Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister in history, will resign Friday due to health reasons, according to Japan’s public broadcaster NHK, citing sources close to Abe.
Speaking to reporters, Hiroshige Seko, a senior executive with Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), said the prime minister had expressed his intention to resign to party officials. A government aide told CNN that they had also been informed of Abe’s intentions to stand down.
Abe had been expected to hold a press conference later on Friday to update on the coronavirus situation in Japan.
Markets reacted negatively to the impending announcement. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index closed down 1.4% Friday after the news broke. It initially tumbled more than 2% before paring losses. The Japanese yen, a traditional save haven currency, rose 0.3% against the US dollar.
On Monday morning, Abe visited Keio University Hospital in Tokyo for what was his second hospital visit in a week. Abe suffers from colitis, a non-curable inflammatory bowel disease, which was also a factor in his sudden resignation as prime minister in 2007, ending his first term after just over a year in office.
He was reelected in 2012. Since then he has been the dominant force in Japanese politics, winning a landslide third term in 2017 and a fourth in 2019, despite multiple scandals and plummeting popularity.
Under Abe, his right-wing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has also seen major success, benefiting from the fracturing of its long-term rival Democratic Party, which split in two in 2017. Abe leaves the LDP in control of both houses of parliament, with a large majority in the Lower House of Representatives.
Abenomics
When Abe was elected to a second term in 2012, Japan was in the economic doldrums following decades of stagnation. He soon launched a grand experiment popularly known as “Abenomics,” which included three so-called arrows — massive monetary stimulus, increased government spending, and structural reforms — that his allies credited for reviving the country’s economy and boosting consumer and investor confidence.
“Japan is no longer the Japan of the past,” Abe said in January 2020. “We have succeeded in completely breaking through the ‘wall of resignation’.”
But any success of Abenomics was largely in avoiding continued decline than prompting a major boom, and the world’s third-largest economy remained vulnerable throughout his time in office. Japan tipped deeper into recession as the coronavirus hit this year.
A major factor that has dogged Abe during his time in office was the country’s rapidly aging population.
More than a third of the Japanese population is over 65, and the country marked a new record low birth rate in 2019. The country’s demographic decline means a shrinking cohort of workers is left supporting an increasingly elderly population in need of healthcare and pensions.
