12 Facts About Shintaro Abe

Shintaro Abe was a Japanese politician who served as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1982 to 1986.

Shintaro Abe was a leading member of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Shintaro Abe was born on April 29,1924, in Tokyo, the only son of politician and member of Parliament Kan Abe.

Shintaro Abe was raised in his father's home prefecture of Yamaguchi from soon after his birth.

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.

Shintaro Abe became a politician in 1957, when he started working as a legislative aide of his father in-law, the then-prime minister Nobusuke Kishi.

Shintaro Abe won his father's seat in the House of Representatives in 1958.

Shintaro Abe led a major LDP faction, the conservative Seiwa Seisaku Kenkyukai, 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.

Shintaro Abe was named as Minister of International Trade and Industry in the cabinet of the then prime minister Zenko Suzuki on November 30,1981.

Shintaro 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.

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 Shintaro Abe to resign as the party's secretary general in December 1988.

Shintaro Abe died at Tokyo's Juntendo University Hospital on May 15,1991, aged 67.