade questioning in parliament over alleged scandals. Abe was expected to retain a majority of seats in the Diet. Abe's ruling coalition took almost a majority of the vote and two-thirds of the seats. The last-minute campaigning and voting took place as Typhoon Lan, the biggest typhoon of 2017, was wreaking havoc on Japan.
Re-election as LDP president
On 20 September 2018, Abe was re-elected as leader of the main ruling Liberal Democratic Party. On 19 November 2019, Abe became Japan's longest-serving prime minister, surpassing the 2,883-day record of Katsura Tarō. On 24 August 2020, Abe became the longest-serving prime minister in terms of consecutive days in office, surpassing Eisaku Satō's 2,798-day record.
Favoritism scandals
In March 2018, it was revealed that the finance ministry (with finance minister Tarō Asō at its head) had falsified documents presented to the parliament in relation to the Moritomo Gakuen scandal, in order to remove 14 passages implicating Abe. It was suggested that the scandal could cost Abe his seat as Liberal Democratic party's leader. Further accusations arose the same year that Abe had given preferential treatment to his friend Kotarō Kake to open a veterinary department at his school, Kake Gakuen. Abe denied the charges, but support for his administration fell below 30% in the polls, the lowest since his taking power in 2012. Those who called for him to step down included former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. The scandal was referred to by some as "Abegate". Former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi speculated that Abe would likely resign due to the scandal.
The scandals, while not damaging his political standing permanently, did little good for his image. In July 2018, Abe's public standing was further hit after he held a drinking party with LDP lawmakers during the peak of the floods in western Japan. In 2020, Abe came under further criticism for extending the term of top Tokyo prosecutor Hiromu Kurokawa, who later resigned amid a gambling scandal. Abe's approval rating fell from 40% to 27% during the month of May 2020, largely due to his handling of the Kurokawa situation.
Foreign policy
Abe supported the 2018 North Korea–United States summit. Shortly after the summit was announced, Abe told reporters he appreciated "North Korea's change" and attributed the diplomatic change in tone to the coordinated sanctions campaign by the United States, Japan, and South Korea. Abe, however, cautioned President Trump not to compromise on North Korea's missile program and leave Japan exposed to short-range missiles or relieve pressure on North Korea too soon before complete denuclearization. Abe also expressed a desire to hold a bilateral meeting with North Korea on the issue of abductions of Japanese citizens, pressing President Trump to raise the matter at the summit. Reports in 2019 revealed that Abe authorized covering up information about two missing people from Japan living in North Korea.
In 2018, Abe paid a 2-day formal visit to the PRC, in the hopes of improving foreign relations, where he had several meetings with President Xi Jinping. At this time, Abe promised that in 2019 he would ease restrictions on the eligibility for PRC citizens to obtain Japanese visas, especially among teenagers. Abe also stated that he hoped Xi Jinping would visit Japan to cultivate better relations between the two countries. Abe cautioned Xi Jinping over protests in Hong Kong at the G20 Summit. Abe told Xi it is important for "a free and open Hong Kong to prosper under the 'one country, two systems' policy".
Regarding the territorial dispute with Russia, Abe adopted the "two plus alpha" approach, altering the previous governments' position that Habomai, Shikotan, Etorofu and Kunashiri islands be returned to Japan's sovereign. In a 2021 interview, Abe spoke about his negotiation with the Russian president Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...
in 2018, also confirming he had requested Fumio Kishida to continue with this approach, to avoid worsening Japan's relations with Russia.
Writing of what he characterizes as the most serious failure of the Abe administration, co-director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies of Temple University in Japan Robert Dujarric, wrote: "The election of Donald Trump raised existential questions about the reliability of Washington as a guarantor of Tokyo's security. The events of January 6th… reflected the fact that a substantial number of Republican voters believe that Trump had won the election and appeared to endorse his supporters' use of lethal violence to keep him in the White House, which was indeed very worrisome for the Japanese. Yet neither Abe's Japan nor for that matter any country that relies on the US as the ultimate guarantor of its security—South Korea, Taiwan, or all of NATO—took any significant steps to buttress their military to prepare for the day when the Americans might not be able to come to their rescue. That is also true for their diplomacy, economic policies, and other components of national security. For this, however, it is hard to blame Abe alone. Japanese voters would have had no interest in such a course of action, which would have entailed major costs."
Japan's relations with South Korea further deteriorated starting from 2018, when, while negotiating a "comfort women" deal with then South Korean president Moon Jae-in
Moon Jae-in (, ; born January 24, 1953) is a South Korean politician and former lawyer who served as the 12th president of South Korea from 2017 to 2022. Before his presidency, he served as the senior secretary for civil affairs and the Chief ...
, Abe demanded that South Korea remove statues of comfort women that had been installed in South Korea, the United States, Australia, and Germany. In late 2018, the Supreme Court of Korea
The Supreme Court of Korea () is the highest ordinary court in the judicial branch of South Korea, seated in Seocho, Seoul. Established under Chapter 5 of the Constitution of South Korea, the court has ultimate and comprehensive jurisdictio ...
and other high courts ordered several Japanese companies, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational engineering, electrical equipment and electronics corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. MHI is one of the core companies of the Mitsubishi Group and its automobile division is the prede ...
, Nachi-Fujikoshi, and Nippon Steel
(previously known as Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal until 2019) is Japan's largest steelmaker, headquartered in Marunouchi, Chiyoda, Tokyo. The company has four business segments, which are steelmaking, engineering, chemicals, and systems solu ...
, to make compensations to the families of Koreans who were unfairly treated and illegally forced to supply labor for World War II war efforts. The Japanese government protested these decisions, Abe argued that any issues concerning Japan's rule of Korea were previously resolved in the which normalized relations between Japan and South Korea, adding that further requests of reparations meant that South Korea had violated the treaty. In August 2019, Abe's cabinet approved the removal of South Korea from Japan's trade "whitelist"; the subsequent trade dispute between South Korea and Japan is still ongoing and has caused a significant deterioration in Japan–South Korea relations
Japan–South Korea relations (; ) are the diplomatic relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea. As the Sea of Japan and the Korea Strait geographically separate the two nations, political interactions date back from the 6th century whe ...
.
Economic policy
In July 2018, Japan became the second country after Mexico to ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). CPTPP evolved from the Trans-Pacific Partnership which never came into force after then US president Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in early 2017. Abe's administration was credited with overcoming protectionist pressures within Japan and rallying the 10 other TPP member countries to support CPTPP, which largely kept the previous agreement intact and left the door open to an eventual US return.
Whaling
In 2019, Japan resumed commercial whaling, for the first time in 31 years, a day after withdrawing from the International Whaling Commission
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) is a specialised regional fishery management organisation, established under the terms of the 1946 International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling (ICRW) to "provide for the proper conservation ...
(IWC). The district Abe hailed from and represented includes a major whaling center and he long pushed to resume commercial whaling.
Resignation
Abe's colitis relapsed in June 2020 and resulted in his health deteriorating through the summer. Following several hospital visits, Abe announced on 28 August 2020 that he intended to retire as prime minister, citing his inability to carry out the duties of the office while seeking treatment for his condition. During the press conference announcing his retirement, Abe indicated that he would remain in office until a successor was chosen by the LDP, but declined to endorse any specific successor. Abe expressed regret at being unable to fully accomplish his policy goals due to his early retirement. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshihide Suga was elected as his successor by the LDP on 14 September 2020 and took office as prime minister on 16 September. In retirement, Abe was not as active as before. He continued to give interviews sporadically, such as the career retrospective on 19 July 2021, he gave to H.R. McMaster of the Hoover Institute.
Assassination
On 8 July 2022, at around 11:30 JST, Abe was shot and killed while he was delivering a campaign speech at the Yamato-Saidaiji Station, Nara
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is an independent agency of the United States government within the executive branch, charged with the preservation and documentation of government and historical records. It is also task ...
. He was supporting fellow LDP party member Kei Satō for the House of Councillors election. The assassin approached Abe from behind and fired two shots using an improvised firearm
Improvised firearms (sometimes called zip guns, pipe guns, or slam guns) are firearms manufactured by an entity other than a registered firearms manufacturer or a gunsmith. Improvised firearms are typically constructed by adapting existing mater ...
. The first shot missed and prompted Abe to turn around, at which point a second shot was fired, hitting Abe in the right front of the neck and the left upper arm. He was fatally struck in an artery near the heart.
Abe was rushed to the Nara Medical University Hospital in Kashihara by helicopter. Prior to his arrival at the hospital, Abe had already shown no vital signs
Vital signs (also known as vitals) are a group of the four to six most crucial medical signs that indicate the status of the body's vital (life-sustaining) functions. These measurements are taken to help assess the general physical health of ...
. Despite a transfusion of 100 units of blood (≈ 30 liters), the blood loss
Bleeding, hemorrhage, haemorrhage or blood loss, is blood escaping from the circulatory system from damaged blood vessels. Bleeding can occur internally, or externally either through a natural opening such as the mouth, nose, ear, urethra, v ...
was too great and attempts to resuscitate Abe failed; he was pronounced dead at 17:03 JST. He was 67 years old.
A 41-year-old man named Tetsuya Yamagami, a former JMSDF member, was immediately arrested and later confessed to local police. Yamagami said he held a grudge against the Unification Church
The Unification Church () is a new religious movement, whose members are called Unificationists or sometimes informally Moonies. It was founded in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon in Seoul, South Korea, as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unificatio ...
and shot Abe because "the religious group and Abe were connected". Yamagami said his mother had been brainwashed by the religious group, giving the church all of his family's money and leaving them so destitute that he and his siblings often did not have enough to eat. They became so despondent, he added, that his brother had committed suicide and he himself had attempted it.
Yamagami had been trying to kill Hak Ja Han
Hak Ja Han Moon (; born February 10, 1943 January 6, 1943, lunar calendar) is a Korean religious leader. Her late husband Sun Myung Moon was the founder of the Unification Church (UC). Han and Moon were married in April 1960 and have 10 living ...
of the Unification Church since around 2002, but gave up because he could not get close to her, changing his target to Abe. Yamagami said he did not have a grudge against Abe's political beliefs, but had targeted him because he believed the former prime minister spread the religion in Japan. Abe and his family were known to have long-standing ties to the Unification Church, dating back to his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi; Abe himself had held speeches in support of the religious movement. According to research by '' Nikkan Gendai'', half of the twenty members of the Fourth Abe Cabinet had connections to the Unification Church. The connection between the two groups was found peculiar by some as the South Korean-based Unification Church raised billions of dollars worth of funds from its Japanese followers ("since the 1970s" most of the church's money has come from Japan) playing on feelings of "war guilt" towards Korea, while Abe was famous for his proudly unapologetic embrace of Japan's imperial past and denial of any oppression of Koreans.
In response to the shooting and his subsequent death, numerous present and former world leaders expressed their sympathies and support for Abe. His body was returned to Tokyo the day after his assassination and his state funeral took place on 27 September 2022.
Political positions
Historical negationism
Some have described Abe as a right-wing Japanese nationalist. Some have claimed that Abe often engaged in historical negationism
Historical negationism, also called historical denialism, is falsification or distortion of the historical record. This is not the same as '' historical revisionism'', a broader term that extends to newly evidenced, fairly reasoned academic rein ...
via his membership in Nippon Kaigi, especially in regard to Japanese war crimes
During its imperial era, Empire of Japan, Japan committed numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity across various Asian-Pacific nations, notably during the Second Sino-Japanese War, Second Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars. These incidents ...
during World War II. According to some analysts, this caused Japan's relations with South Korea and China to deteriorate under his premiership. In the PRC, Abe's legacy remains mixed. While he was often criticized as an extreme nationalist, others also recognized his efforts for reconciliation between the two countries. Since 1997, as the bureau chief of the "Institute of Junior Assembly Members Who Think About the Outlook of Japan and History Education", Abe led the Society for History Textbook Reform. Abe was affiliated with the ultra-conservative, revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference).
According to Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut
The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university system with its main campus in Storrs, Connecticut, United States. It was founded in 1881 as the Storrs Agricultural School, named after two benefactors. In 1893, ...
who specializes in modern Japan and Korea, in the 1990s when Abe first became a parliamentarian he is believed to have co-authored a document denying the Nanjing Massacre
The Nanjing Massacre, or the Rape of Nanjing (formerly Chinese postal romanization, romanized as ''Nanking'') was the mass murder of Chinese civilians, noncombatants, and surrendered prisoners of war by the Imperial Japanese Army in Nanji ...
; the article used to be available in Japan's Diet archives but has since disappeared. Abe also made comments that denied the occurrence of the massacre. Dudden has said Nanjing Massacre denial is akin to Holocaust denial
Historical negationism, Denial of the Holocaust is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the genocide of Jews by the Nazi Party, Nazis is a fabrication or exaggeration. It includes making one or more of the following false claims:
...
.
In 1 March 2007, Abe denied to reporters that Japan forced women into sexual slavery during World War II claiming that there was "no evidence". He elaborated that he meant “forcible in the narrow sense of the word”. On 26 March 2007, he apologized saying, "I express my sympathy toward the comfort women and apologize for the situation they found themselves in'. On his official homepage, he questioned the extent to which coercion was applied toward the comfort women, dismissing South Korean positions on the issue as foreign interference in Japanese domestic affairs; Abe's position towards the comfort women caused deteriorations of relations between Japan and South Korea. In a Diet session on 6 October 2006, Abe revised his statement regarding comfort women and said that he accepted the report issued in 1993 by the sitting cabinet secretary, Yōhei Kōno
is a Japanese politician and a former President of the Liberal Democratic Party. He served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from November 2003 until August 2009, when the LDP lost its majority in the 2009 election. Kōno served as sp ...
, wherein the Japanese government officially acknowledged the issue. Later in the session, Abe stated his belief that Class-A war criminals
A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hostag ...
are not criminals under Japan's domestic law.
In a meeting of the Lower House Budget Committee in February 2006, Abe said, "There is a problem as to how to define aggressive wars; we cannot say it is decided academically", and "It is not the business of the government to decide how to define the last world war. I think we have to wait for the estimation of historians".
On a television program in July 2006, he denied that Manchukuo was a puppet state
A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government is a State (polity), state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside Power (international relations), power and subject to its ord ...
of Japan. Manchukuo was notorious for its exploitative rule and use of slave labor when it was under the economic management of Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather. Abe published a book called in July 2006, which became a bestseller in Japan. The South Korean and PRC governments, as well as noted academics and commentators, voiced concern about Abe's historical views.
In March 2007, in response to a United States Congress
The United States Congress is the legislature, legislative branch of the federal government of the United States. It is a Bicameralism, bicameral legislature, including a Lower house, lower body, the United States House of Representatives, ...
resolution introduced by Mike Honda, Abe denied any government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II. This was in line with a statement made almost 10 years earlier, in which Abe voiced his opposition to the inclusion of the subject of military prostitution in several school textbooks while denying any coercion in the "narrow" sense of the word, environmental factors notwithstanding.[''Japan Press Weekly'' Special Issue – November 2006](_blank)
(PDF
Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...
). This statement provoked negative reactions in Asian and western
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
*Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that id ...
countries; a ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' editorial on 6 March 2007 commented for instance:
A 2007 ''Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'' editorial, "Shinzo Abe's Double Talk", also criticized him: "he's passionate about Japanese victims of North Korea—and blind to Japan's own war crimes". In ''The New York Times'' in 2014, an editorial called Abe a "nationalist" who was a profound threat to American–Japanese relations, and an opinion piece labeled Abe's position on the subject of comfort women a "war on truth". The same editorial presented him as a revisionist, a view largely accepted by the international and part of the Japanese press. Writing in the ''London Review of Books
The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published bimonthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews.
History
The ''London Review of Book ...
'', political scientist Edward Luttwak
Edward Nicolae Luttwak (born 4 November 1942) is an American author known for his works on grand strategy, military strategy, geoeconomics, military history, and international relations. He is best known for being the author of '' Coup d'Éta ...
called Abe a "pragmatic Japanese Tory driving through reforms at home, while weaving an alliance aimed at containing China".
Response to the mass media
The ''Asahi Shimbun
is a Japanese daily newspaper founded in 1879. It is one of the oldest newspapers in Japan and Asia, and is considered a newspaper of record for Japan.
The ''Asahi Shimbun'' is one of the five largest newspapers in Japan along with the ''Yom ...
'' accused Abe and Shōichi Nakagawa of censoring a 2001 NHK
, also known by its Romanization of Japanese, romanized initialism NHK, is a Japanese public broadcasting, public broadcaster. It is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television licence, television license fee.
NHK ope ...
program concerning "The Women's International War Crimes Tribunal". The "tribunal" was a private committee which was established to adjudicate the complaints of comfort women
Comfort women were women and girls forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces in occupied countries and territories before and during World War II. The term ''comfort women'' is a translation of the Japanese , a euphemism ...
; about 5,000 people, including 64 victims from Japan and abroad, attended. The members of the committee, who claimed to be specialists in international law
International law, also known as public international law and the law of nations, is the set of Rule of law, rules, norms, Customary law, legal customs and standards that State (polity), states and other actors feel an obligation to, and generall ...
, claimed that Emperor Hirohito
, Posthumous name, posthumously honored as , was the 124th emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession, from 25 December 1926 until Death and state funeral of Hirohito, his death in 1989. He remains Japan's longest-reigni ...
and the Japanese government were responsible for the use of comfort women. However, the TV program did not mention the full name of the tribunal, it omitted keywords such as "Japanese troops" and "sexual slavery
Sexual slavery and sexual exploitation is an attachment of any ownership rights, right over one or more people with the intent of Coercion, coercing or otherwise forcing them to engage in Human sexual activity, sexual activities. This includ ...
", and it also cut the sight of the tribunal, the host grouping, the statements of the organizer, and the judgment itself. Instead, it presented criticism of the tribunal by a right-wing academic who stated that "there was no abduction of sex slaves and they were prostitutes".
On the day following the broadcasting of the report by ''Asahi Shimbun'', Akira Nagai, the chief producer and the primary person who was responsible for the program, held a press conference in which he stated that Abe stated that the content of the report by the ''Asahi Shimbun''. "had to be broadcast from a neutral point of view" and "what I did is not giving into political pressure". Abe said, "It was political terrorism by ''Asahi Shimbun'' and it was tremendously clear that they had the intention to inhume me and Mr. Nakagawa politically, and it is also clear that it was a complete fabrication." He also characterized the tribunal as a "mock trial" and raised objection to the presence of North Korean prosecutor
A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the adversarial system, which is adopted in common law, or inquisitorial system, which is adopted in Civil law (legal system), civil law. The prosecution is the ...
s, singling them out as agents of the North Korean government. Abe's actions in the NHK incident were criticized by journalists as violating both the Broadcasting Act and the constitution.
On 24 October 2006, a report which stated that Abe's new administration had called on the NHK to "pay attention" to the North Korean abductees issue emerged. Critics, some even within Abe's own LDP party, charged that the government was violating freedom of expression by meddling in the affairs of the public broadcaster. In December 2006, it was revealed that former prime minister Junichiro Koizumi's government, in which Abe was Chief Cabinet Secretary, had influenced town hall-style meetings, during which paid performers would ask government officials favorable questions.
On 22 November 2012, it was reported that TBS's early morning TV show ''Asazuba'' accidentally displayed Abe's photo alongside a news report about an NHK announcer's arrest for a sex offense. Abe's face filled viewers' screens along with the name of NHK announcer Takeshige Morimoto, who anchors NHK's ''Ohayo Nippon'' program on Saturday and Sunday. Morimoto was arrested for allegedly groping a woman on the train. Abe posted on his public Facebook page
Facebook is a social-network service website launched on February 4, 2004, by Mark Zuckerberg. The following is a list of software and technology features that can be found on the Facebook website and mobile app and are available to users of ...
, "This morning on the TBS show ''Asazuba'', when a newscaster reported on a story regarding the apprehension of a molester, a photo of me was shown. Images of this blunder can now be seen clearly across the Internet, Have the slander campaigns already begun!? If this were merely an accident, it would be proper for the TV station to give me a personal apology, but as yet I haven't heard a single word." The newscaster acknowledged that the incorrect image had been displayed, but merely stated that the photo was "unrelated" and did not refer to the politician by name. Neither Abe nor his office received any form of apology.
Abe's constant interference and intimidation of media outlets was cited as one of many reasons Japan fell to 72nd place on the Press Freedom Index
The World Press Freedom Index (WPFI) is an annual ranking of Country, countries compiled and published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) since 2002 based upon the non-governmental organization's own assessment of the countries' Freedom of the ...
in 2016, in contrast to its previous 11th-place ranking from six years prior.
Yasukuni Shrine
Abe visited the Yasukuni Shrine on several occasions, which enshrines the spirits of Japan's war dead, including several Class-A war criminals convicted in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East
The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMTFE), also known as the Tokyo Trial and the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, was a military trial convened on 29 April 1946 to Criminal procedure, try leaders of the Empire of Japan for their cri ...
. While serving as Chief Cabinet Secretary in the government of Junichiro Koizumi, he visited in April 2006, prompting South Korea to describe the trip as "regrettable". He visited again on 15 August 2012, the anniversary of the end of World War II. After winning the presidency of the Liberal Democratic Party, he visited on 17 October 2012, in an official capacity as party president.
Abe initially refrained from visiting the shrine as a sitting prime minister. He did not visit at all during his first term from September 2006 to September 2007, unlike his predecessor Koizumi, who had visited yearly while in office. Abe's not visiting the shrine prompted a Japanese nationalist named Yoshihiro Tanjo to cut off his little finger in protest and mail it to the LDP. While campaigning for the presidency of the LDP in 2012, Abe said that he regretted not visiting the shrine while he was prime minister. He again refrained from visiting the shrine during the first year of his second stint as prime minister in consideration of improving relations with the PRC and Korea, whose leaders refused to meet with Abe during this time. He said on 9 December 2013 that "it is natural that we should express our feelings of respect to the war dead who sacrificed their lives for the nation... but it is my thinking that we should avoid making asukuni visitspolitical and diplomatic issues". In lieu of visiting, Abe sent ritual offerings to the shrine for festivals in April and October 2013, as well as the anniversary of the end of World War II in August 2013.
His first visit to the shrine as prime minister took place on 26 December 2013, the first anniversary of his second term in office. It was the first visit to the shrine by a sitting prime minister since Junichiro Koizumi visited in August 2006. Abe said that he "prayed to pay respect for the war dead who sacrificed their precious lives and hoped that they rest in peace". The PRC government published a protest that day, calling government visits to the shrine "an effort to glorify the Japanese militaristic history of external invasion and colonial rule and to challenge the outcome of World War II". Qin Gang of the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Abe is "unwelcome by Chinese people... Chinese leaders won't meet him any more". The ''Mainichi Shimbun
The is one of the major newspapers in Japan, published by
In addition to the ''Mainichi Shimbun'', which is printed twice a day in several local editions, Mainichi also operates an English-language news website called , and publishes a bilin ...
'' argued in an editorial that the visit could also "cast a dark shadow" on relations with the United States. The US embassy in Tokyo released a statement saying that "the United States is disappointed that Japan's leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan's neighbors". ''The Wall Street Journal
''The Wall Street Journal'' (''WSJ''), also referred to simply as the ''Journal,'' is an American newspaper based in New York City. The newspaper provides extensive coverage of news, especially business and finance. It operates on a subscriptio ...
'' reported that US officials urged Abe not to visit the shrine and pay homage to war criminals anymore. On 15 August 2014, the 69th anniversary of the surrender of Japan in World War II, Abe chose to not visit the shrine, in what was perceived as a diplomatic gesture to the PRC, South Korea, and Taiwan
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...
. Despite Abe's absence, the PRC and South Korea both voiced their disapproval at Japan's leadership as a large number of politicians, including three cabinet members, did attend the shrine to mark the anniversary.
Photographs with "731"
In May 2013, Abe posed for photographs giving thumbs up gestures while sitting in the cockpit of a Kawasaki T-4
The Kawasaki T-4 is a Japanese subsonic intermediate jet trainer aircraft developed and manufactured by the commercial conglomerate Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Its sole operator is the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF), in part due to historic ...
military training aircraft of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force
The , , also referred to as the Japanese Air Force, is the Aerial warfare, air and space warfare, space branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, responsible for the defense of Japanese airspace, other air and space operations, cyberwarfare and ...
's Blue Impulse
(currently 11 Squadron 4th Air Wing, previously 21 Squadron 4th Air Wing) is the aerobatic demonstration team of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force (JASDF). The team was founded in 1960 as a team of six F-86 Sabres. They changed mounts to the Mits ...
aerobatics
Aerobatics is the practice of flying maneuvers involving aircraft attitudes that are not used in conventional passenger-carrying flights. The term is a portmanteau of "aeroplane" and "acrobatics". Aerobatics are performed in aeroplanes and gl ...
team. The aircraft was numbered "731", which was the number of the infamous Imperial Japanese Army
The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...
Unit 731
, short for Manchu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment and the Ishii Unit, was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentat ...
that conducted lethal chemical and biological experiments on live prisoners of war during World War II. The image was widely circulated in South Korean media and drew widespread criticism in both South Korea and China. The combination of the symbolically charged number and Abe’s casual gesture was viewed as deeply insensitive and provocative. South Korean politician Chung Mong-joon
Chung Mong-joon or Chung Mong Joon (, born November 15, 1951) is a South Korean businessman and politician. He is the sixth son of Chung Ju-yung, founder of Hyundai Group, Hyundai, the second-largest South Korean ''chaebol'' before its breakup i ...
described Abe's actions as "an act of direct provocation to Korea, China and other victim nations". In response, a Japanese Defense Ministry official claimed that the numbering on the jet was coincidental and that the numbers were the pilot's individual ID number.
Restoration of Sovereignty Day
On 28 April 2013, a new public event, the Restoration of Sovereignty Day (), was held in Tokyo to mark the 61st anniversary of the end of the US occupation of Japan. It had been proposed by Abe in 2012. Since the US occupation of Okinawa ended in 1972 and nearly three-quarters of US troops in Japan continue to be stationed in Okinawa, the event, which was attended by Emperor Akihito, was denounced by many Okinawans, who saw it as celebrating a betrayal. There were demonstrations in both Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawa and Tokyo.
Immigration policy
In 2015, the Abe government refused to admit refugees affected by conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. Abe said Japan must "solve its own problems before accepting immigrants." Abe backed a short-term work visa deal for migrant workers to "work for a limited period, earn more and return home."
Personal life
Abe married Akie Abe, Akie Matsuzaki, a socialite and former radio disc jockey, in 1987. She is the daughter of the president of Morinaga & Company, Morinaga, a confectionery manufacturer. She is popularly known as the "domestic opposition party" due to her outspoken views, which often contradicted her husband's. Following her husband's first stint as prime minister, she opened an organic izakaya in the Kanda, Tokyo, Kanda district of Tokyo, but remained inactive in management due to the urging of her mother-in-law. The couple were unable to have children, having undergone unsuccessful fertility treatments early in their marriage.
Abe's elder brother, Hironobu Abe, became president and CEO of Mitsubishi Shōji Packaging Corporation, while his younger brother, Nobuo Kishi, became Senior Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs. Abe abstained from drinking alcohol. In addition to his native Japanese, Abe spoke English.
Legacy
Abe was often referred to as the "shadow shogun" due to his profound influence on Japanese politics during his life. After his assassination, Japanologist Michael Green (political expert), Michael Green described Abe as "the most consequential modern Japanese leader" and argued that Japan's future appears to be that of Abe's "vision". Following Abe's assassination, the LDP–Komeito coalition won a majority of the available seats in the upper house in the 10 July election. This gave the government a majority in the upper house. Many, such as Sheila A. Smith of the Council on Foreign Relations and East Asia expert Jeff Kingston, speculated that a revised constitution, especially a revision of its Article 9 clause which outlaws war and the maintenance of military forces, may become Abe's main legacy. Abe is also credited with engineering the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and salvaging the deal as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), after the US withdrew from the TPP in 2017.
A ''Washington Post'' analysis described Abe as the "preeminent statesman of the Indo-Pacific" whose realist approach helped build a cooperative security network in East Asia. Columnist Josh Rogin wrote that Abe's lasting legacy was a world better prepared to confront an increasingly assertive China. Similarly, US Admiral James Stavridis wrote that Abe's greatest contribution was a strengthened Japanese military. His death solicited tributes and condolences from many states and leaders, a testament to his commitment to international relations. Consultant Bill Emmott noted that thanks to Abe's diplomacy, he was more popular abroad than domestically, bearing similarities to Margaret Thatcher. Economist Matthew P. Goodman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) wrote that Abe's legacy was that of a "Champion of the Global Economic Order", whose administration launched the "Partnership for Quality Infrastructure" infrastructure project in Asia, proposed an internationally endorsed organizing principle for global data governance, kickstarted the TPP, and later salvaged it with the CPTPP. Indian commentator Harshil Mehta called Abe a "Unifier of Oceans" in his obituary due to formation of the Quad and wrote that he "stayed committed to the common cause" of Japan and India.
Conversely, Abe's nationalism and Historical negationism#War crimes, historical denialism strained long-term relations with the neighboring PRC and South Korea. Abe's complex legacy was displayed in both nations following his assassination, where some praised Abe's efforts to improve relations and others denounced his views on Japanese history with its neighbors. According to historian of religions Ernils Larsson, Abe's political rhetoric stoked "religious nationalism", and under his leadership the LDP forged closer ties with the "Shinto establishment". In addition, journalist Jake Adelstein argued that Abe left a legacy vexed by authoritarianism, with his actions throughout his tenure such as the intimidation of media that were critical of him leading to Japan's fall on the Press Freedom Index to as low as 72nd, stoking Anti-Korean sentiment in Japan, anti-Korean sentiments, as well as the creation of a "Cabinet Personnel Bureau" to vet bureaucratic positions of anyone that may be openly critical of the government, among others.
In Japan, Abe remains controversial and is described as the "most polarizing" figure in contemporary Japanese politics. Domestic divisiveness created by his historical negationist efforts is long-lasting. Abe also had a profound and lasting effect on the Japanese economy through Abenomics, leaving behind a mixed economic record.
Honors, awards and international recognition
Domestic honors
* Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum:
** Collar of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum (8 July 2022, ''posthumous'')
** Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum (8 July 2022, ''posthumous'')
* List of Japanese court ranks, positions and hereditary titles, Junior First Rank (8 July 2022, ''posthumous'')
Foreign honors
*: Grand Cross of the Order of the Liberator General San Martín (2016)
*: Honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (31 August 2022, ''posthumous'')
*: Member 1st Class of the Order of Sheikh Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa (2013)
*: Grand Cross of the Order of the Southern Cross (2020)
*: Grand Cross of the Order of Honour (Greece), Order of Honour
*: Padma Vibhushan (2021)
*: Grand Cross of the Order of Ivory Merit (2014)
*: Grand Cross of the Order of the Oak Crown (2017)
*: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Orange-Nassau (2014)
*: Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit (Paraguay), National Order of Merit (2018)
*: Grand Collar ''(Raja)'' of the Order of Sikatuna (3 June 2015)
*: Member 1st Class of the Order of Abdulaziz Al Saud (2007)
*: Member 2nd Class of the Order of the Republic of Serbia (2022)
*: Knight Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic (2017)
*: Special Grand Cordon of the Order of Propitious Clouds (26 January 2023, ''posthumous'')
*: Chief Commander of the Legion of Merit (2020)
*: Grand Officer of the Medal of the Oriental Republic of Uruguay (2018)
Other honors
*: Gold Olympic Order (2020)
Awards
* 2013 ''Foreign Policy'' Top 100 Global Thinkers, 2013. (United States)
* Hudson Institute, Herman Kahn Award, September 2013. (United States)
* ''The Straits Times'' Asian of the Year award, December 2013. (Singapore)
* Time 100, Time 100 in 2014, April 2014. (United States)
* Time 100 in 2018, 2018. (United States)
* Boston Global Forum's World Leader in Cybersecurity Award, December 2015. (United States)
* Appeal of Conscience Foundation, 2021 World Statesman Award, March 2021. (United States)
* , January 2021. (Japan)
* Netaji Award 2022 by Netaji Research Bureau, January 2022. (India)
Honorary doctorates
* Rangsit University, March 2013. (Thailand)
* Jawaharlal Nehru University, December 2015. (India)
* Turkmen State University, October 2015. (Turkmenistan)
* International Islamic University Malaysia, March 2022. (Malaysia)
Election history
See also
* First Abe Cabinet
* Second Abe Cabinet
* Third Abe Cabinet
* Fourth Abe Cabinet
* Tohokushinsha Film and Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications scandal
* Work Style Reform Law (Japan), Work Style Reform Law
Footnotes
References
Further reading
* The Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan's Role and the World Order in the 21st Century. ''Toward the Abe Statement on the 70th Anniversary of the End of World War II: Lessons from the 20th Century and a Vision for the 21st Century for Japan'' (Japan Publishing Industry Foundation for Culture, 2017
* Harris, Tobias. ''The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan'' (Hurst, 2020)
* Hughes, C. W. "Japan's Security Policy in the context of the US-Japan alliance: the emergence of an 'Abe Doctrine. In: James D.J. Brown and Jeff Kingston (eds.) ''Japan's Foreign Relations in Asia'' (Palgrave, 2018) pp 49–60.
* Kitaoka, Shinichi. "A 'Proactive Contribution to Peace' and the Right of Collective Self-Defense: The Development of Security Policy in the Abe Administration" ''Asia-Pacific Review'' (2014) 21(2), pp. 1–18.
* Kolmas, Michal. ''National Identity and Japanese Revisionism: Abe Shinzo's vision of a beautiful Japan and its limits'' (2020)
* Liff, A. P. "Japan's Defense Policy: Abe the Evolutionary." ''The Washington Quarterly,'' (2015) 38(2), pp. 79–99.
* Maslow, Sebastian. "A Blueprint for a Strong Japan? Abe Shinzō and Japan's Evolving Security System." ''Asian Survey'' 55.4 (2015): 739–765
online
* Oren, Eitan, and Matthew Brummer. "Threat perception, government centralization, and political instrumentality in Abe Shinzo's Japan." ''Australian Journal of International Affairs'' 74.6 (2020): 721–745.
* Pugliese, Giulio, and Alessio Patalano.
Diplomatic and security practice under Abe Shinzō: the case for Realpolitik Japan
" ''Australian Journal of International Affairs'' 74.6 (2020): 615–632.
External links
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