page_title: Shinzo Abe
hierarchical_section_title: Shinzo Abe
caption_attribution_description: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe
context_page_description: Shinzo Abe is a Japanese politician who has served four terms as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party since 2012, and previously from 2006 to 2007. He also served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2006 and was Leader of the Opposition in 2012. He is the longest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.
  Abe was elected to the House of Representatives in the 1993 election. He was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary by Junichiro Koizumi in September 2005, before going on to replace Koizumi as LDP President in September 2006. He was subsequently confirmed as Prime Minister of Japan by a special session of the National Diet, becoming, aged 52, Japan's youngest post-war Prime Minister, and the first to have been born after World War II. Abe resigned as Prime Minister after one year in office, citing ulcerative colitis, shortly after his party lost that year's House of Councillors election. He was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, the first in a series of five prime ministers who each failed to retain office for more than sixteen months.
context_section_description: Shinzo Abe (安倍 晋三, Abe Shinzō [abe ɕin(d)zoː]; born 21 September 1954) is a Japanese politician who has served four terms as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 2012, and previously from 2006 to 2007. He also served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2006 and was Leader of the Opposition in 2012. He is the longest-serving Prime Minister in Japanese history.
  Abe was elected to the House of Representatives in the 1993 election. He was appointed Chief Cabinet Secretary by Junichiro Koizumi in September 2005, before going on to replace Koizumi as LDP President in September 2006. He was subsequently confirmed as Prime Minister of Japan by a special session of the National Diet, becoming, aged 52, Japan's youngest post-war Prime Minister, and the first to have been born after World War II. Abe resigned as Prime Minister after one year in office, citing ulcerative colitis, shortly after his party lost that year's House of Councillors election. He was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, the first in a series of five prime ministers who each failed to retain office for more than sixteen months.
  After recovering from his illness, Abe staged an unexpected political comeback, defeating former Defense Minister Shigeru Ishiba in a vote to become LDP President for the second time in September 2012. Following the LDP's landslide victory in the general election that December, he became the first former Prime Minister to return to the office since Shigeru Yoshida in 1948. He was re-elected in similar landslides in the 2014 and 2017 elections. In August 2020, Abe announced his pending resignation as Prime Minister, citing a resurgence of his ulcerative colitis. He has indicated that he will remain in office until the LDP elects his successor.
  Abe is a conservative whom political commentators have widely described as a right-wing nationalist. He is a member of Nippon Kaigi and holds revisionist views on Japanese history, including denying the role of government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during World War II, a position which has created tension with neighboring South Korea. He is considered a hard-liner with respect to North Korea, and advocates revising Article 9 of the pacifist constitution to permit Japan to maintain military forces. Abe is known internationally for his government's economic policies, nicknamed Abenomics, which pursue monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and structural reforms.
caption: Official portrait, 2015
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