Shinzo Abe, the ex-Japanese premier who was just slain by an assassin, might have appeared to be a hard core pro-American leader — a wonderful and important thing — but it would be better to say he was hard core pro-Japan.

Certainly Abe subscribed fully to the Japanese-American alliance as a bulwark against North Korea and Communist China. Certainly, too, he was all for keeping American forces in Japan in the face of protests in the southernmost prefecture of Okinawa, home of major American Air Force and Marine bases.

Ultimately, however, Abe wanted to weaken if not do away with Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. That’s the article that declares “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation” and “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”

It’s because of those lines, laid on Japan in 1947 during the American military occupation under General Douglas MacArthur, that Japan’s army, navy and air force are called “self-defense forces” and the military budget is restricted to 1 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. 

Given that Japan’s GDP this year is projected to hit nearly $5 trillion, the defense budget is still large, and Japan’s Self Defense Forces of about 250,000 troops in all services, ground, air, and sea, are well equipped and trained. With Communist China’s rise as a power and North Korea’s growing threat, with missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads anywhere in Japan, Abe did not want to have to count on Washington if a real war broke out.

For Abe, the solution was to begin by recognizing the SDF for what they are, the armed forces of Japan. He encountered stiff opposition, though, to changing the nomenclature, which was seen as a step on the way finally to jettisoning Article 9. Basically, Abe wanted the constitution revised so Japanese forces could deploy to foreign countries, which would be essential if war broke out with either Communist China or North Korea — or both.

The two prime ministers who succeeded Abe, both members of the same Liberal-Democratic Party that has ruled Japan, except for brief periods, for more than 70 years, are equally conservative. They, though, are not eager to change the status quo. Japan’s current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, avoided the touchy topic of revising Article 9 while welcoming President Biden’s assurances of support if Communist China were to invade the island of Taiwan under a free Chinese government, which the communists vow to conquer.

Abe’s blend of nationalism and conservatism was also clear in the highly emotional issue of recovering Japanese citizens kidnapped from Japanese shores to North Korea. Hopes were high in 2002, when Junichiro Koizumi, then Japan’s prime minister, got Kim Jong-il, then North Korea’s leader, to apologize for the kidnappings, acknowledging 13 of them. Eight had died, Kim said, but the other five could return.

The Japanese, however, say many more remain in Korea, and Abe’s attempts at getting North Korea to admit holding them went nowhere during his first stint as prime minister between 2006 and 2007. In fact, since Kim Jong-il died in 2011 and his son, Kim Jong-un, succeeded him, the topic has not come up for serious discussion. 

Abe, surging to power again in 2012, brought a new kind of nationalism to the Japanese scene before stepping down in 2020.

He did not engage in the kind of strident right-wing extremism that led Japan into World War II, and he upset South Korea in 2013 by visiting the Yasukuni Shrine honoring Japanese war dead, including war criminals and those involved in colonizing Korea until the Japanese surrender in August 1945. He also played upon the belief that Japan would have prevailed had the Americans not resorted to the atom-bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to win the war. 

If there were a slogan for Abe’s form of nationalism, it might be, “Make Japan Great Again.” 

Abe owes his conservative philosophy in part to his heritage. His grandfather, Nobuske Kishi, having been imprisoned by the Americans as a Class A war criminal for his cruel rule over Manchuria during World War II, served as prime minister in the late 1950s, focusing on making Japan a vibrant economic power.

Abe’s father, Shintaro Abe, served as foreign minister, negotiating sometimes bitter trade disputes as Japan built strong trade balances with almost all countries, especially the United States. Against this background, Shinzo Abe, as prime minister, introduced what came to be known as “Abe-nomics,” for pulling Japan out of the economic doldrums after the bursting of the bubble of wildfire gains in the 1980s.

Abe was, if anything, increasingly worried about the need for security as he saw signs of America’s weakening will to defend the region. The answer, he believed, was to lead Japan from dependence on the United States, which maintains separate alliances with both Japan and Korea. 

If the U.S. seriously cut its strength in the region or weakened alliances, as Abe was well aware, Japan would have to fill the void. With the balance of forces shifting,  Abe would have had the perfect rationale for ditching Article 9 and encouraging the revival of Japan as a great military power.