Akie Abe
Akie Abe (, Abe Akie; née Matsuzaki; born 10 June 1962) is a Japanese radio DJ and the widow of Shinzo Abe, who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020. Early life Abe was born . She is from a wealthy Japanese family; her father is the former president of Morinaga & Co., one of Japan's largest confectionery companies. She was educated at Sacred Heart School in Tokyo (or Seishin Joshi Gakuin), a Roman Catholic private elementary through high school, then graduated from Sacred Heart Professional Training College. Abe later worked for Dentsu Inc., the world's largest advertising agency, before marrying Shinzo Abe in 1987. The couple had no children, having undergone unsuccessful fertility treatments earlier in their marriage. The two would remain married until Shinzo's assassination on 8 July 2022. In the late 1990s, Abe worked as a radio disc jockey in her husband's hometown of Shimonoseki. She was popular in the broadcast area and was known by her jockey name, "Akky". Public life Following her husband's first stint as prime minister, she opened an organic izakaya in the Kanda district of Tokyo, but was not active in management due