Abe Shintaro

Abe Shintaro (1956)

Abe Shintarō ( Japanese 安 倍 晋太郎 ; born April 29, 1924 in Yotsuya (today: Shinjuku ), Tokyo ; † May 15, 1991 in Bunkyō , Tokyo Prefecture ) was a Japanese politician of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and from 1958 to his Death with an Interruption (1963–1967) Member of the Shūgiin , the lower house of the national parliament , for the 1st constituency of Yamaguchi . From 1982 to 1986 he was Foreign Minister and from 1987 to 1989 Secretary General of the LDP.

Life

Career

Abe Shintarō was born on April 29, 1924 as the first son of the future Shūgiin MP Abe Kan ( 安 倍 寛 ; 1894-1946) in Tokyo. He grew up in Yamaguchi Prefecture, the home prefecture of the Abe family, with his father and great-aunt because his parents separated shortly after he was born. From 1944 he studied at the University of Okayama , where he stood out for his special achievements and was recommended to him to enter the Imperial University of Tokyo . Shortly thereafter, however, he was drafted into the Navy . After the end of the war, he returned to the law faculty of the former Imperial University of Tokyo, now renamed "University of Tokyo", and in 1949 joined the Mainichi Shimbun .

In 1949 he married the eldest daughter of the Shūgiin MP Kishi Nobusuke , Kishi Yōko ( 岸 信 洋子 ; * 1928). 1952 his first son Hironobu ( 寛 信 ) was born; Shinzō followed in 1954 . When Kishi Nobusuke was appointed foreign minister in the Ishibashi cabinet in 1956 , Abe left the Mainichi Shimbun and became its secretary. Even after Kishi's appointment as Prime Minister in February 1957, Abe remained his secretary. In the Shūgiin election in 1958 , he joined the LDP in the old constituency of Yamaguchi 1 (4 seats) and was elected to Shūgiin with the second highest percentage of votes. In 1959, his third son, Nobuo , was born, and the Kishi family soon adopted him. After being re-elected in 1960 , Abe left the Shūgiin in the 1963 election when he failed with the fifth highest share of the vote as the only LDP candidate in this constituency. In the 1967 election he returned after strong support from his relatives Kishi Nobusuke and Satō Eisaku in the election campaign as first place in the Shūgiin and has since been re-elected eight times until his death.

minister

Abe with Ronald Reagan in the Oval Office (1987)

Within the LDP, Abe belonged initially to the Kishi faction and from 1979 to the Fukuda faction  ; In the Kakufuku war of the 1970s and early 1980s, he was always on the side of Fukuda Takeo . Abe received his first ministerial post in 1974 in the Miki cabinet as Minister for Agriculture and Forests . In 1977 he was appointed chief cabinet secretary in the reorganized Fukuda cabinet and was involved in the 1978 peace treaty between Japan and the People's Republic of China . After Fukuda's resignation, he was chairman of the LDP's Political Research Council under Ōhira Masayoshi until he returned to the government in 1981 as Minister for International Trade and Industry in the reshaped Suzuki cabinet . In the election of the LDP chairman held after Suzuki Zenko's resignation in 1982 , Abe from the anti-Tanaka camp stood against Nakasone Yasuhiro, supported by the Tanaka faction  . Nakasone clearly won the election with 559,673 votes; Abe lost to him behind Kōmoto Toshio (265,078 votes) in third place with 80,443 votes.

From 1982 to 1986 he was foreign minister in the Nakasone cabinets, with the exception of the third cabinet . Because of his diplomatic skills, he was sometimes dubbed by the media as "Foreign Policy Abe" ( 外交 の 安 倍Gaikō no Abe ) and acted as a potential successor to the office of Prime Minister. At that time he made his son Shinzo his personal secretary. After the Shūgiin election in 1986 , which was extremely successful for the LDP , Abe became chairman of the LDP executive council and took over the chairmanship of his faction. As the end of Nakasone's term as LDP chairman approached, Abe was considered the most popular successor in polls among the three candidates running for election (Abe, Takeshita Noboru and Miyazawa Kiichi ). However, Nakasone chose Takeshita as his successor, whereupon Abe and Miyazawa withdrew. Under Takeshita, Abe was general secretary of the LDP until 1989.

death

During the recruit scandal , in which Abe, like most LDP politicians, was also involved, he contracted pancreatic cancer in 1988 . In 1989, he was operated on to remove a gallstone in the main bile duct , whereupon he appeared to be recovering. With a view to the next election of the party chairman, Abe tried increasingly to recruit new members of parliament from 1989 in order to enlarge his faction. In the Shūgiin election in February 1990 , most of these candidates moved into the Shūgiin. B. Yasuo Fukuda or Takeo Kawamura . In September 1990 Abe's health deteriorated again; he died in May 1991 at the age of 67.

Web links

• Abe Shintarō in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus, Abe is the family name, Shintarō the first name.