Shintarō Abe

Shintaro Abe (安倍 晋太郎, Abe Shintarō, 29 April 1924 – 15 May 1991) was a Japanese politician from Yamaguchi Prefecture. He was a leading member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). He served as foreign minister from 1982 to 1986.

Abe was born in Tokyo on April 29, 1924. He was raised in his father's home prefecture of Yamaguchi from soon after his birth. He was the eldest son of politician and member of Parliament Kan Abe. His mother was an army general's daughter.

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.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. He became a politician in 1957, when he started working as a legislative aide of the then-prime minister Nobusuke Kishi. He won his father's seat in the House of Representatives in 1958.

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 November 30, 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.

Abe married Yoko Kishi, daughter of Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, in 1951. His second son, Shinzō Abe, became prime minister on September 26, 2006 and December 26, 2012.

Abe was hospitalized in January 1991. He died of heart failure at Tokyo's Juntendo University Hospital on May 15, 1991.

From the corresponding article in the Japanese Wikipedia

• Grand Cordon of the Order of the Rising Sun with Order of the Paulownia Flowers