This assassination of Shinzo Abe, no matter who the conspirators are behind the lone gunman, might just have tipped the balance for that ferocious Japanese spirit to have reemerged.
Tokyo: One cannot overstate just how great a friend of India the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was. Shinzo Abe used to often tell the story of how his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who visited India as PM of a then-recently defeated nation after World War II, was overwhelmed by Indian magnanimity and generosity that just blew him away, with huge crowds coming to see him speak. Nearly teary-eyed while telling that story, it may explain why Shinzo Abe, who was told that story by his grandfather while sitting as a child on his lap, fiercely resisted the Japanese bureaucracy and some corporate honchos who cast doubt on India as having economic and infrastructural constraints and therefore not the best partner for Japan. Shinzo Abe insisted that Japan would always hold a special place for India and he knew that Japan, that rose from the ashes of World War II, is a source of inspiration for India. Ever conscious of history, Shinzo Abe was always aware that among Japan’s very few allies in the War was Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army.
The same magnanimity was shown to Shinzo Abe himself when he visited India in 2011 after he resigned his first stint 2006-2007 as PM of Japan, when it was assumed that it would be the political end of the scion. At the time, suffering the exacerbation of his ulcerative colitis, Shinzo Abe resigned so soon as to cast doubt on his staying power. When he came to deliver a lecture at the Indian Council of World Affairs in New Delhi filled with JNU and Delhi University faculty, they treated him with the respect that again engendered his lasting admiration. It is a unique aspect which makes India attractive, that India permits multiple personal and professional failures cheerfully along the way.
It is therefore no wonder that as PM once again in 2012-2020 (the longest anyone has been post-War PM of Japan), Shinzo Abe would take phone calls and discuss huge initiatives directly with both PM Manmohan Singh and PM Narendra Modi, such as the $50 billion swap arrangement and its later increase to $75 billion. That level of self-assurance and command of the levers of power is exceptionally rare. Indeed, he even invited PM Modi for a rare private dinner to his holiday villa in Narusawa, near Lake Kawaguchi located in the foothills of picturesque Mount Fuji, the first non-Japanese to be so invited.
Every year I was fortunate to be able to see then-PM Abe at a science and technology conference in Kyoto that he inaugurated and each time he would make a compelling, substantive speech that even impressed multiple Nobel Prize winners who regularly attended. Robotics, artificial intelligence, digital health, semiconductors, it and data centers were points he would elucidate on—making the case for Japanese industry to go beyond its borders to the rest of the world in a much more active way than the past, akin to the Japanese automobile industry that has become ubiquitous worldwide after very humble origins in the 1960s. He led from the front, making sure India had access to massive Japanese government loans at the lowest interest rate possible of even less than 1% for the Delhi Metro and the bullet train project that was close to his heart.
The failure so far to change Article 9 in the Japanese Constitution that was imposed by the US occupation forces after World War II has rankled PM Abe, and he saw that among his failures despite many successes. Clearly, by continuing to be active politically, even campaigning in an election for the Upper House of Parliament where his LDP Party is certain to prevail, Shinzo Abe was persisting with his dream of making Japan a “normal nation” or in effect to end the restrictions placed on it following defeat in World War II—some of which are not applicable to Germany or Italy, thereby alluding to the discriminatory nature of actions against Japan including the dropping of the nuclear bombs that were not done to end the War in Europe despite all the horrors of Nazi Germany.
PM Abe has been a transformational figure—his vision of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” was embraced by most of Asia, barring one notable country. His quality infrastructure initiative in Asia and Africa countered the debt-trap diplomacy of others, and his “Three-Arrows of Abenomics” revived a then-moribund economy. In the Covid-19 crisis, he stepped up with major stimulus measures, putting cash into the accounts of individuals and companies. PM Abe cooperated effectively with both the permanent bureaucracy as well as with outside scholarly advisors like Prof Tomohiko Taniguchi, who worked with Abe on his “Confluence of the Two Seas” speech to Indian Parliament on 22 August 2007, and multiple other prescient strategic moves thereafter. That set the stage for impetus to the Quad and Quad Plus and linking the Indian and Pacific Oceans—the title of Mughal Prince Dara Shikoh’s year-1655 book was used as the headline of PM Abe’s speech that was received with rapturous applause in the Indian Parliament.
Abe himself was related to multiple political figures including two Prime Ministers, maternal grandfather Kishi and Shinzo’s great-uncle Eisaku Sato; and Shinzo’s late father Shintaro Abe was a well-regarded internationalist Foreign Minister, who advocated education and mutual understanding as priorities. In his wife Akie Abe, he found a passionate fellow advocate for greater opportunities for women that made a significant difference with companies and government departments having to find talented women to add to the mostly male executive class.
Among the factors speculated to have played a part in Shinzo Abe’s resignation decision in 2020 included the rising criticism about Japan’s Covid-19 cases, then totalling nearly 71,000, with 1,339 deaths. If only the hyper-critical media and a significant proportion of the Japanese population had the same patience as in many other countries with far higher Covid numbers, Shinzo Abe may not have felt compelled to resign. Further, if he had been a sitting Prime Minister, today, he would have had far greater security protocols in place where a lone shooter would not have been able to get close to him. The dastardly and tragic assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in 1991, killed by a lone suicide bomber but who was part of larger conspiracy hatched by the LTTE, while campaigning as a former PM, comes to mind.
Abe had argued that if Japan were attacked it needs every means to defend itself as “a normal nation” and for that, Article 9 must be amended. Further, both he and his biological brother Nobuo Kishi, the current Defence Minister of Japan, are known to be close to Taiwan, and believe that Japan would have to join with the US in defending any attack on Taiwan. Shinzo Abe made that perfectly clear in his statements, speeches and columns. But the Japanese people who suffered immensely during the War and in the aftermath of defeat, were in no mood to change the peace Constitution, with one proviso—that the same peace-loving people would become extraordinarily fiery were either the PRC or the DPRK to fire a missile that actually landed on Japanese territory.
This assassination of Shinzo Abe, no matter who the conspirators are behind the lone gunman, might just have tipped the balance for that ferocious Japanese spirit to have reemerged. Campaign events were friendly gatherings where one could shake hands with virtually anyone there, and there were really very limited security measures in place. All that will change. Japan will never be the same again. May Shinzo Abe’s soul rest in perfect peace—a life well lived for his beloved Japan.
Dr Sunil Chacko holds degrees in medicine (Kerala), public health (Harvard) and an MBA (Columbia). He was Assistant Director of Harvard University’s Intl. Commission on Health Research, served in the Executive Office of the World Bank Group, and has been a faculty member in the US, Canada, Japan and India.