Who was Shinzo Abe?

Shinzo Abe the longest-serving Prime Minister of Japan – from 2006 to 2007 and then again from 2012 to 2020.

Moreover, he was also the chief cabinet secretary from 2005-2006 and was the leader of the opposition for a short span of 2012 also.

He was born in a political family on September 21, 1954, and was assassinated on 8 July 2022.

Why was he in the news?

On the 8th of July 2022, Shinzo Abe shot by a young man while he was delivering a speech an an election event in a Japanese city called Nara. He died og the injuries.

Who killed Shinzo Abe?

The suspect, a 41-year old man named Tetsuya Yamagami, admitted to shooting Shinzo Abe while he was giving the speech.

He said that he held a grudge against Abe who, he thought, had links with a religious ground that had cheated his mother. The shooter also told the police that he wanted to attack the leader of the religious group initially and not Abe.

A hand-made gun was recovered in the area of the incident.

India’s friend

Shinzo Abe had a special relationship with India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said:

“Shinzo Abe — an outstanding leader of Japan, a towering global statesman, and a great champion of India-Japan friendship – is not among us anymore. Japan and the world have lost a great visionary. And, I have lost a dear friend.”

Quick facts about Shinzo Abe’s key role in Japanese politics

• He became Japan’s 90th Prime Minister at 52.
• He was the first Japanese government leader born after the second world war, and also the youngest Prime Minister in Japanese history. 
• He took steps toward balancing the Japanese budget, such as appointing a tax policy expert, Koji Omi, as Minister of Finance.
• His first term lasted less than a year. 
• He launched an ambitious economic program, known as “Abenomics”, to ease monetary and structural reform, intended to stimulate the Japanese economy.
• Abe, in his four terms as the prime minister of Japan, sought to upgrade the strategic Japan–India relationship.
• He initiated the quadrilateral security dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia, and India in 2007.
• His three-day visit to India in August 2007 inaugurated a new bilateral Asian alliance, building on the long history of friendly bilateral relations between India and Japan.

Headline image
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Shinzo_Abe_meeting_with_Putin.jpg
Kremlin.ru, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I Kid You Not now has a large readership across India and also parts of the world. If you want to write for us, you can submit your story here. You can also apply to become a news anchor. Apply here