Do we like Shinzo Abe?
Our score: 4 out of 10. Real statecraft and a long run in office, set against a thin record on women's leadership, wartime apologies and straight answers over scandals.
Abe was born in Tokyo in 1954 into a political dynasty: his father was a foreign minister and his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was a prime minister. He entered parliament in 1993, took the top job in 2006, quit a year later amid money scandals and election losses, then stormed back in 2012. By 2020 he was Japan's longest-serving PM.
The economics were Abenomics: cheap money, government spending and reform. The Guardian's obituary says it never fully delivered, with inflation stuck below target and debt near 240 per cent of GDP. He also reinterpreted the constitution so Japan's military could help allies under attack, over big public protests, and he never got his Article 9 rewrite to a vote.
The scandal that stuck was the cherry blossom party. Opposition lawmakers pointed to illegal payments for supporter dinners; in December 2020 prosecutors decided not to charge Abe and indicted his long-time aide instead. Abe apologised and said he was “keenly aware of my moral responsibility”, while opposition lawmakers say he gave Parliament wrong statements at least 118 times.
On the harm check, the record is mixed rather than damning. On wartime history he visited the Yasukuni shrine in December 2013, which angered China and South Korea and drew a US statement of disappointment. In 2015 he told Harvard only that his “heart aches” for the victims of trafficking, which critics read as sidestepping a comfort women apology. Nothing turned up showing him campaigning against LGBTQ+ people.
On women and same-sex marriage, the picture is thin. He launched “womenomics” programmes and women's employment rose, but mostly in temporary jobs, and he wound a 30 per cent target for women in business leadership back to 5 per cent. In the Diet in 2015 he said the constitution did not envisage same-sex marriage and urged extreme caution on any change. That isn't a crusade, but it isn't an ally's record either.
His death is part of the story. He was shot dead while campaigning in Nara in July 2022. The killer, Yamagami, said he targeted Abe over a video message Abe sent to an event of a church-linked group in 2019. Reporting shows Abe's own church ties were a video message, while his family and the LDP's links to the group go back decades, so that motive is the killer's claim and not a finding about Abe.