Shinzo Abewho died this Friday after suffering a firearm attack during a campaign rally, deeply marked the political life of Japan and broke records as the longest-serving prime minister of his countryresisting various political and financial scandals.
After leaving power in 2020, Abe remained the most influential politician in the country until this Friday.
(Also read: Shinzo Abe: Former Japanese Prime Minister dies after attack)
His political influence
Shinzo Abe, born on September 21, 1954 in Tokyo, although raised in Yamaguchi prefecture, the region of southwestern Japan where the samurai clan from which his family descended, Abe had politics in his veins.
His maternal grandfather was the imperialist Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, imprisoned for three years as a war criminal after World War II, but later exonerated and elected Prime Minister in 1957 and 1960. His father, Shintaro Abe, was Foreign Minister in the governments of Yasuhiro Nakasone in the eighties.
Another figure that marked his career was that of his great-uncle and Nobel Peace Prize winner Eisaku Sato, one of the country’s longest-lasting chief executives (1964-1972), and whom Abe surpassed by chaining mandates between December 2012 and September of 2020.
Graduated in Political Science in 1977 from Tokyo Seikei University, Abe completed his studies at the University of Southern California (USC) before joining the workforce in 1979 at Kobe Steel.
Three years later he began to get involved in politics as an adviser to his father, who shortly after would assume the Foreign Ministry portfolio, but it was not until 1993 when he obtained a deputy seat from the Liberal Democratic Party representing a district of his native prefecture, Yamaguchi.
This trajectory was consolidated in 2003 with his appointment as secretary general of the PLD, a position he combined with that of Junichiro Koizumi’s Cabinet spokesman.
His coming to power
Abe was 52 years old when he became prime minister in 2006, making him the youngest person to hold the post.
He was considered a symbol of change and youth, but he also brought the pedigree of a third-generation politician, groomed from a very young age to wield power within an elite conservative family.
His first term was turbulent, beset by scandals and disputes, ending with his abrupt resignation a year later.
He initially said that he was resigning for political reasons, but later admitted that he suffered from a health problem, which was diagnosed as ulcerative colitis.
The ailment required months of treatment, and he got over it thanks to a new drug, Abe said.
He ran again, returning to the head of government as a savior in December 2012, ending a turbulent period in which prime ministers succeeded each other at a rate of up to one a year.
Hit by the effects of the tsunami in 2011 and the subsequent Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan found in Abe a reliable hand.
Abe became known abroad for his economic recovery strategy, known as “abenomics”, launched in 2012, in which he mixed monetary easing, massive budget recovery and structural reforms.
It registered some achievements, such as an increase in the activity rate of women and the elderly. She also turned more heavily to immigration to deal with labor shortages.
However, in the absence of really ambitious reforms, this program was only partially successful, today clearly overshadowed by the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
political storms
Abe’s great ambition was to revise Japan’s 1947 peace constitution, written by the US occupier, and never amended.
On the international stage, Abe took a hard line on North Korea but assumed a role as a peacemaker between the United States and Iran.
He prioritized a close personal relationship with former US President Donald Trump to protect the relationship between the two countries from Trump’s nationalism, and sought to mend ties with Russia and China.
But the results were mixed: Trump insisted on forcing Japan to pay more for US soldiers based in the country; and, on the other hand, Abe failed to finalize an agreement with Russia on some disputed islands. The same thing happened with his plan to invite Chinese President Xi Jinping for a state visit.
Abe, often punctuated by scandals that affected his environment, knew how to take advantage of external events — North Korean missile firings, natural catastrophes — to divert attention and present himself as an indispensable boss in the face of adversity.
He also benefited from the lack of a major rival within his party, the PLD, and from the fragility of the opposition, still not recovered from his disastrous passage to power between 2009 and 2012.
But his popularity has declined since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as his government’s policy was seen as too slow and confusing.
For a long time, he clung to the hope of holding the Tokyo Olympics in the summer of 2020, which were to be the highlight of his tenure. The Olympic Games were finally held a year later, behind closed doors.
His influence on current politics
Abe was the mentor of the current Prime Minister of Japan, Fumkio Kishida, who has maintained the main pillars of his predecessor’s political strategy since he came to power in October last year.
Despite his withdrawal from the front page, the charisma of the “hawk” Abe and his frequent pronouncements on thorny issues such as the reform of Japan’s pacifist constitution or tensions with China continued to define the agenda of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), in contrast with Kishida’s more moderate tone.
The former president no longer held any high official position in the Government nor in his party, although he kept his parliamentary seat, he led the main faction within the PLD and, according to political gossips, he pulled the strings of the conservative party at will.
In recent months, he has made headlines again and put his “protégé” Kishida in trouble with statements in which he pointed to a Japanese military intervention in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, or in which he was in favor of Japan harboring weapons US nuclear.
And it is that Abe left the head of the Japanese Government without having been able to achieve his political priority, that of expanding national defense powers, for which a constitutional reform would be necessary that until now has not had sufficient political or citizen support.
(Also: Shinzo Abe: video of distressing moments of the attack on former prime minister)
(You can read: Shinzo Abe: the reactions after the attack on the former Japanese prime minister)
Nearly two years after health problems forced him out of office, Abe, 67, died in Kashihara hospital hours after being shot during an election rally on the street in Nara, western Japan. .
*With information from AFP and EFE
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