was a Japanese politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1982 to 1986. 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 29 April 1924, in Tokyo, the only child of Kan Abe and Shizuko Hondo. His parents got divorced on July 24, 1924 when he was two months old. His mother married a banker named Kenzo Nishimura and he has two maternal half-brothers. His maternal half-brother Masao Nishimura was born on November 18, 1932 and died on August 1, 2006 at the age of 73 due to heart failure. He was raised by his father in prefecture of Yamaguchi after his parents got divorced. His maternal grandfather is Tsunejiro Hondo who is an army general. His mother died at the age of thirty one due to illness in 1936 when Shintaro Abe was twelve years old.
Personal life
Abe married Yoko Kishi, daughter of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, in 1951. His second son, Shinzo Abe, served as prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020. 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.Shintaro Abe, Japanese Politician And Ex-Cabinet Aide, Dies at 67, by James Sterngold, The New York Times, May 16, 1991 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.
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. 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.
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. Abe was named as Minister of International Trade and Industry in the cabinet of the then prime minister Zenkō Suzuki on 30 November 1981. During this period, he was seen as a young leader groomed for the future prime ministry. 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.
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. 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.
Death Shintaro Abe was hospitalized on January 19, 1991. He died at Tokyo's Juntendo University Hospital on 15 May 1991, aged 67. The cause of death was heart failure.
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