PM who sought to end Japan’s wartime legacy of defeat and bolster its economy

Shinzo Abe, who has been assassinated aged 67, grew up in a Japan shamed and shackled by its role in World War II. He was raised in the shadow of his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, a suspected war criminal who later became prime minister and fought to free his country from the restrictions imposed on it after its defeat.

As a young politician Abe witnessed the ‘‘lost decade’’ of the 1990s when Japan’s booming economy succumbed to stagnation. Abe yearned to change all that. A fervent nationalist who on occasion engaged in historical revisionism, he was determined to end Japan’s wartime legacy of defeat and occupation, to restore its pride and confidence, and to build a strong, independent country that would be a player on the international stage.

He failed to do so during his first brief stint as prime minister, which lasted only 366 days before he was forced to resign due to ill health.

He enjoyed more success during his second stint of nearly eight years from 2012, making him Japan’s longest-serving prime minister since the birth of its constitutional government in 1889. Abe restored stability and, thanks in part to an economic experiment labelled ‘‘Abenomics’’, the world’s third largest economy enjoyed its longest postwar boom. He opened up Japan to the outside world, built a strong alliance with the United States and turned his country into a global power that championed free trade and a rulesbased economic order.

In 2020, distracted by scandals, Abe reacted passively to the arrival of Covid-19. The economy went into freefall and he was again forced to resign as prime minister through ill health, by which time his approval ratings had slumped to the mid-30s.

Abenomics had proved only a partial success – generating weak growth while failing to achieve structural reforms, amassing a huge public debt and doing little to remedy Japan’s relentless decline in population. He expanded the role of the military, but failed to rewrite the pacifist constitution imposed on the country after the war.

Shinzo Abe was born in Tokyo, the second son of Shintaro Abe, a journalist-turnedpolitician, and his wife Yoko. His maternal grandfather, Kishi, had been ‘‘economic king’’ of occupied China in the 1930s and was munitions vice-minister during the war.

Kishi was subsequently imprisoned as a war criminal for three years, but re-entered politics after the US occupation ended in 1952 and became prime minister in 1957.

Abe spent a lot of his youth in Kishi’s company after he resigned as PM in 1960, and inherited his strong conservative and nationalist beliefs. After he graduated from university, Abe worked at Kobe Steel until his father became foreign minister in 1982, when Abe was made his private secretary.

In 1987 he married Akie Matsuzaki; they had no children despite trying fertility treatments.

Shintaro Abe died in 1991, and in 1993 Abe won his father’s parliamentary seat as a member of Japan’s dominant centre-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Abe became a prominent member of a group known as the new conservatives. They opposed the postwar consensus that accepted restrictions on Japanese independence and, in their view, left it vulnerable to threats, including a rising China, North Korea’s nuclear programme and, with the Cold War over, US disengagement.

They also resisted any form of apology for Japan’s wartime conduct, but it was the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea in the 1970s and 80s that they, and Abe in particular, used to indict a postwar status quo that failed to protect its own citizens.

The political establishment had long chosen to ignore the fate of at least 17 abducted citizens. Abe made his name by championing their cause, and it was embraced by Junichiro Koizumi after he became prime minister in 2001. When North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il allowed the survivors to visit Japan, Koizumi, at Abe’s behest, refused to return them.

When Koizumi resigned in 2006, Abe was elected leader of the ruling LDP in a landslide.

His first term was not a success; he failed to manage internal divisions, suffered several ministerial scandals and resignations, damaged relations with the US by questioning whether Japan’s army had used women in occupied countries as ‘‘comfort women’’ (sex slaves) during WWII. Worst of all,the government lost 50 million pension records.

The stress exacerbated Abe’s ulcerative colitis and in 2007 he resigned as PM.

At the time he believed his political career was over, but he was wrong. New drugs helped to control his illness. He acknowledged his mistakes. The LDP crashed to defeat in 2009. After the earthquake that triggered the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, Abe delivered emergency supplies to survivors in a hired truck.

In September 2012 he regained the LDP’S leadership with a promise to end Japan’s economic stagnation. That December he led the party back to power with the slogan ‘‘Taking Back Japan’’.

Central to his vision of rejuvenating Japan were the ‘‘three arrows’’ of Abenomics: aggressive monetary easing, fiscal stimulus and structural reforms. Corporate Japan boomed, as did the stock market and employment, but growth during Abe’s second premiership averaged barely 1 per cent. Inequality widened. Wages grew sluggishly. Productivity remained low. Men continued to dominate business and Japan’s population continued to shrink and age.

He opened up Japan to foreign residents, tourists and investment. However, he also passed draconian legislation making it a crime for journalists to publish state secrets.

Due to public opposition Abe failed to revise the Japanese constitution to remove Article 9, which renounces war, prohibits an army and leaves Japan dependent on the US for its security, although he boosted defence spending and enacted landmark legislation permitting Japan’s Self-defence Forces to join overseas combat missions with allied forces in ‘‘collective’’ self-defence operations.

Though Japan weathered the pandemic relatively well, his response was slow and clumsy, his communication poor. He was simultaneously hit by corruption scandals and an economy that had tipped into recession before Covid-19 hit. After several hospital visits he resigned in August 2020, admitting ‘‘it is gut-wrenching to have to leave my job before accomplishing my goals’’.

Abe was shot while campaigning for Japan’s upper house elections. It was a cruel and poignant end for a man who had done so much to help his country move on from its violent past. – The Times