The thing to bear in mind about Shinzo Abe in the time of his assassination is that he was a great man — the “most strategic leader of a major democracy since Reagan.” That phrasing is from a tweet by the Hudson Institute’s Kenneth Weinstein, a long-time friend of Abe. Mr. Weinstein notes that after Abe’s first term as prime minister of Japan he was “laser-focused” on his mission “to bring Japan back to the center of geopolitics.”

How we need Abe now. Communist China is on the march — and the high seas — against America and our allies, of which Japan is one by dint of an actual treaty. That makes our alliance, in the constitutional sense, part of the supreme law of the land. North Korea is testing atomic bombs for potential use against Japan and America. Abe’s prevision of these dangers was his great scoop and led to his rise to greatness.

Abe was certainly born to the cloth. His maternal grandfather was a prime minister of Japan, his father a foreign minister. So it’s not necessarily surprising, if no less impressive, that he came — ahead of his peers — to what Mr. Weinstein calls a “unique” understanding of the threat from Communist China and North Korea. And of the notion that it is the part of leadership to make in a democracy the case for sacrifice in respect of national security. 

In respect of the political economy, Abe might not have been the same kind of supply sider as Reagan nor a New York Sun type hard money person. He comprehended, though, that Japan’s was an over-regulated economy. He attached great importance to modernizing corporate governance in hopes of bringing to Japan Western-style standards, with independent directors held accountable for decisions.

One of Abe’s projects was the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the trade agreement signed by, among others, America in the last year of the Obama administration only to be opposed by the Republican nominee in 2016, Donald Trump, and eventually Secretary of State Clinton. When America pulled out, Abe’s determination was crucial to reviving the pact as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership.

Last year, post-Brexit Britain applied to join. America might yet. The illuminating thing about it, in respect of Shinzo Abe, is that he nonetheless maintained a friendship with President Trump, both while he was in office and after. It speaks of a Reaganite big tent spirit. Which makes it so obnoxious, and inaccurate, when Abe is spoken of, as he was this morning by the Associated Press, as a “divisive arch-conservative.”

That’s the kind of language the left used against Reagan as he secured his second term by winning 49 of the 50 states. Abe can’t have been all that divisive. He was Japan’s longest serving premier. We were a bit caustic when, in 2014, Abe launched his plan to “reinterpret” Japan’s constitution to, as the Times put it, “allow Japanese armed forces to come to the aid of friendly nations under attack.” We preferred amendment to “reinterpretation.”

In any event, we have long since come to appreciate Shinzo Abe’s geo-political prevision. The way the world is shaping up, it looks like one of the West’s great assets. It’s too soon to know yet the motive of the gunman who felled Abe by shooting him in the back while he was making an election speech at Nara. It’s not too soon to say, though, that the effect was a ghastly blow to America — and to all freedom loving peoples — as well as to Japan.