Abe tours world to bolster Japan’s position vs China

WITH his recent trip to South Asia, Shinzo Abe has officially upped the tally of the countries he has visited as Japan’s prime minister to 49. All this in the 20-some months he has been in power. That amounts to just over a quarter of all United Nations member states, with an average of over two foreign trips a month.

It also, by far, makes him the most well-travelled Japanese prime minister. For comparison, his two Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) predecessors, Yoshihiko Noda and Naoto Kan, visited 18 countries between them in over two years. The enthusiasm with which Abe has been engaging world leaders speaks to his plans for Japan. When he returned to power in late 2012 with the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in tow, Abe’s pitch was that he would return Japan to its rightful place as a highly visible economic powerhouse on the world stage. This was after Japan ceded its position as the world’s second largest economy to China in 2011 and was reeling from the seemingly cataclysmic fallout of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, and the accompanying nuclear disaster.