Abe Shinzo’s important place in Japanese politics

Editor’s note (July 8th 2022): Abe Shinzo, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, has died after being shot while making a campaign speech in the western city of Nara. In this article from 2020, we considered his political legacy.

WHEN HE WAS a boy, Abe Shinzo aspired to make films. His family history—he is the grandson of a prime minister and the son of a foreign minister—set him on a different path. Yet as a politician, he strived to change the stories that Japan tells about itself. “If the Japanese need one thing now, that thing is confidence—the ability to turn our faces to the sun, like the sunflower does when it blooms at the height of summer,” Mr Abe said after becoming prime minister for the second time, in 2012.