Shinzo Abe relative Abe Shintarō
Early life
Family
Shinzo Abe was born on 21 September 1954 to a prominent political family in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Although as a boy he aspired to become a filmmaker, Abe's family history led him upon a political path. His father Shintaro Abe served in the House of Representatives from 1958 to 1991, with stints as Chief Cabinet Secretary, Minister for International Trade and Industry, and Minister for Foreign Affairs. During World War II, Shintaro volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot but the war ended before he completed training.Abe's maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was the de facto "economic king" of occupied China and Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state in Northern China established after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the lead-up to the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II. During the war, Kishi served as Vice Minister of Munitions in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tojo. At the end of the war, Kishi was imprisoned as a suspected "Class-A" war criminal by the US military occupation of Japan, but was released and later de-purged as part of the Occupation's "reverse course" due to the Cold War. Kishi helped found the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1955 and served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 until his 1960 resignation following the Anpo protests. The BBC speculated that Abe's aversion to protests may have originated as a result. Abe viewed Kishi as his "No 1 role model" and was influenced by many of his beliefs, like Kishi's hawkish stance on Communist China. Regarding Kishi, Abe later wrote: "Some people used to point to my grandfather as a 'Class-A war criminal suspect,' and I felt strong repulsion. Because of that experience, I may have become emotionally attached to 'conservatism,' on the contrary".Abe's paternal grandfather, Kan Abe, was a Yamaguchi landowner who served in the House of Representatives during World War II. In contrast to Kishi, Kan Abe was a stalwart pacifist who opposed the Tojo government and war in East Asia.
kin family member kinsman kinswoman relation by marriage