Yoshihisa Komori revisits his 2006 New York Times essay and examines how portrayals of Shinzo Abe as a “dangerous hawk,” a “villain,” and a militarist were contradicted by Abe’s record of strengthening the Japan–U.S. alliance.

September 2, 2020
The following is taken from an article by Yoshihisa Komori, a visiting correspondent stationed in Washington, published in the Sankei Shimbun on August 30, 2020, under the title “Dispelling the False Image of a ‘Dangerous Abe.’”
“Who’s Afraid of Shinzo Abe?”
An English-language article of mine bearing that headline once appeared in The New York Times.
It was published on September 30, 2006, four days after Shinzo Abe was designated Japan’s youngest postwar prime minister and the first prime minister born after the war.
At the time, The New York Times’ treatment of Prime Minister Abe was unduly harsh.
Abe, then the young Chief Cabinet Secretary in the Koizumi administration, spoke clearly about constitutional and historical issues according to the standards of a “normal nation.”
The newspaper responded by attaching such labels to him as a “dangerous hawkish nationalist.”
Norimitsu Onishi, the newspaper’s Tokyo bureau chief, went so far as to condemn what he described as Abe’s vision of Japanese democracy as an illusion.
Regarding historical perceptions, the newspaper also frequently cited attacks on Abe by Alexis Dudden, an American historian who had declared Emperor Showa guilty at a mock tribunal held in Tokyo in 2000.
She was an anti-Japanese activist who went so far as to disparage Prime Minister Abe as a “villain” and as being driven by “militaristic ambitions.”
The editor of the newspaper’s opinion section probably asked me, then stationed in Washington, to contribute an article out of a desire to provide some balance to its pages.
The request may have come because the editor had somehow learned that, as a political reporter in Tokyo, I had come to know Abe through my reporting from the period when he served as secretary to his father, Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe.
My fairly lengthy contribution was published as the leading article on the opinion page.
I began by writing that Prime Minister Abe was a firm supporter of maintaining the Japan–U.S. alliance based upon the shared principle of democracy.
I also wrote that his condemnation of North Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens and China’s repression of its own people arose from his commitment to the universal values of democracy and human rights.
I further explained that Prime Minister Abe’s advocacy of constitutional revision was an attempt to release Japan from the unnatural restraints placed upon concepts that would be self-evident in other countries—the defence of one’s own nation and a sense of belonging to it.
I also argued that his assertions on historical issues were intended to correct distorted accounts of fact.
These explanations may now appear too obvious to require such elaborate expression.
I wrote in that manner because the headwinds facing Prime Minister Abe in the United States at the time were so intense.
The New York Times had created the false image of Shinzo Abe as an obscure, emerging politician and a dangerous leader who might push Japan in an undemocratic direction.
I therefore concluded my contribution with the following words:
“Prime Minister Abe, in keeping with the advice of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, will firmly maintain Japan’s future defence within the framework of the Japan–U.S. alliance.
Americans, whether Republican or Democrat, will discover that Japan’s popular new prime minister is thoroughly modern, candid, and a trustworthy friend.”
Although I am conscious of the folly of praising my own prediction, I feel a modest degree of satisfaction that this hopeful forecast from fourteen years ago proved consistent with reality.
Both Republican President Donald Trump and former Democratic Vice President Joe Biden have now openly expressed unreserved praise for Prime Minister Abe’s record of strengthening the alliance and friendship between Japan and the United States.
In confronting the immediate threats and national crises posed by China and North Korea, stronger ties with the United States are invaluable to Japan today.
It was none other than Prime Minister Abe himself—through his ability, his efforts, and his convictions and philosophy—who transformed the headwinds from the United States into an unprecedented tailwind.