Japanese former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has died, public broadcaster NHK said on Friday.
Abe, 67, had been delivering a stump speech near a train station in the western city of Nara when he was shot by an assailant.
When he came to office for the second time in 2012, Abe launched an unprecedented effort to revive Japan’s flagging economy -- what became known as “Abenomics” -- based on a surge of monetary easing and government spending. Its success propelled his LDP to six straight election wins, making Abe the country’s longest-serving prime minister, with more than 2,800 consecutive days in office.
The legacy of that policy, including a weaker yen and the Bank of Japan’s ultra-easy support for the economy, remained largely intact even after he stepped down in 2020 -- and even after other central banks started raising borrowing costs in 2022 to stem rampant inflation.
Political Dynasty
Abe wasbornSept. 21, 1954 in Tokyo. His father, Shintaro Abe, was a foreign minister and his maternal grandfather was the prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, whose views Abe has cited as a strong influence.
He was the second of three boys born to Shintaro and Yoko Abe. The eldest, Hironobu Abe, went into business. His younger brother, Nobuo, was adopted by a relative and in 2020 became defense minister, Nobuo Kishi.
Shinzo Abe graduated from the Department of Political Science, the Faculty of Law, atSeikei University, in 1977, according to agovernment website. Ten years later he married Akie Matsuzaki, who was working at the advertising firmDentsu Inc.They had no children.
He began his political career in 1993, when he was elected to take over his father’s constituency in the southwestern prefecture of Yamaguchi. The clean-cut, young politician was soon singled out as a future leader and appointed to a position in the prime minister’s office in 2000.
He went on to accompany then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi on a surprise trip to North Korea in 2002 and became his chief cabinet secretary in 2005. The following year, he took over the leadership of the LDP at 52 -- becoming the country’s youngest postwar prime minister.
His triumph was short-lived: Abe stepped down a year later, blaming a chronic medical condition, ulcerative colitis. His exit led to a revolving door of two further yearlong premierships, followed by the LDP’s historic loss of power in 2009. The three years it spent in opposition were viewed as a humiliation for a party that had been in government almost continuously since 1955.
Covid Hit
Everything changed again with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. The disease hit an economy already strained from trade disputes and asales tax hikethat Abe finally pushed through in 2019 after two delays.
While Japan’s total Covid-19 death toll remains a fraction of that of other Group of Seven nations, the outbreak forced the postponement of theTokyo 2020 Olympics. Abe had promoted the event by dressing up as video-game character Super Mario for a cameo at the closing ceremonies in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
The infection effectively shut down the tourist industry his government had nurtured, and devastated consumption and exports. Even the female workers he had boasted of retaining in the aging and labor-starved economy began to lose their jobs.
Abe’s handling of the virus came in for intense criticism. At the same time, a fresh scandal surfaced over a former cabinet minister accused of bribing voters to help get his wife elected to parliament’s upper house.
His public support fell to record lows in some surveys, Abe spent less time in the public eye even as the virus outbreak worsened in July and August 2020, sparking speculation over his health.
On Aug. 17, 2020, he went to Keio University Hospital -- the hospital that treated him after his 2007 resignation -- for what aides told domestic media were tests. He stepped down later the same month, and the reins were taken over by his former right-hand man, Yoshihide Suga, who again lasted only a year.
Abe again made a remarkable recovery, remaining a member of parliament and an outspoken voice on security policy.
His repeated calls for a doubling of defense spending -- controversial within and outside Japan -- and for a revision of the pacifist constitution, are seen by some as having nudged the once-dovish current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to take a more robust stance.