During his two stints in power, between 2006 and 2007 and 2012 and 2020, this conservative prime minister attempted to reform the moderate constitution and boost the economy to cope with China’s rise.
Since taking power in 2006, when he became Japan’s youngest prime minister at age 52, Shinzo Abe seemed destined to change his country’s politics. Lifeless after being shot during a rally in Nara by a 41-year-old former soldier already in custody named Yamagami Tetsuya, Abe can make such a change even if he dies. In an extremely safe country like Japan, Friday’s attack is stirring the worst of political violence and ideological radicalization.
Until his resignation due to problems in late August 2020, Abe was the longest-serving president in the Japanese archipelago, where the leaders have been in power for barely a year. But just as he set the record for most days in office as prime minister, 2,799, an ill-timed hospital visit revealed that he was again suffering from the same bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, that had already forced him to resign in 2007. To continue, Abe was replaced by Yoshihide Suga, who was revealed a year later by the current Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, who was just as shocked as the rest of the country by this attack. And it’s that Abe sparked both passion and hatred in measured Japan, where controlling emotions is one of the hallmarks of national identity.
Born in 1954 in Nagato, Yamaguchi Prefecture, Abe graduated in politics from Seiki University in 1977 and continued his studies at the University of Southern California in the United States. Like his father, Shintaro Abe, he headed Foreign Affairs and his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister between 1957 and 1960, joined the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD) after a brief stint in private business.
Considered a hawk of Japanese law for his eagerness to reform the country’s pacifist constitution, he maintained tense relations with China and South Korea during his tenure because of his previous visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of those those in conscription for Japan, including a number of World War II criminals. Promoter of economic recovery thanks to his stimulus program called ‘Abenomics’, Japan wanted to restore the international relevance lost by the rise of China. For this, the Olympic and Paralympic Games to be held in Tokyo in the summer of 2020, which were postponed to 2021 due to the corona virus, were essential. Two world events that Abe wanted to usher in but which, first the pandemic and then health, prevented him from doing so. Breaking with traditional Japanese rigidity, he even lent himself to dress up as Super Mario to host the Olympic relay at the close of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. A joke that brought his figure closer to the public around the world. world and his prestige during his second stint at the helm of Japan, very different from his first ten years earlier.
After long experience in the ranks of the hegemonic Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), in 2006 he replaced Junichiro Koizumi as prime minister, who left the government when the presidency of said political formation expired a year after his crushing reelection in the polls. Plagued by numerous corruption scandals and the inexplicable loss of millions of social security contributions, Abe barely lasted a year and resigned in September 2007 due to serious health problems.
Despite that failure, he again ran in the 2012 elections, defeating the Social Democratic government that had suffered from the tsunami and the Fukushima nuclear disaster the year before. Since then, Abe has brought forward the election twice to take advantage of the opposition’s weakness and win re-election with a huge advantage. He did so in 2014 and 2017, when, before continuing to lose popularity over corruption cases threatening his government, he reaffirmed his mandate without giving his main rival, Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, time to fight him. Abe thus ended the traditional brevity that Japanese prime ministers have suffered since Junichiro Koizumi, who was in office from 2001 to 2006. Curiously, the previous prime minister who held this record of permanence was an uncle of his: Eisaku Sato.
Politically, thanks to the weakness of the opposition, Abe survived Japan’s faltering economy, several instances of corruption and favoritism, and the coronavirus pandemic. After retiring two years ago, he was still active and it was possible that he would run for re-election if his health allowed it. Anything to achieve his goal of changing Japan. A revolution that he can achieve even if he dies after this strange attack in a country that displayed its pacifism after the Second World War.
Source: La Verdad
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