Japanese PM Shinzo Abe resigns due to chronic illness

SEOUL, South Korea — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced Friday that he was stepping down because of illness, ending a recordbreaking tenure marked less by grand achievements than by measured economic and diplomatic gains and mixed success in his push to bolster Japan’s military power.

In a lengthy news conference, Abe apologized to his compatriots for stepping down at a time when the country was struggling with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and before he had accomplished some of his most cherished goals, including a revision of the country’s U.S.-installed pacifist constitution.

“I must ask you for your forgiveness that I’m resigning now,” he said.

He said his long-standing chronic illness, ulcerative colitis, had reemerged in recent months and he was in need of treatment; his frequent visits to the hospital had fueled speculation about his health. He will remain in the position until a successor is formally named.

Abe first vaulted into the prime minister’s office in 2006 as the youngest person, at age 52, ever to hold the job. But poor health cut short that stint, too, after only a year.

Abe, now 65, returned to power in 2012 for a second time in the wake of a tumultuous period in Japanese politics and in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. A scion of an elite political family, Abe on Monday broke the record of his own great-uncle, Eisaku Sato, for consecutive days as premier. Sato served 2,798 days from 1964 to 1972.

While the years under Abe’s leadership marked a period of political stability rare for Japan, he will leave behind a contentious legacy shaped by his nationalist bent and modest economic gains that are now in danger of being wiped out by the pandemic.

Abe’s approval ratings have tumbled in recent months to one of the lowest levels during his years in office amid perceptions that his leadership was absent in the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in Japan.

“He was nearly invisible most of the time, and when he did come out, it was with eccentric, illthought-out policies,” said Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

In assessing his own legacy Friday, Abe said it would be “up to the judgment of the people.” At the same time, he highlighted Japan’s recovery from the Fukushima disaster, economic growth following nearly two decades of deflation and President Barack Obama’s 2016 visit to Hiroshima, a first by a U.S. leader.

Abe was deeply influenced by his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who was once jailed as a war crimes suspect but went on to serve as prime minister in postwar Japan from 1957 to 1960. Throughout his time in office, Abe unsuccessfully pursued the unfulfilled ambition of his grandfather to revise Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, which renounces war.

Even without the revision, Abe in 2015 pushed through laws that reinterpreted the constitutional restrictions and broadened Japan’s use of military powers.