page_title: Shinzo Abe
section_title: Second term as prime minister (2012–2014)
hierarchical_section_title: Shinzo Abe / Second term as prime minister (2012–2014)
caption_attribution_description: English: Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister of Japan, at CSIS during a visit to Washington, D.C. in February 2013
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: On 26 December 2012, Abe was formally elected as prime minister by the Diet, with the support of 328 out of 480 members of the House of Representatives. He and his second cabinet, which he called a "crisis-busting cabinet", were sworn in later that day. The new government included LDP heavyweights such as former Prime Minister Tarō Asō as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Yoshihide Suga as Chief Cabinet Secretary and Akira Amari as Economy Minister. Following his victory, Abe said, "With the strength of my entire cabinet, I will implement bold monetary policy, flexible fiscal policy and a growth strategy that encourages private investment, and with these three policy pillars, achieve results."
  In February 2013 Abe gave an address at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., in which he explained his economic and diplomatic objectives, and that he had returned to the Prime Ministership to prevent Japan becoming a "Tier Two Nation", declaring that "Japan is back".
caption: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaking at CSIS in Washington DC, in February 2013
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