Shinzo Abe changed Japan’s meaning for Australia

Recommendable! Shinzo Abe was a transformative Western leader (here is my brief legacy on him)!

"Before Shinzo Abe, Australia’s vital economic relationship with Japan had only small, slowly evolving defence, strategic and intelligence dimensions. By the time he finished as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Australia and Japan were quasi-allies. ...

Abe delivered that revolution. He expanded Japan’s understanding of its regional power and international prerogatives far beyond Australia’s imaginings. In his second term as leader (2012–2020), he transformed Japan’s foreign policy; one part of that was the ‘special relationship’ with Australia.

In 2014, Abe travelled to Canberra to seal a free-trade agreement with Australia. The work had started during his first term as prime minister. After seven long years of negotiation, he made it happen, as much a statement of strategic intent as an economic partnership. ..."

Abe changed Japan’s meaning for Australia | The Strategist

The historic irony of Shinzo Abe's assassination

Given the fact that violent attacks on top Japanese politicians are rare in Japan, but there was, for example, another assassination attempt on a Prime Minister in Japan.

In 1960, then Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi was assailed and stabbed several times with a knife. He survived. He also was the maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe.

According to the Japan Times (see below), there were actually at least a dozen or more severe attacks on Japanese politicians since 1900. In 2007, the mayor of Nagasaki was shot by a "senior member of a crime organization". Thus, you wonder why the security detail of current and former politicians are apparently incapable of preventing a direct close proximity assassination attempt.

Past assassinations and attacks on Japanese politicians

A brief legacy of Shinzo Abe, the longest serving prime minister of Japan after 1945

No doubt he was a consequential Prime Minister for Japan!

His efforts to normalize Japanese pacifism stand out! Among other things, Japan agreed to greater security responsibilities in the U.S.-Japan Alliance.

His efforts to form a closer alliance with South Korea, India, and Australia in response to growing Chinese hegemony in the region were remarkable. Could it be seen as some kind of a containment policy?

He was perhaps one of first Western leaders to meet impromptu with the newly elected U.S. President Trump immediately after his election. They seemed to have developed a special relationship. He saw an opportunity and went for it.

I am not sure whether the so called Abenomics economic policies were so great for Japan. Was not like debt financed Keynesian economics combined with loose monetary policy with artificially low interest rates over a very long period?

Did I forgot something! Certainly! Mea culpa! 😌