Japan loses its political reference of the 21st century

On July 8, the most influential politician in Japan He violently disappeared from the scene. Shinzo Abe He was shot dead on a street in the city of Nara while campaigning for the candidates of his formation, the Liberal Democratic Party, for the Senate elections, which are held on July 10. With his death, the Japanese leader who has defined the foreign and economic policy of the third world power in the last two decades disappears.

Born into an elite Japanese family in 1954, Abe lived the politics of his country from his earliest childhood. His grandfather was the prime minister nobusuke kishi and his father, Shintarou Abe, held the portfolios of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Abe obtained his first act of deputy in 1993. It was the beginning of a vast political career that led him to become the youngest Japanese prime minister since the end of World War II and the premiere longest-serving in his country, holding this position uninterruptedly from December 26, 2012 until September 2020, when he resigned due to health problems.

A conservative politician with firm nationalist convictions, he did not manage to complete, however, most of the economic, political and security projects he wanted for his country. However, he is considered the great “transformer” of Japan in this century.

Known for his tough foreign policy and economic strategy known as Abenomics, whose ultimate goal was to revive the Japanese economy after two decades of recession, his fame as a statesman came to him from 2012. It was in that year that he made a surprising political comeback and promised the Japanese that he would pull the country out of depression and the difficult economic situation he was going through. A scenario further aggravated by the triple disaster of March 2011, when a strong earthquake caused the gigantic tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

“Abe fought for Japan to regain the leading role that corresponded to it as the third world power, as well as to stop Chinese expansionism”

There began his long and fruitful second political stage, in which he earned the respect of the Japanese and international public opinion. He fought to place his country on the international scene and to recover the prominence that corresponded to him as third world power, as well as to curb Chinese expansionism. This led him to maintain a firm alliance with the different presidents of the United States.

Gone was a fleeting and controversial first step of just over a year as prime minister, in 2006. A position from which he resigned due to health problems and various scandals in his administration, including the loss of 50 million pension records. It was a long desert crossing, which many analysts doubted he would survive, given the Japanese tradition of sacrificing their resigned prime ministers.

But Abe came back and established himself as a statesman. However, he never saw his great political project of Japan being a “normal country” realized. An objective that included reviewing the pacifist constitution imposed by the US in 1947 and achieve its own Magna Carta that would allow it to have a army. A goal that was partially achieved in 2015 when it achieved a constitutional amendment that allows Japan to mobilize its troops to defend itself and provide military support to its allies abroad.

Despite the lights and shadows of his political management, no one questions, however, that Abe was the great architect of the security structures that currently govern the indo-pacific region, in his obsession with curbing Chinese expansionism. A term that, by the way, was the first to coin.

«His firm nationalist positions led him to have frequent clashes with his neighbors because of the war crimes committed by the imperial troops during World War II»

And the fact is that this tough and skilled Japanese politician is responsible for a large part of the regional initiatives to curb the growing economic and military power of China in the region. The initiative of ATV, a security cooperation framework that encompasses Japan, the US, Australia and India, is one of them. and the signature of Transpacific Economic Cooperation Agreement signed by 11 countries from both shores of the Pacific Ocean and from which the president of the United States stepped down, donald trumpis another example.

His strong nationalist positions also led him to have frequent clashes with his neighbors because of the war crimes committed by the imperial troops during the war. Second World War. Abe felt that his country had already apologized enough. Conviction that he led him to have an icy relationship with South Korea due to the dispute between the two countries over the so-called “comfort women”. Abe rejected, like the rest of the Japanese leaders, Seoul’s accusations that Korean women had been used as sexual slaves during World War II.

His successes and failures caused his popularity to fluctuate in Japan, although he remained the most influential leader of his party, the all-powerful Liberal Democratic Party. Proof of this is that this formation modified its regulations so that Abe could be re-elected as leader for the third consecutive time and thus try to culminate his efforts to modernize the country’s economy and put it back on the path of economic growth.

To strengthen the Japanese economy, Abe designed a global strategy that he named Abenomics. A package of measures aimed at bringing the country out of the deflationary doldrums, while maintaining fiscal discipline. However, the volatile international economic situation and internal weakness caused Japan to fall back into recession and it will not achieve all the goals it had set for itself.

That scenario, coupled with various slowdowns and its failure to empower women in corporate leadership positions, as well as difficulties in changing unhealthy work cultures, called into question the validity of its economic proposals. However, his successors continue to bet on keeping Abenomics current. An unequivocal sign that Abe will continue to influence the future of his country beyond his death.