Shintaro Abe

Template:Short description Template:Use mdy dates Template:Family name hatnote Template:Infobox officeholder Template:Nihongo<ref name="Who's Who">Template:Cite book</ref> was a Japanese politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1982 to 1986.<ref name="yates">Template:Cite news</ref> He was a leading member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He was the father of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and part of the Satō–Kishi–Abe family.

Early life and education

Shintaro Abe was born on April 29, 1926, in Tokyo, the only child of politician and member of Parliament Kan Abe. He was raised in his father's home prefecture of Yamaguchi from soon after his birth. His mother was an army general's daughter.<ref name=latob/>

Personal life

Template:Multiple image Abe married Yoko Kishi, daughter of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, in 1951.<ref name=yates/> His second son, Shinzo Abe, served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> His third son, Nobuo Kishi, was adopted by his brother-in-law shortly after birth, won a House of Representatives seat in 2012 and was appointed Minister of Defense in 2020. He was from Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Career

After graduating from high school in 1944 during World War II, Abe entered a naval aviation school and volunteered to become a kamikaze pilot. The war ended before he could undergo the required training.<ref>Shintaro Abe, Japanese Politician And Ex-Cabinet Aide, Dies at 67, by James Sterngold, The New York Times, May 16, 1991</ref> In 1949 he graduated from the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, Shintaro Abe began his career as a political reporter for Mainichi Shimbun.<ref name=seattle/>

Abe formally entered the political sphere in 1956, when he started working as a legislative aide of his father in-law, then-foreign minister Nobusuke Kishi.<ref name=seattle/> He became an aide to the Prime Minister when Kishi assumed the premiership the following year. In 1958, Abe contested and won the House of Representatives seat once held by his father.<ref name=latob/>

He led a major LDP faction, the conservative Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyūkai, whose reins he took from former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda in July 1986, and held a variety of ministerial and party posts, the former of which included Minister of Agriculture and Forestry and Minister of International Trade and Industry.<ref name=latob/> Abe was named as Minister of International Trade and Industry in the cabinet of the then prime minister Zenkō Suzuki on November 30, 1981.<ref name=sdchronicle>Template:Cite news</ref> During this period, he was seen as a young leader groomed for the future prime ministry.<ref name=sdchronicle/> In November 1982, he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs in the cabinet of the then-prime minister Yasuhiro Nakasone, replacing Yoshio Sakurauchi. His term lasted until 1986.<ref name=yates/>

Abe was a top contender to succeed Nakasone as prime minister in 1987, until he stepped aside for Noboru Takeshita, head of a powerful rival faction. Then, he was given the post of secretary general of the party in 1987.<ref name=yates/> In 1988, his chances of becoming prime minister some time in the near future were again thwarted when his name became associated with the Recruit-Cosmos insider-trading stock scandal, which brought down Takeshita and forced Abe to resign as the party's secretary general in December 1988.<ref name=yates/>

Death

Shintaro Abe was hospitalized in January 1991.<ref name=latob>Template:Cite news</ref> He died at Tokyo's Juntendo University Hospital on May 15, 1991, aged 65. The cause of death was not officially announced, although various reports point to cancer, liver failure, or heart failure.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=seattle>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Honours

From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia

• Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun with Order of the Paulownia Flowers

References

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