Why former Japan PM Abe is much more highly praised abroad.
We would like to share the commentary reported in Kyodo news, by Mr. Bill Emmott, a writer and consultant best known for his 13 years as editor in chief of The Economist in 1993-2006. He is now chairman of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, of the board of Trinity College Dublin's Long Room Hub for Arts & Humanities, and of the Japan Society of the UK.
Views held about the influence and contribution made by Shinzo Abe during his lifetime in politics, and especially his more than eight years as prime minister, are strikingly different inside and outside Japan. In some ways this is normal: long-serving prime ministers always tend to create more enemies or critics at home than abroad.
It was exactly the same with Britain's Margaret Thatcher. Yet as with Mrs., later Baroness, Thatcher, with Mr. Abe there is another reason: he was a politician with strong convictions, and as a result was a much more polarizing or controversial figure at home, where people were likelier to agree or disagree with his views, than he was abroad.
