Shinzo Abe, a polarising, nationalist scion of an elite political dynasty and Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, defined an era of reform and invited the world to reassess the giant Asian economy under his “Abenomics” banner. He died after being shot during a campaign speech in western Japan at the age of 67.
Abe’s second term in office, which stretched from late 2012 to the summer of 2020 and generated fandom, scandal and large-scale protests, stood in striking contrast with the decades that preceded it and his first short one-year stint as prime minister. His was an outsized incumbency, said political analysts, for an outsized political figure.
For years after the collapse of the 1980s stock and property bubble, Japan struggled with economic stagnation, a succession of prime ministers each lasting an average of around 18 months, and the nation’s creeping diminution on the global stage. Abe, who mixed domestic charisma with diplomatic verve, sought to redress all of that.