Word: abely
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Though Koizumi all but anointed abe as his successor, another leader may bear even more responsibility for boosting Abe to the premiership: Kim Jong Il. As deputy cabinet secretary, Abe accompanied Koizumi on his historic trip to Pyongyang in 2002. After Kim shocked Japan by admitting that North Korea had kidnapped Japanese nationals, including Megumi Yokota, Abe became the face of Tokyo's response. When a group of surviving abductees visited Japan, Abe insisted they not return to the North. "From then on he was very popular on TV and among the general public," says Jun Iio, professor of government...
...This much is known about Abe. He is a born conservative?literally. As the grandson of Nobusuke Kishi and the grandnephew of Eisaku Sato?two of postwar Japan's most powerful and conservative Prime Ministers?Abe always knew which side he was on. Katsuei Hirasawa, now an LDP Diet member, tutored a young Abe for two years, and he recalls taking the primary-school student to his dorm at the University of Tokyo, at the heart of Japan's 1960s political tumult. "He would be right in the middle of pacifist, anti-Sato protests," Hirasawa recalls. "He wasn't angry...
...Abe's grandfather Kishi, too, had been the target of angry protests in 1960, for tying the Japanese military closer to that of the U.S. That's work that Abe, who has made the Japan-U.S. alliance the cornerstone of his foreign policy, will carry on. "Abe's beliefs and values are similar to Kishi's," says Hirasawa. "He's inherited his grandfather's political DNA." But Abe is operating in an environment where the political opposition to his views has greatly diminished. "The fact that the left has fallen out of Japanese politics is important," says Calder. "Inside...
...Will Abe tinker with Japan's constitution, and allow greater leeway for the country's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to act abroad? "I'd like to draft a new constitution with my own hands," he told an LDP convention on Sept. 1, when he declared his candidacy for party president. He won't get the chance to do that; but Abe will almost certainly reinterpret the constitution in a way that allows the military to engage in collective self-defense actions with allies, a move Koizumi?no softie on defense?never pulled off, even while he dispatched Japanese forces...
...These are the kind of comments that make Abe's critics nervous. "Abe is the epitome of this anti-Asia, anti-China feeling that is strengthening in Japan," says Morita. Under Koizumi, thanks largely to his repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, Japan's relations with China and South Korea are worse than they've been in decades. It's possible that Abe, who visited Yasukuni in the past and has questioned the validity of the Tokyo trials of Japan's wartime leaders, will worsen the damage. "There's a lot of apprehension in Seoul and Beijing about whether Abe...