Abe Shinzo, Japan’s longest-serving and most incumbent prime minister in decades, has been fired from his post over health complications.
After weeks of speculation fueled by recent hospital visits, Abe officially raised some suspicions: Although his chronic ulcerative colitis is not life-threatening, he is simply too ill to rule.
“I do not want to make mistakes in important political decisions,” because he is dealing with a worsening of the bowel disease, he told reporters Friday. “I decided that I would not sit in this seat as long as I could not respond with confidence to the mandate of the people.”
Abe will remain in the role he took on for the second time in 2012 (he resigned after only one year in the leadership in 2007, also because of his health), but will step down once his conservative Liberal Democratic Party new leader chooses to party. That choice is likely to occur in late September. He then remained a member of the lower house of parliament and an important party member.
He did not name a favorite to succeed him, and opened a political struggle to lead the world’s third largest economy – and potentially carry on his legacy.
How Abe changed Japan – and the world
The dismissal of the 65-year-old is a wonderful development with profound consequences for the country, East Asia, and the US foreign policy for the region.
A sworn nationalist, Abe came into office eight years ago and made two big promises.
The first was to start Japan’s long sputtering economy – and its record was mixed. Japan’s economy was not booming under its leadership, but overall it grew modestly after two preceding decades of deflation. And it recently entered a recession caused by coronavirus.
However, he made some nice notable reforms, such as allowing foreign workers to leave the country for periods of five years, championing large incentive investments and changes in monetary policy, reforming the nation’s tourism sector, and making it easier – albeit for a long time not easy – for women to work outside the home by expanding kindergarten and home care.
But the recent hit for the economy, exacerbated by the outbreak of the nation’s coronavirus, failed to fully control Abe, dropping its approval ratings in the 30s. That may have contributed to his decision to hand over control now.
His second promise was far more visible to the world and controversial: Japan would pursue a muscular foreign policy with a special focus on opposing China – a major disruption to Tokyo’s post-war ways.
“I have realized that Japan is expected to exercise leadership not only on the economic front, but also in the field of security in the Asia-Pacific Ocean,” he told the Wall Street Journal in October 2013, just 10 months after his office. “There are concerns that China is trying to change the status quo by force, instead of by law,” he continued, adding that “it should not take that path, and many peoples expect Japan to that view will be strongly expressed. “
Many Japanese allies have endorsed that aggressive Japanese stance. “Abe put Japan on a grand strategy to secure a free and open Indo-Pacific Ocean that was embraced by the United States, India and Australia and welcomed by much of South and Southeast Asia and Europe,” he said. Mike Green, an expert from Japan at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Think Tank in Washington.
Such a policy required that Japan have a close relationship with the United States, which Abe followed and cultivated throughout his time in power. He was, for example, the first foreign leader to elect President Donald Trump in November 2016, and spent about 90 minutes with him at Trump Tower. However, this progress did not always work, as Trump scolded Japan over trade issues and for not paying more for hosting the roughly 50,000 U.S. troops in the country.
He also had other worldwide failures. He made little attempt to revise the US-created pacifist constitution of Japan to introduce a more traditional military ban since World War II, did not reach deals with Russia or China over long-disputed islands, increased tensions with South Korea, and failed to limit North Korea’s nuclear program alongside allies.
But for many experts, his overall record makes such deficits more than good. “He has not achieved everything that Japan needed, but in many decades he has achieved more than any Japanese leader,” Green told me. “And above all, he demonstrated that Japan can lead.”
That last point is important. Despite his many mistakes, Abe’s legacy is likely to take Japan from a shaky country of courageous action in the world to one more confident in the world.
Abe may soon be gone, then, but his impact on Japan – and the world – is primarily to be felt for years to come.
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