Unfavorable views of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō are on the rise in Japan. But, rather than dwelling on his critics' errors, it is more useful to draw attention to two important aspects of Abe’s policy agenda that will have a lasting and positive impact on the country.
TOKYO – After the 1985 Plaza Accord pushed the yen’s exchange rate sharply upward, Japan’s economy suffered a severe slowdown that proved mightily difficult to reverse. In fact, the only Japanese prime minister to oversee a period of consistent growth and high employment in the past three decades was Abe Shinzō, during his second term, which began in 2012.
Abe’s economic program (which I helped the prime minister develop), was quickly dubbed Abenomics. Assisted by the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy under then-Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, the policy saw employment rise more than under any other Japanese government in the twenty-first century, creating nearly five million jobs between 2013 and 2019.
At the same time, about three million new female workers joined the labor force during this period. To provide his economic policies with a secure base, Abe sought to strengthen national security by promoting the idea of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”
TOKYO – After the 1985 Plaza Accord pushed the yen’s exchange rate sharply upward, Japan’s economy suffered a severe slowdown that proved mightily difficult to reverse. In fact, the only Japanese prime minister to oversee a period of consistent growth and high employment in the past three decades was Abe Shinzō, during his second term, which began in 2012.
Abe’s economic program (which I helped the prime minister develop), was quickly dubbed Abenomics. Assisted by the Bank of Japan’s monetary policy under then-Governor Haruhiko Kuroda, the policy saw employment rise more than under any other Japanese government in the twenty-first century, creating nearly five million jobs between 2013 and 2019.
At the same time, about three million new female workers joined the labor force during this period. To provide his economic policies with a secure base, Abe sought to strengthen national security by promoting the idea of a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific.”