Abe Shinzo: A legacy Japan 'should be proud of'

Abe Shinzo, who was assassinated Friday, angered many across Asia during his years as prime minister with his revisionist views and a push to revamp the Japanese military. Yet he also revitalized Japan’s economy and served as a rare beacon of political stability in the region.

|
Itsuo Inouye/AP/File
Then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during a news conference on Trans-Pacific Partnership at his official residence in Tokyo, March 15, 2013. Mr. Abe was assassinated during a campaign speech on July 8, 2022, in western Japan.

Abe Shinzo was a political blueblood groomed for power. Japan’s longest serving prime minister, he was also perhaps the most polarizing, complex politician in recent Japanese history.

Mr. Abe, who was assassinated Friday, angered both liberals at home and World War II victims in Asia with his hawkish push to revamp the military and his revisionist view that Japan was given an unfair verdict by history for its brutal past.

At the same time, he revitalized Japan’s economy, led efforts for the nation to take a stronger role in Asia, and served as a rare beacon of political stability before stepping down two years ago for health reasons.

“He’s the most towering political figure in Japan over the past couple of decades,” said Dave Leheny, a political scientist at Waseda University. “He wanted Japan to be respected on the global stage in the way that he felt was deserved. ... He also wanted Japan to not have to keep apologizing for World War II.”

Mr. Abe, who died after being shot during a campaign speech, was 67.

Police arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of the attack, which shocked many in Japan, one of the world’s safest nations with some of the strictest gun control laws. Near the suspect was a double-barreled device that appeared to be a handmade gun.

Mr. Abe believed that Japan’s postwar track record of economic success, peace, and global cooperation was something “other countries should pay more attention to, and that Japanese should be proud of,” Mr. Leheny said.

Mr. Abe was a darling of conservatives but reviled by many liberals in Japan. And no policy was more divisive than his cherished, ultimately unsuccessful dream to revise Japan’s war-renouncing constitution. His ultra-nationalism also angered the Koreas and China, both wartime victims of Japan.

That push for constitutional revision stemmed from his personal history. Mr. Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, despised the U.S.-drafted constitution, adopted during the American postwar occupation. For Mr. Abe, too, the 1947 charter was symbolic of what he saw as the unfair legacy of Japan’s war defeat and an imposition of the victors’ world order and Western values.

That constitution renounces the use of force in international conflicts, and limits Japan’s military to self defense, although the country has a well-equipped modern army, navy, and air force that work closely with the United States, Japan’s top ally.

Poor public support for the changes doomed Mr. Abe’s push, but the goal still enjoys backing from his ultra-conservative supporters.

Mr. Abe bristled against postwar treaties and the tribunal that judged Japanese war criminals. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.

He also was a driving force for Japanese conservatives’ efforts to whitewash wartime atrocities and push for an end of apologies over atrocities.

Supporters point to his efforts to raise Japan’s profile on the international stage, and his proposal for a new order of like-minded democracies as a counter to China’s rise, something Washington and others soon endorsed.

Mr. Abe was also a big influence on current Prime Minister Kishida Fumio's policies, pushing for the bolstering of military capability, including a preemptive-strike capability.

Mr. Abe stepped down as prime minister in 2020 because he said the ulcerative colitis he’d had since he was a teenager resurfaced.

He told reporters at the time that it was “gut wrenching” to leave many of his goals unachieved. In addition to the failure on constitutional revision, he was also unable to settle several other unfinished legacies of the war, including normalizing ties with North Korea, settling island disputes with neighbors and signing a peace treaty with Russia formally ending their hostilities in World War II.

Mr. Abe was praised in Washington for his push for a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship, which he saw as a means of bolstering Japan’s defense capability. Japan hosts 50,000 U.S. troops as a bulwark in the region amid tensions with China and North Korea.

Mr. Abe charmed conservatives with his security policies because of fears of terrorism, North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons ambitions and China’s military assertiveness.

But there has always been general public support for the pacifist constitution and divided views on amendments within Mr. Abe’s governing party. Many lawmakers preferred to focus on economic growth.

Mr. Abe said he was proud of working for a stronger Japan-U.S. security alliance and shepherding the first visit by a serving U.S. president to the atom-bombed city of Hiroshima. He also helped Tokyo gain the right to host the 2020 Olympics by pledging that a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant was “under control” when it was not.

Mr. Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at age 52, but his overly nationalistic first stint abruptly ended a year later, also because of his health.

The end of that scandal-laden term was the beginning of six years of annual Japanese leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.

When he returned to office in 2012, Mr. Abe vowed to revitalize the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combined fiscal stimulus, monetary easing, and structural reforms.

He won six national elections and built a rock-solid grip on power, bolstering Japan’s defense role and its security alliance with the U.S. He also stepped up patriotic education at schools and raised Japan’s international profile.

Mr. Abe left office as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister by consecutive days in office, eclipsing the record of Sato Eisaku, his great-uncle, who served 2,798 days from 1964 to 1972.

This story was reported by The Associated Press. Stephen Wade contributed to this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Abe Shinzo: A legacy Japan 'should be proud of'
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2022/0708/Abe-Shinzo-A-legacy-Japan-should-be-proud-of
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe