In Japan, Akie Abe is best known for her outspoken and progressive views. Unlike her predecessors, she refused to stay in her husband’s shadow. Instead, the socialite carved out a public role for herself in a style more akin to American first ladies. On Friday, she made a several-hour train journey to rush to her husband’s side at a hospital in Nara. The next day, he brought his body back to Tokyo by car. On Monday, he mourned with family and guests at a private wake at Zojo-ji Temple. Through it all, Akie Abe remained outwardly reserved and quiet when appearing in public. On Tuesday, he will hold a private funeral, with larger ceremonies to follow later. After her husband resigned as prime minister in December 2020, Aki Abe faded from public view. Now she’s back in the spotlight — and the nation will look to her as it mourns the death of its former leader.
Abe’s “domestic opposition party”.
“Aki Abe — as first lady — was certainly unlike many of her predecessors,” said Tobias Harris, senior fellow for Asia at the Center for American Progress. Her advocacy of progressive causes, free manners and cheerful confidence endeared her to the Japanese public. Among the Japanese media, Akie Abe has earned a nickname — as Shinzo Abe’s “domestic opposition party.” With a penchant for speaking her mind, she has openly challenged a number of her husband’s policies, from his push for nuclear power to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. In 2016, he met protesters in Okinawa who opposed the expansion of a United States Marine Corps base, which Shinzo Abe supported. “I want to collect and convey the views that don’t get through to my husband or his circle,” she told Bloomberg in 2016. “This is a bit like an opposition party, I guess.” Her progressive views sometimes seemed to conflict with more conservative values. Akie Abe has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ rights, participating in a gay pride parade in Tokyo in 2014. She also supports the use of medical marijuana, having posed for photos in a sprawling cannabis field in 2015. Akie Abe has also been embroiled in occasional controversies, including a scandal over a murky land sale deal involving a nationalist school with which she had ties. Despite their often opposing views, the pair had a loving relationship — and Aki Abe didn’t hesitate to let the public know. The couple often held hands when they got off the plane on official trips abroad – a public display of affection rarely seen in Japan’s political circles. Shinzo Abe often appeared in Akie Abe’s Instagram posts, smiling next to her at events or on leisurely walks, petting their dog on the couch, reading newspapers in the car — or posing with a bowl of Udon curry. On their 30th anniversary, Akie Abe posted a wedding photo of them dressed in kimono. On their 32nd anniversary, they celebrated with a cherry cream cake and wine. She was the first wife of a Japanese minister to actively use social media, especially Facebook and Instagram, sharing snippets of her life with tens of thousands of followers.
Her own face
The daughter of a confectionery magnate, Akie Abe grew up in a wealthy and privileged family in Tokyo. She was educated at a private Catholic school and an all-female vocational school and is fluent in English. After graduation, Akie Abe worked at the Japanese advertising company Dentsu. At 22, she met Shinzo Abe, who was seven years older and working as a political aide. They dated for over two years before tying the knot in 1987. The couple never had children. Akie Abe told Japanese media that they had sought fertility treatment in the early days of their marriage, to no avail. Aki Abe was not content to confine himself to a domestic role. She worked as a radio DJ in the 1990s, and after her husband resigned from his first term as prime minister in 2007, she came up with a plan to open an izakaya pub. “When (Shinzo) Abe wanted to return to his leadership in 2012, it was at the same time that she was busy preparing to open a restaurant. This was something he wanted to do for a while and he thought with (Shinzo) Abe left the prime ministership for 2007, she finally had this opportunity,” said Harris, the author of “The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan ». “So she made him promise that he could still open her business and he went ahead and it was a very nice restaurant.” The izakaya, called “UZU” — English for hot tub, opened in 2012 in Tokyo’s Kanda district, months before Shinzo Abe began his second term as prime minister. She even grew her own organic rice in a paddy field located in her husband’s prefecture and served it in her restaurant. In 2015, she was photographed in a paddy field planting rice with then-US ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, wearing traditional women’s work pants, barefoot in murky water. In the intervening years before returning as first lady, Akie Abe returned to college and earned a master’s degree in social planning studies from Rikkyo University. “This was a period of setbacks and difficulties for us as a couple,” he told the Wall Street Journal in 2013. “After a while, he decided to refocus on his political career. I felt I had to start my own life. “ “It shows that he really tried — throughout his political career — to continue to be her own person, not just be a political wife who would show up and just expect her to do the things that Japan expects her to do. political wives do,” Harris said. “I don’t necessarily think she was ever satisfied or willing to play that role.”
