Tokyo Report | Politics | East Asia

Was Abe Shinzo an Idealist?

A new biography of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister reevaluates his realist legacy.

Then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzo delivers a policy speech on Oct. 4, 2019.

In Japan, books written about Abe Shinzo, the country’s longest-serving prime minister, have become an industry unto themselves. However, most of them tend to reflect a partisan bias – perhaps fitting for such a controversial political figure, who once described himself as a “fighting politician.” At worst, his detractors have portrayed him as a would-be dictator, while his devotees have cast him as a messianic figure. More analytical assessments, meanwhile, have earned his foreign policy a strong reputation as pragmatic and realistic.

Yet, until recently, no full-length biography of Abe had been published, partly for the obvious reason that his death came so suddenly. The closest thing to a biographical study was Tobias Harris’ “The Iconoclast,” published in 2020. That has now changed. A more comprehensive biography on Abe by Hattori Ryuji, professor of Chuo University, was just released by Chuo Koron Shinsha.

Hattori’s short but detailed biography of Abe Shinzo could be regarded as a revisionist work in its own right, challenging the conventional wisdom – one that has also gained international currency – that Abe can be strictly characterized as a realist foreign policy thinker. Written by a diplomatic historian, the book focuses extensively on the foreign policy decisions made during Abe’s tenure as prime minister, drawing on newly declassified diplomatic documents that the author was able to access. Hattori’s conclusion is that, while Abe possessed a “remarkable strategic vision,” he was ultimately “an imperfect realist.”

Abe’s visionary thinking was an outlier in a country whose postwar prime ministers – almost all of them from the Liberal Democratic Party – were generally known for their conciliatory approach and skill in building intraparty coalitions. They were politicians more accustomed to working behind the scenes than articulating bold visions in public. 

Among Abe’s many foreign policy conceptions, the most famous was the “Free and Open Indo-Pacific,” a strategic vision that not only articulated Japan’s broader interests in the world but also encouraged other governments to adapt to a new century in which the influence and potential of the Indo-Pacific region had become greater than ever before. 

One of the clearest examples of the practical implementation of this vision was Abe’s promotion of free trade. His administration played a crucial role in bringing the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to fruition after the United States withdrew from the original TPP, while also advancing the Japan-EU Economic Partnership Agreement and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations.

However, while Abe’s vision of maintaining a liberal international order fostered a strong affinity with the West, his misconceptions and even biases may have constrained his ability to pursue constructive diplomacy in East Asia. This, in turn, highlights the imperfect side of Abe’s realism. According to Hattori’s account, Abe’s eagerness to reach deals with Russia and China may have led him to surrender valuable leverage – and, perhaps more importantly, some of the legitimacy underpinning Japan’s position on the disputed Senkaku Islands, which China claims as the Diaoyu. In negotiations with Beijing, this resulted in a memorandum that........

© The Diplomat