Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe dies after being shot during a speech in Nara Prefecture
July 8, 2022 7:16 PM Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shoots
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot during his speech, died at a hospital in Kashihara City, Nara Prefecture, where he was undergoing treatment. He was 67.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was born in Tokyo, his grandfather was former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, who revised the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty, and his father was Shintaro Abe, who served as secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party and Minister for Foreign Affairs.
After graduating from Seikei University, he studied abroad in the United States and joined the steel manufacturer Kobe Steel, and then became a ministerial secretary when his father, Shintaro, became Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Following Shintaro's death, he took over his foothold and ran for election to the House of Representatives in 1993 from the former Yamaguchi 1st district and was elected for the first time.
He served as the Director of the Party's Youth Bureau, which is said to be the gateway to success for Prime Minister and President, Chairman of the Party's Social Affairs Department, which is in charge of social security, and served as Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary in the second Mori and Koizumi Cabinets.
Mr. Abe, who had been working on the abduction issue by North Korea from an early stage, visited North Korea with Prime Minister Koizumi and witnessed a summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Then, in 2003, without any experience in cabinet ministers or party executive posts, he was overtaken by Prime Minister Koizumi as party secretary-general at the young age of 49, and in the third Koizumi Cabinet in 2005, he entered the Cabinet for the first time as Chief Cabinet Secretary. <
I ran in the LDP presidential election in 2006 to choose the successor to Prime Minister Koizumi, who had built a long-term administration, and was elected president on my first attempt, and became Prime Minister at the age of 52, the youngest person in the post-war era.
During his tenure, he visited China and South Korea, where relations had cooled due to the issue of Mr. Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, and while striving to improve relations, he also enacted the amended Basic Act on Education and the National Referendum Law, which stipulates the procedures for constitutional revision, under the banner of "breaking away from the postwar system."
However, in addition to the revelation of sloppy management of public pension records, a series of cabinet ministerial resignations led to a heavy defeat in the House of Councillors election in 2007, inviting a so-called "twisted Diet."
Partly due to the deterioration of his own health, he resigned about a year after taking office.
After retiring from office, he worked on issues such as the abduction issue as chairman of the "Sosei Japan," a policy group of bipartisan conservative Diet members, but in 2012, when the LDP was an opposition party, he ran for president again. <
He was elected president in a run-off election, regained power in the subsequent House of Representatives election, and returned to the position of Prime Minister.
In order to overcome deflation, the second administration has made efforts to revitalize the economy by placing the highest priority on "economic revitalization" and promoting "Abenomics" based on bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy, and the "three arrows" of the Growth Strategy to stimulate private investment.
With regard to the consumption tax, following the raising of the tax rate from 5 percent to 8 percent in 2014, in Reiwa 1999 we introduced a reduced tax rate for the first time, which left the tax rate unchanged at 8 percent for food and other goods, and raised it to 10 percent.
In addition, when the Emperor succeeded to the Imperial Throne from the Emperor to His Majesty, we worked on the development of a special law that would allow abdication for a limited period of one generation, as well as the accompanying revision of the Imperial Family.
The year after I assumed the post of Prime Minister, I spearheaded the bid for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games and won the Tokyo Games. <
On the diplomatic front, under the banner of "diplomacy that takes a panoramic perspective of the world map," during his tenure in office, he visited a total of 176 countries and regions, holding the G7 Ise-Shima Summit in 2016 and the first G20 Osaka Summit in Japan in Reiwa year.
After the conclusion of the Ise-Shima Summit, Mr. Abe became the first sitting president to visit Hiroshima City, the site of the atomic bombings of then-U.S. President Barack Obama, while Mr. Abe himself became the first sitting Prime Minister to visit Pearl Harbor in Hawaii to commemorate the victims of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
With Mr. Obama's successor, Mr. Trump, he was among the first to meet among the leaders of various countries before taking office to build personal trust, and including telephone talks, he has held 50 summits.
In terms of economic diplomacy, we have advanced negotiations on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) = Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and although the United States withdrew, we have succeeded in bringing it into force with the participation of 11 countries.
Furthermore, in the area of security, after a Cabinet decision to change the conventional interpretation of the Constitution and allow the exercise of the right of collective self-defense to be limited in scope, we enacted security-related laws and greatly changed the security policy of the postwar Japan.
In addition, he instructed the compilation of specific items to be amended with the aim of realizing constitutional revision, and under the Abe administration, the LDP compiled a four-point amendment bill including the clarification of the Self-Defense Forces.
During this period, Prime Minister Abe won six national elections for the House of Representatives and the House of Councillors, and in the 2018 LDP presidential election, he won three elections made possible by the revision of party rules.
On the other hand, opposition parties continued to pursue the issue of falsification of approval documents approved by the Ministry of Finance regarding Moritomo Gakuen, the problem of Kakei Gakuen, and the response of the "Cherry Blossom Viewing Party," and even within the LDP, it was pointed out that it was "a symbol of the confusion and distortion of the long-term administration."
Then, in Reiwa 2, as the infection of the new coronavirus spread worldwide, I responded by issuing a "declaration of a state of emergency" based on the Special Measures Law for the first time, but my chronic disease ulcerative colitis recurred and I resigned as Prime Minister in August.
His consecutive tenure as Prime Minister has reached seven years and eight months, and his total tenure combined with the first administration has reached eight years and eight months, both of which are the longest in history.
After retiring as Prime Minister, Mr. Abe was active as a non-factional faction for a while, but in the autumn of last year he returned to his former faction for the first time in nine years, and became the chairman of the "Abe faction", the largest faction in the party, and actively expressed the necessity of foreign and security policy and active public finance.
Mr. Abe was shot while giving a speech in Nara City at around 11:30 a.m. on the 8th, and was taken to a hospital in Kashihara City for treatment, but he died.
He was 67.
Mr. Abe's Economic and Fiscal Measures
The three pillars of the policy are bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy, and the growth strategy, and these policies were said to be the three arrows.
With regard to monetary policy, in January 2013, the government and the Bank of Japan issued an extraordinary joint statement, in which the Bank of Japan set a clear target of achieving the inflation rate of 2 percent in about two years.
Then, under Governor Kuroda, the Bank of Japan embarked on large-scale monetary easing in April 2013, which is called "a new dimension."
Financial markets reacted to this, and the yen's appreciation to the point where it recorded a high of 1 dollar = 75 yen in 2011 began to move rapidly toward yen depreciation.
In 2015, the yen depreciated to the 125 yen level = 1 dollar.
The stock market also recovered rapidly, and the Nikkei Stock Average rose from 10,80.12 yen on December 25, 2012, the day before the inauguration of the administration, to 24,270.62 yen on October 2, 2018, marking the highest price in about 27 years at the time.
Corporate earnings have also recovered, and the active job openings-to-applicants ratio improved to the highest level in about 45 years in August 2018.
On the other hand, in fiscal 2013, immediately after the inauguration of the administration, although the growth rate of GDP = gross domestic product increased to 2.7 percent, the growth rate remained in the range of 0 percent to 1 percent in most fiscal years, and it was pointed out that "there is little sense of economic recovery."
In addition, the Bank failed to achieve its target of 2 percent inflation.
Mr. Abe raised the consumption tax rate twice during his tenure.
As the aging of the population progresses, tax revenues alone cannot cover the ever-increasing social security expenses, and the second Abe administration raised the consumption tax rate from 5 percent to 8 percent in April 2014 in order to secure financial resources for social security expenses and to promote fiscal soundness.
Although the tax hike to 10% was postponed twice due to the decline in personal consumption after the tax hike, in October 2019 we raised it to 10% and introduced a reduced tax rate that will remain unchanged at 8% for food products and other products.
We aimed to use the tax revenues from the tax hike to fund the provision of free early childhood education and childcare, and to transform the social security system into one oriented to all generations.
In terms of trade policy, we have made the promotion of free trade a pillar of our growth strategy, which has led to the entry into force of large-scale trade agreements such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) = Economic Partnership Agreement between Japan and the EU and the European Union.
Former Prime Minister Abe, the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Sports World
At the IOC = International Olympic Committee General Assembly held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in September 2013, then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe made his final presentation in which he explained that the issue of contaminated water at TEPCO's Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant was "under control."
Tokyo appealed to the fact that it has a stable financial base and is the safest city in the world, and it was decided to host the Tokyo Olympics for the first time since 1964.
At the closing ceremony of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, he appeared in the form of the game character "Mario" and contributed to the PR of the Tokyo Games.
In March 2020, the Olympic year marked by the spread of the novel coronavirus around the world, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held a telephone conversation with IOC President Bach and proposed postponing the Games for about a year.
As a result, it has been decided that the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games will be postponed for the first time in history.
The Olympic flame had already been brought from Greece to the Japan, just before the torch relay began.
After retiring as Prime Minister in September of that year, he was awarded the Gold Medal of Merit by the IOC called the "Olympic Order" for his contribution to the spread and development of the Olympic Games, and since then he has served as an honorary chief advisor to the Organizing Committee of the Games, and has devoted himself to the holding of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games.
He was also a member of the archery team in college and served as president of the All-Japan Archery Federation for many years.
