Abe Shinzo left his mark on Asia and the world, not just Japan

A procedural rule has long limited the trips a Japanese prime minister can ordinarily make overseas to the brief periods of the year when parliament is not in session. The rule appears tailor-made for the kind of inward-looking nonentity who has too often occupied the prime minister’s residence in Japan’s modern history. Abe Shinzo, who was assassinated on July 8th, could not have been further from the stereotype. He squeezed 81 overseas visits to Asia, America and beyond into his second and longer stint in office, from 2012 to 2020.

Those trips helped transform Japan’s foreign-policy focus and standing in Asia—and confirmed Mr Abe as the most consequential Japanese statesman since the second world war. Mr Abe once explained to Banyan that China’s ascendance posed an existential challenge to Japan similar to that of Western imperial powers when they turned up in gunboats in Tokyo Bay in the mid-19th century. At home, his response was to bolster both the economy and security. Abroad, it meant putting a normally retiring Japan at the forefront of efforts to prevent Chinese assertiveness from wrecking an open, international order that for decades had by and large guaranteed East Asian peace and prosperity.