Shinzo Abe relative Nobusuke Kishi
East and Southeast Asia
Abe publicly recognized the need for improved relations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and, along with Foreign Minister Tarō Asō, sought an eventual summit meeting with former PRC paramount leader Hu Jintao. Abe also said that China–Japan relations should not continue to be based on "emotions".Abe was respected among some politicians in the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan), most notably those who are part of the Pan-Green Coalition seeking Taiwanese independence. Chen Shui-bian welcomed Abe's ministership. Part of Abe's appeal in Taiwan was historical; his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was an anti-communist who supported Chiang Kai-shek's government after the government retreated to the island, and his great-uncle Eisaku Satō was the last prime minister to visit Taiwan while in office.Abe expressed the need to strengthen political, security, and economic ties with Southeast Asian countries. Although the PRC is not within the Southeast Asian region, Japan has also sought its support. However, relations with the PRC and the ROC continue to be tarnished by the Senkaku Islands dispute and Abe's visits to the Yasukuni Shrine.Assassination
On 8 July 2022 around 11:30 JST, Abe was shot while delivering a campaign speech at Yamato-Saidaiji Station, Nara. He was supporting fellow LDP party member Kei Satō for the House of Councillors election.The assassin approached Abe from behind and fired two shots using a homemade firearm. The first shot missed and prompted Abe to turn around, at which point a second shot was fired, hitting Abe in the neck and chest area. He was fatally struck in the heart.Abe was rushed to the Nara Medical University Hospital in Kashihara by helicopter. Prior to his arrival at the hospital, Abe had already shown no vital signs. Despite a transfusion of 100 units of blood (≈ 56 litres), the blood loss was too great and attempts to resuscitate Abe failed; he was pronounced dead at 17:03 JST.  He was 67 years old.A 41-year-old man named Tetsuya Yamagami, a former JMSDF member, was immediately arrested and later confessed to local police. Yamagami stated that he held a grudge against the Unification Church and shot Abe because "the religious group and Abe were connected". Yamagami said he resented the fact that his mother was brain-washed by the religious group, and had gone bankrupt as a result. Yamagami had been trying to kill Hak Ja Han of the Unification Church since around 2002, but he gave up because he could not get close to her, changing his target to Abe. Yamagami said that he "didn't have a grudge against Abe's political beliefs", but instead that he killed Abe because he believed the former prime minister had spread the religion to Japan. Abe and his family were known to have long-standing ties to the Unification Church, dating back to his grandfather Kishi Nobusuke; Abe himself had held speeches in support of the religious movement. According to research by Nikkan Gendai, 10 out of 20 members in the Fourth Abe Cabinet had connections to the Unification Church.In response to the shooting and his subsequent death, numerous present and former world leaders expressed their sympathies and support for Abe. His body was returned to Tokyo the day after his assassination and his funeral took place on 27 September 2022.Controversies and issues
Historic negationism
Many political commentators have described Abe as a right-wing Japanese nationalist. Throughout his political life, Abe often engaged in historical negationism, especially in regards to Japanese war crimes during World War II. According to some analysts, this caused Japan's relations with South Korea and China to deteriorate under his premiership. In the PRC, how Abe is thought of in retrospect is mixed, while he was often criticized as an extreme nationalist, others also recognized his efforts for reconciliation between their two countries.Since 1997, as the bureau chief of the "Institute of Junior Assembly Members Who Think About the Outlook of Japan and History Education", Abe led the Society for History Textbook Reform. Abe was affiliated with the ultra-conservative, revisionist organization Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference).According to Alexis Dudden, a professor of history at the University of Connecticut who specializes in modern Japan and Korea, in the 1990s when Abe first became a parliamentarian he is believed to have co-authored a document denying the Nanjing Massacre; the article used to be available in Japan's Diet archives but has since disappeared. Abe also made comments that denied the occurrence of the massacre. Dudden has said Nanjing Massacre denial is akin to Holocaust denial.In 2007, Abe denied to reporters that Japan forced women into sexual slavery during World War II. On his official homepage, he questioned the extent to which coercion was applied toward the comfort women, dismissing South Korean positions on the issue as foreign interference in Japanese domestic affairs; Abe's position towards the comfort women caused deteriorations of relations between Japan and South Korea. In a Diet session on 6 October 2006, Abe revised his statement regarding comfort women and said that he accepted the report issued in 1993 by the sitting cabinet secretary, Yōhei Kōno, wherein the Japanese government officially acknowledged the issue. Later in the session, Abe stated his belief that Class-A war criminals are not criminals under Japan's domestic law.In a meeting of the Lower House Budget Committee in February 2006, Shinzo Abe said, "There is a problem as to how to define aggressive wars; we cannot say it is decided academically", and "It is not the business of the government to decide how to define the last world war. I think we have to wait for the estimation of historians".On a television program in July 2006, he denied that Manchukuo was a puppet state of Japan. Manchukuo was notorious for its exploitative rule and use of slave labor when it was under the economic management of Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather.Abe published a book called Toward a Beautiful Nation (美しい国へ, Utsukushii kuni e) in July 2006, which became a bestseller in Japan. The South Korean and PRC governments, as well as noted academics and commentators, voiced concern about Abe's historical views.In March 2007, in response to a United States Congress resolution introduced by Mike Honda, Abe denied any government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II. This was in line with a statement made almost ten years earlier, in which Abe voiced his opposition to the inclusion of the subject of military prostitution in several school textbooks while denying any coercion in the "narrow" sense of the word, environmental factors notwithstanding. This statement provoked negative reactions in Asian and western countries; a New York Times editorial on 6 March 2007 commented for instance:Personal life
Abe married Akie Matsuzaki, a socialite and former radio disc jockey, in 1987. She is the daughter of the president of Morinaga, a confectionery manufacturer. She is popularly known as the "domestic opposition party" due to her outspoken views, which often contradicted her husband's. Following her husband's first stint as prime minister, she opened an organic izakaya in the Kanda district of Tokyo, but remained inactive in management due to the urging of her mother-in-law. The couple were unable to have children, having undergone unsuccessful fertility treatments early in their marriage. Abe's elder brother, Hironobu Abe, became president and CEO of Mitsubishi Shōji Packaging Corporation, while his younger brother, Nobuo Kishi, became Senior Vice-Minister for Foreign Affairs.
During his life, Abe abstained from drinking alcohol.In addition to his native Japanese, Abe spoke English.
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