Abe, 67, appeared to have been shot during a campaign speech on Friday, national broadcaster NHK reported.
The Conservative lawmaker, who abruptly resigned as prime minister in 2007 after a year in office, returned for a rare second term in 2012 promising to revive a stagnant economy, ease the limits of the pacifist constitution of after the war and to restore traditional values.
He was instrumental in securing the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo, nurturing a wish to preside over the Games and even appearing as Nintendo’s video game character, Mario, when the Olympics were handed over.
Abe became Japan’s longest-serving prime minister in November 2019, but by the summer of 2020 public support had been eroded by his handling of the COVID-19 outbreak as well as a series of scandals, including the arrest of his former justice minister. He stepped down without presiding over the Games, which were postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19.
He took office in 2006 as Japan’s youngest prime minister since World War II. After a year marred by political scandals, outrage among readers over the loss of pension records and an election defeat for his ruling party, Mr Abe resigned citing health concerns.
“What worries me the most now is that because of my resignation, the conservative ideals that the Abe administration raised will fade,” Abe later wrote in Bungei Shunju magazine.
“From now on, I want to sacrifice myself as the sole legislator so that true conservatism takes root in Japan.”
Five years after his resignation, which he blamed on an intestinal disease, ulcerative colitis, Abe returned to power his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), ousted in 2009.
He then launched a three-pronged strategy, “Abenomics”, to overcome persistent deflation and revive economic growth through extremely flexible monetary policy and fiscal spending, as well as structural reforms to cope with rapid aging and shrinking Population.
Deflation has proved stubborn, however, and its growth strategy suffered in 2019 from a sales tax hike and the Sino-US trade war. The following year, the COVID-19 outbreak triggered the biggest economic collapse Japan had ever seen.
At the start of the epidemic, Abe was late in closing Japan’s borders and implementing a state of emergency urging people to stay at home and shops to close. Critics first called the response clumsy and then blamed Abe for a lack of leadership.
Even so, Japan’s death rate remained well below that of many other developed countries.
DYNASTY
Abe comes from a wealthy political family whose father was foreign minister and whose great-uncle was prime minister. But when it came to many policies, his grandfather, the late Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, seems to have been the most important.
Kishi was a wartime minister imprisoned but never tried as a war criminal after World War II. He served as prime minister from 1957 to 1960, before resigning due to public outrage over the renegotiation of the US-Japan security pact.
Aged five at the time, Abe heard the sound of clashes between police and left-wing crowds protesting the pact outside parliament, as he played on his grandfather’s lap.
Kishi tried unsuccessfully to revise Japan’s 1947 constitution, drafted by the United States, in order to become an equal security partner to the United States and to adopt more assertive diplomacy – issues at the heart of Japan’s own agenda. Abbe.
Abe has increased defense spending and reached out to other Asian countries to counter China. He pushed for laws allowing Japan to exercise the right of “collective self-defense”, or to militarily aid an ally under attack.
Revising the pacifist constitution remained a priority for Abe, a controversial goal since many Japanese consider the charter responsible for the country’s post-war peaceful record.
Abe’s underlying agenda was to escape what he called the post-war regime, a legacy of US occupation that conservatives say robbed Japan of its national pride. Reforming the education system to restore traditional walls was another of his goals.
He also took a less apologetic stance toward Japan’s actions during World War II, saying that future generations shouldn’t have to constantly apologize for past mistakes.
CLOSED POSITION
First elected to parliament in 1993, after his father’s death, Abe rose to national prominence by taking a tough stance on his unpredictable neighbor North Korea in a dispute over Japanese citizens kidnapped by Pyongyang several decades ago.
Although Abe has also sought to improve ties with China and South Korea, where bitter memories of the war run deep, he angered those two neighbors in 2013 by visiting Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, considered by Beijing and Soul as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism.
Thereafter, he refrained from going there in person and preferred to send ritual offerings.
Across the Pacific, Abe forged close ties with US President Donald Trump, playing golf and engaging in frequent phone calls and meetings.
He was re-elected as LDP President for a third consecutive three-year term in 2018 after a party rule change and, until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, some within the LDP had considered another change of settlement to allow him a fourth term.