Yoshihide Suga is the new Japanese prime minister. What legacy does outgoing premier Shinzo Abe leave behind — the longest-serving in the nation's history?
Last updated 8 July 2022
Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe died at the age of 67 after being wounded by a gunshot, as confirmed by an official announcement on 8 July. Abe was shot in the streets of Nara, a city in central-southern Japan, at around 11:30 in the morning local time. The attacker was identified as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41 years old. Two shots were heard, and at least one struck Abe while he was delivering a speech for a candidate from his Liberal Democratic Party (Ldp) ahead of the Japanese upper house elections scheduled for 10 July.
The suspect, a former member of the maritime self-defence forces, was immediately stopped and arrested. Japanese broadcaster Nhk reported a police statement saying the attacker used a homemade gun to attack the former prime minister.
Abe, who had fallen to the ground unconscious, was airlifted to hospital in Nara in a state of cardiopulmonary arrest, a term "often used in Japan before death is officially confirmed", Washington Post journalist Michelle Ye Hee Lee explained in a tweet. Abe had been wounded on the right side of his neck, and internal bleeding in the chest led to his death.
The reaction across Japan was one of shock, given Abe's popularity and the rarity of this type of attack — as well as gun violence in general — in a country like Japan, where only 6 gun-related deaths were reported in 2014 according to the national police agency.
Japanese firearms law is among the most restrictive in the world. Gun ownership is limited to sport and hunting only, but even in these cases tests, psychological examinations and rigorous background checks are required to obtain a licence. Political violence is also uncommon in the country, at least since the 1960s — a turbulent decade in which the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party, Inejiro Asanuma, was stabbed to death by an ultranationalist.
As Abe fought for his life, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, also a member of the same Liberal Democratic Party as Abe, delivered a moving speech in which he confirmed the seriousness of Abe's condition and condemned the attack.
"This is a cowardly and barbaric act, committed in the midst of an election that lies at the very foundation of democracy, and cannot be tolerated in any way. We condemn it in the strongest possible terms."
The motives behind the attack remain unclear. As this story continues to unfold, we take a look at the life and legacy of Shinzo Abe.
"It is painful to have to leave office before achieving my goals." With these words, and eyes slightly glistening, on 28 August Shinzo Abe unexpectedly announced his decision to step down from leading Japan, the world's third-largest economy, after seven years and eight months. The decision was prompted by a worsening of his ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition affecting the colon that he has long suffered from — the same illness that forced him to resign from his first term in 2007, after just one year as prime minister.
What will Abe be remembered for, beyond being Japan's longest-serving prime minister? Perhaps the one thing everyone agrees on is that his legacy cannot be summed up with a single political note or a defining moment. His years in power were marked by multiple reform programmes, (partial) successes and missed opportunities. It will now fall to cabinet secretary general Yoshihide Suga, Abe's ally within the Liberal Democratic Party (Ldp), to take charge of the unresolved issues, such as the crisis caused by the pandemic and the Olympic Games dilemma.
To understand who Shinzo Abe is and what he represented for Japan, one must go back to his origins. If politics is an art, Abe was born into it: his maternal grandfather Nobusuke served as prime minister between 1957 and 1960, and his great-uncle Eisaku Sato, who headed the government from 1964 to 1972, was the longest-serving premier before his great-nephew. And then there is his father Shintaro Abe, foreign minister from 1982 to 1986.
After studying in Tokyo, where he was born in 1954, and in the United States, Shinzo Abe worked for a steel company before embarking on his political career within the Ldp, the conservative party that has held power almost uninterruptedly since the 1950s. Despite being a member of such an influential family, "from the moment he entered the diet (the Japanese parliament, ed.) in 1993, Abe was always critical of the ruling class that had established itself in the postwar period, which he believed had failed to build a strong and independent nation", recounts Tobias Harris, author of The Iconoclast, a biography of Abe published the day before the resignation announcement.
Indeed, Abe's political rise was built on questions of national pride, such as the issue of Japanese citizens abducted by the North Korean regime in the 1960s. A matter that remains unresolved, as even as prime minister Abe was unable to secure the repatriation of the dozens if not hundreds of people who disappeared.
Following the resignation of popular prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, in 2006 Abe became the first Japanese head of government born after the end of the Second World War. Despite resigning in the wake of a difficult year in office marked by scandals and cases of corruption, Abe returned to lead the country with two electoral victories in 2012 and 2016. Worth noting is his decision to inaugurate his return to power with a visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a monument to those who fell in the Second World War, among them some war criminals. A gesture that symbolised Abe's desire to restore Japan's role as a world power, and some attempts at historical revisionism.
Having restored the nation's standing on the international stage was one of Abe's greatest achievements. Yet the premier is leaving office with an approval rating at its lowest ever level, reflecting the difficult moment the country is going through on the domestic political front, compounded by the coronavirus pandemic. Despite Japan having managed to keep its case numbers relatively low compared to other industrialised countries, the government's slow response to the crisis disappointed many citizens.
The cracks, in truth, had begun to show even before the pandemic. Scandals and cases of corruption — some of which directly implicated the premier, such as the disproportionate use of public funds to organise the annual hanami parties — and the shortcomings of the economic reform programme known as Abenomics, on which the leader had based much of his legitimacy, had already begun to erode Abe's popularity.
I will tear down all the walls that could slow the Japanese economy and chart a new trajectory of growth. This is the mission of Abenomics.
Shinzo Abe
Now that the time has come to take stock of the leader's record — a leader known above all for the economic strategy that bears his name — the wide range of analyses and conflicting judgements from political commentators show how the bittersweet results of Abenomics allow everyone to find arguments both for and against.
"The outgoing premier is not given enough credit for what he has done," reads The Economist. "Before the advent of Covid-19, 'Abenomics' was succeeding, albeit slowly, in resuscitating the economy. The prime minister's legacy is far greater than his quiet exit would suggest."
So, Abe's promise to lift Japan out of decades of deflation (a general fall in prices) resulted in higher profits for large companies and an increase in share values thanks to a monetary stimulus programme. "However, achieving an annual inflation rate of 2 per cent remains a distant goal more than seven years on," writes the Japan Times in an editorial.
"One thing that must be acknowledged is that under Abe, Japan experienced the second-longest period of post-war economic growth," Harris recalls. "Yes, it was brief, interrupted by the increase in the consumption tax (from 8 to 10 per cent, ed.) last year and now by the recession caused by the pandemic. But let us not forget the low unemployment rate and the fact that young people now have excellent employment options. Even if the growth was short-lived, it had a significant impact on the lives of many people."
They want women to shine for them, not for themselves. This is not empowerment.
Wakako Fukuda, feminist and co-founder of Sealds
The impact of Abe's policies is particularly debated when it comes to women. With the Womenomics programme, the outgoing prime minister sought to encourage their economic participation, above all that of mothers. As a result, waiting lists for nurseries were reduced, though not eliminated, maternity and paternity leave was extended, and a law was introduced requiring companies to disclose their female employment targets.
These reforms opened the door of the labour market to two million women who had previously been excluded, with an employment rate of over 77 per cent — higher than in other industrialised countries such as Italy, where only 57 per cent of women are in work.
But in Japan, half of female employment is concentrated in part-time and fixed-term jobs — that is, the lowest-paid ones. Just over one tenth of corporate managers are women, well below the 30 per cent target, and Japan fell eleven places this year in the gender equality ranking compiled annually by the World Economic Forum (Wef), sitting at 121st place out of 153 countries (Italy is 76th).
An embarrassing result for the architect of Womenomics, whose cabinet was made up of 19 men and just one woman. With only 10 per cent of parliamentary seats held by women, Japan has one of the lowest rates of female political representation in the world. And there is more. "The gender gap is by far the highest among advanced economies, and has grown over the past year," reads the Wef's 2020 report. In this context, the coronavirus has highlighted the vulnerability of female employment: of the 970,000 precarious workers who lost their jobs in April,
