Few other Japanese leaders in living memory have left as deep an imprint on their country as Shinzo Abe. One of the most transformative politicians of the postwar era, he was shot dead at the age of 67 while giving a campaign speech in the western city of Nara ahead of elections to the upper house.
When he stepped down as prime minister in 2007 after only a year, most people assumed he would fade into an undistinguished career on the backbenches. Yet just over a decade later, he had become Japan’s longest-serving premier, with a host of major political reforms to his name and even his own globally recognised brand of economic stimulus, Abenomics.
In 2012, when Abe reclaimed the helm of state in a landslide election, the Japanese economy, once the second largest in the world, had flatlined for two decades. Though many had tried, none had succeeded in rousing it out of stagnation. Facing tough odds, Abe took a three-pronged approach of dramatically increasing the money supply, boosting government spending, and driving through structural reform.
His “Abenomics” combination was to deliver a massive jolt that aimed to lift inflation to 2%, stimulate consumer spending, and reinvigorate the “animal spirits” of Japan’s capitalist class. The bold neoliberal move shook awake a moribund stock market and drove substantial gains for Japan’s big export companies. The excitement of change and an open future propelled Abe into the global spotlight as he declared, “Japan is back”.
Abe pushed through further reforms, many exposing his arch-conservative leanings, which had changed little from his first premiership. However, borne aloft by the wind of Abenomics, he was able to see through policy objectives that were stymied earlier. His State Secrets Act rendered many whistleblowing activities illegal and subject to harsh punishment. Against widespread public protest, he expanded military spending and reinterpreted the constitution to enable Japan’s self defence forces to help allies under attack. Controversially, he restarted nuclear energy, which had lain dormant since the Fukushima disaster of 2011.
Facing a population in decline, Abe unfurled programmes to boost marriage and fertility rates, making significant expansions to childcare, under the maternalist wartime slogan of “give birth, increase [the population]!” Women’s employment expanded, but mainly in temporary contract jobs, while he rolled back goals for promoting women in leadership positions in business from 30 % to a mere 5%.
However, Abenomics never fully delivered the economic recovery it promised. The loose monetary policy sent government debt soaring to nearly 240% of GDP under his watch. Instead of a spending revival, average household income declined, as the gains were not redistributed and consumers were hit by controversial sales tax increases. The inflation rate – the engine of the reform – never got to 2%, and indeed by 2020 it was negative. The late-capitalist trio of debt, deflation and depopulation continued to hound him.
Still, by the middle of 2020, Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, having closed the rotating door to the seat that had been held by 14 people in the previous two decades. What was the secret of his success?
In 2007, he had ended his year-long first term as prime minister in the face of money scandals and election losses. When he was re-elected five years later, the landscape had changed. His campaign slogan from a 2014 snap election gives the most succinct answer: “There is no other path.”
The opposition parties were in disarray, and stalwarts from Abe’s Liberal Democratic party could only cheer when its main rival, the Democratic party of Japan, split in two. There was simply no challenge on the horizon – or within the LDP. In a savvy political move, Abe blocked off the traditional source of alternative views within Japan’s largely one-party democracy, namely competition among factions within the LDP.
He neutered his main challengers by handing them difficult ministerial portfolios, and tamed the once largely independent civil service by appointing key positions himself. He also disciplined the media through his chief cabinet officer and successor in office, Yoshihide Suga, known for his bulldog approach to reporters. In this new context, the money scandals that continued to dog Abe across his second term were a mere annoyance rather than a real threat.
Abe’s greatest achievements lay in foreign policy, if measured in maintaining stability. As prime minister, he was continuously on the road, visiting more countries than any predecessor, as he fanned out from Japan’s traditional alliances to secure trade deals across the world. His strong nationalist leanings were often, if not always, tempered when dealing with Japan’s closest neighbours, still sensitive over Japan’s imperial aggressions.
He did much to secure the Japan-US alliance even as it came under pressure, particularly as the White House adopted increasingly tough language against its traditional allies. Abe’s diplomatic skills earned him the nickname “the Trump whisperer” as the US backed down from threats of import tariffs and an increase in the fees Japan pays to host American military bases. When the US pulled out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, Abe kept the pact alive, becoming the standard-bearer of the regional alliance.
Yet he was never able to lay hands on his most sought-after trophy: revising the constitution. Amendment had long been a part of the LDP platform, but Abe went much further than his predecessors to push for changing a document that had not been revised since 1947. The heart of the contention was article 9, which renounces the right of war, but Abe hoped to alter nearly every article in the document, often derided as an imposition by US occupying forces. Yet constitutional revision has long been controversial among a public that has embraced the Peace Article as a part of national identity.
Thus Abe took a careful, but unrelenting, approach. He lowered the voting age to get young people on board, he launched public relations campaigns against some outmoded phrasing in the document, and he raised the issue after every election win. Still caution prevailed: the revision never went to a vote.
Many predicted that Abe would ride the hype of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics to push through changes at long last. But once those became the 2021 Olympics, it became clear that ever-receding goal would remain out of grasp. By the summer of 2020, Abe was struggling under criticism of the government’s response to Covid-19, and with the return of the ulcerative colitis that had occasioned his first resignation, in 2007. In September 2020, he stepped down to become one of the most influential politicians on the back benches, ensuring the succession of his allies Suga and Fumio Kishida into the prime ministership.
Born in Tokyo, Shinzo was the son of Yoko Kishi and Shintaro Abe. After studying public administration at Seikei University and public policy at the University of Southern California, he took up employment, first in industry and later in assistant roles within government. In 1993, he formally entered the family business – politics – when he was elected to the House of Representatives. The seat he took had long been held by his father, a career politician and former minister.
The political pedigree on his mother’s side, however, was yet more influential. Shinzo’s great-uncle, Eisaku Satō, was the longest-serving prime minister of the postwar years before Abe overtook him, but more of an inspiration was his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who became prime minister after he was rehabilitated from accusations of war crimes. Abe’s long struggle to revise the Japanese constitution was often seen as a continuation of a battle that his grandfather championed.
In 1987 Abe married Akie Matsuzaki, an heiress and former radio disc jockey whose outspoken views gained her the title of the “domestic opposition party” during her husband’s premiership. Given the relatively smooth passage he had from the Diet during his eight years in power, this may have been the greatest source of political challenge that he encountered.
She survives him.
• Shinzo Abe, politician, born 21 September 1954; died 8 July 2022
