Assassination of Shinzo Abe: The legacy of Japan's youngest and longest-serving prime minister

World leaders have reacted with shock and grief at the assassination of Shinzo Abe, one of Japan's most influential figures and formerly its longest-serving prime minister.

The 67-year-old was airlifted to hospital on Friday after being shot from behind while giving a campaign speech in the western Japanese city of Nara.

Despite receiving large blood transfusions, he was later pronounced dead in hospital, causing shockwaves across Japan - one of the safest countries in the world where shootings are almost unheard of.

World leaders decried the shooting and labelled it an attack on democracy, as they hailed Mr Abe a "global leader", a "champion of the multilateral world order" and a "statesman of extraordinary quality and character".

In his second stint serving as prime minister, Mr Abe stepped down in 2020 after the return of chronic stomach condition, ulcerative colitis, which he'd had since he was a teenager.

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He was perhaps the most polarising, complex politician in recent Japanese history, angering both liberals at home and World War II victims in Asia with his hawkish push to revamp the military and his revisionist view that Japan was given an unfair verdict by history for its brutal past.

At the same time, he revitalised Japan’s economy, led efforts for the nation to take a stronger role in Asia and served as a rare beacon of political stability.

“He’s the most towering political figure in Japan over the past couple of decades,” said Dave Leheny, a political scientist at Waseda University.

“He wanted Japan to be respected on the global stage in the way that he felt was deserved... He also wanted Japan to not have to keep apologising for World War II.”

Japan had “a post-war track record of economic success, peace and global cooperation that he felt other countries should pay more attention to, and that Japanese should be proud of,” Mr Leheny said.

Having been born into a prominent political family, Mr Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at age 52, after winning a landslide victory.

Mr Abe was a political blue blood who was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.

His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.

That push for constitutional revision stemmed from his personal history. Mr Abe's grandfather, former leader Kishi, despised the US-drafted constitution, adopted during the American post-war occupation.

For Mr Abe, too, the 1947 charter was symbolic of what he saw as the unfair legacy of Japan’s war defeat and an imposition of the victors’ world order and Western values.

But his overly nationalistic first stint abruptly ended a year later, also because of his health. The end of Mr Abe’s scandal-laden first stint as PM was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.

When he returned to office in 2012, Mr Abe vowed to revitalise the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.

Mr Abe said he was proud of working while leader for a stronger Japan-US security alliance and shepherding the first visit by a serving US president to the atom-bombed city of Hiroshima.

He also helped Tokyo gain the right to host the 2020 Olympics by pledging that a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant was “under control” when it was not.

When he finally resigned in 2020, he told reporters at the time that it was “gut wrenching” to leave many of his goals unfinished.

He spoke of his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia and a revision of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.

That last goal was a big reason he was such a divisive figure.

His ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to create what he saw as a more normal defence posture angered many Japanese.

Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger US-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan’s defence capability. But he also made enemies by forcing his defence goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.

Nevertheless, he won six national elections and built a rock-solid grip on power, bolstering Japan’s defence role and capability, and its security alliance with the US. He also stepped up patriotic education at schools and raised Japan’s international profile.

Mr Abe left office as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister by consecutive days in office, eclipsing the record of Eisaku Sato, his great-uncle, who served 2,798 days from 1964 to 1972.