Context

Former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has reportedly been shot in western Japan's Nara.

About Shinzo Abe

• Shinzo Abe, born in 1954, was the Prime Minister of Japan from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020. 

  • He had first become the PM in 2006, but resigned in 2007 due to illness.
  • Abe, whose tenure began in 2012, was due to be in office till September 2021.
  • Shinzo Abe was the longest serving prime minister of Japan. 
• Shinzo Abe also remained the President of the Liberal Democratic Party twice.
• Abe's career in public life began in 1993 when he was elected to the House of Representatives.
• He also held the crucial posts of Chief Cabinet Secretary and leader of the opposition in his illustrious career. 
  • Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi appointed him as the Chief Cabinet Secretary in September 2005. 

    • He replaced him as the prime minister and the party's president a year later. 

• He was the youngest post world-war prime minister of Japan. 
  • He had to resign due to a medical condition a year later. 
• He brought political stability in Japan in 2022 when he scored a landslide victory. Before that, five prime ministers couldn't even complete 16 months at office. 
• Shinzo Abe repeated the 2012 performance in 2017, as he led his party to another landslide win. 
  • He became the longest serving prime minister in 2020. 
• In August 2020, Shinzo Abe had to resign as the prime minister of Japan due to ulcerative colitis. 
  
  

Indo-Japan Relation during the tenure of Shinzo Abe

• The foundation for “Global Partnership between Japan and India” was laid in 2001.
• Annual bilateral summits were agreed in 2005.
  • However, it was Abe who accelerated the pace of ties since 2012.
• In first term - Abe, who visited India in 2007, laid the foundation for his concept of Indo-Pacific. 
• This concept has now become mainstream and one of the main pillars of Indo-Japan ties.
• In the second term - Abe helped build the relationship further.
• In 2014, Narendra Modi as PM chose Japan for his first bilateral visit outside the neighbourhood. 
• Modi and Abe agreed to upgrade the bilateral relationship to “Special Strategic and Global Partnership”. 
  

Indo-Japan nuclear deal signed

• When Modi went to Japan in 2014, the Indo-Japan nuclear deal was still uncertain. 
  • This is so because Tokyo was sensitive about a deal with a non-Nuclear-Proliferation-Treaty member country. 
• Abe’s government convinced the anti-nuclear hawks in Japan to sign the agreement in 2016. 
• The pact was a key to India’s deals with US and French nuclear firms, which were either owned by or had stakes in Japanese firms.