When Akie Matsuzaki married Shinzo Abe, who was then a rising political aide, in 1987, she followed a path well paved by Japanese wives and gave up her job at the country’s largest advertising agency.
But after more than three decades of marriage — nine of them being Japan’s first lady — she has proven herself to be anything but a conventional politician’s wife.
In Japan, Akie Abe is known for her outgoing and progressive outlook. Unlike her predecessors, she refused to stand in her husband’s shadow. Instead, the socialite has constructed a public role for herself, in a similar way to the American First Ladies.
Akie Abe, 60, became a widow on Friday after the former prime minister was fatally shot in broad daylight while speaking in the city of Nara, a murder that shocked and enraged the nation.
On Friday, she took a long train ride to run to her husband’s side at a hospital in Nara. The next day, she brought his body back home to Tokyo by car. On Monday (11), she watched over him alongside guests and family in a private ceremony at Zojo-ji time.
Over the past few days, Akie Abe has remained composed and silent when appearing in public.
On Tuesday (12), she will host a private funeral, which is to be followed by larger ceremonies at a later time.
After her husband resigned as prime minister in December 2020, Akie Abe disappeared from public life. Now, she’s been thrown back into the spotlight – and the nation is looking down on her as it mourns the death of its former leader.
Abe’s “Domestic Opposition Party”
“Akie Abe – as first lady – was certainly different from many of her predecessors,” said Tobias Harris, senior fellow on Asia at the Center for American Progress.
Her support of progressive causes, uninhibited manners, and joyful confidence endeared her to the Japanese people.
Among Japanese media, Akie Abe has been given a nickname – Shinzo Abe’s “domestic opposition party”.
With a penchant for speaking her mind, she has openly challenged a range of her husband’s policies, from the push for nuclear power to the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
In 2016, she encountered protesters in Okinawa who were opposed to the expansion of a US Marine Corps base supported by Shinzo Abe.
“I want to identify and take the views that don’t reach my husband or his circle,” she told Bloomberg in 2016. “It looks a bit like an opposition party, I suppose.”
His progressive views sometimes appear to run counter to more conservative values.
Akie Abe supports and campaigns for LGBTQ+ rights, joining Tokyo’s LGBTQ+ pride parade in 2014. She also supports the use of medical marijuana, and posed for photos in cannabis growing fields in 2015.
Akie Abe has also been embroiled in occasional controversies, including a scandal over a shady land sales deal involving a nationalist school she had ties to.
Despite their often opposing views, the couple had a romantic relationship — and Akie Abe wasn’t shy about letting the public know. The couple often held hands as they disembarked from planes on official trips – a display of affection rarely seen in Japanese political circles.
Shinzo Abe often appeared on his wife’s Instagram posts, smiling at her side at everyday events or walks, petting her dog on the couch, or reading the newspaper in the car.
On their 30th wedding anniversary, Akie Abe posted a photo of the ceremony with the two wearing kimonos. On their 32nd birthday, they celebrated with a cherry and wine cake.
She was the first wife of a Japanese minister to actively use social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram, sharing snippets of her life with tens of thousands of followers.
your own person
The daughter of a confectionery mogul, Akie Abe grew up in a wealthy and privileged family in Tokyo.
She was educated at a Catholic private school and a women-only vocational school, and speaks English fluently.
After graduating, Akie Abe worked at the Japanese advertising agency Dentsu. At age 22, she met Shinzo Abe, who was seven years her senior and working as an assistant politician. They dated for two years before getting married in 1987.
The couple never had children. Akie Abe told Japanese media that they sought fertility treatments early in their marriage, to no avail.
Akie Abe wasn’t satisfied being confined to housework. She worked as a radio DJ in the 1990s, and after her husband resigned from his post as prime minister in 2007, she planned to open an izakaya pub.
“When (Shinzo) Abe was looking forward to returning to leadership in 2012, it was at the same time as she was getting ready to open a restaurant. It was something she had wanted to do for a while, and she thought that with Shinzo Abe out of power in 2007, she would finally have that opportunity,” said Harris, the author of “The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan” (no edition in English). Portuguese).
“So she made him promise she would still be able to open her business and she went ahead with it and it was a really nice restaurant.”
“So she made him promise that she could still open her business. She insisted and opened a very good restaurant.”
The izakaya, called “UZU” – which means “whirlpool” in Portuguese – 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 near her husband’s home prefecture, and served in his restaurant.
In 2015, she was photographed in a paddy field planting rice with then-U.S. Ambassador to Japan Caroline Kennedy, wearing traditional women’s work pants, barefoot in murky water.
In the years before she returned to the post of First Lady, Akie Abe went back to college and earned a master’s degree in social studies from Rikkyo University.
“This was a period of hardship and frustration for us as a couple,” she told the Wall Street Journal in 2013. “After a while, he decided to focus on his political career, and I felt the need to have my own life.”
“It shows that she’s really tried – throughout her husband’s political career – to be herself and not just a politician’s wife who would show up and do everything that is expected of Japan’s political wives,” Harris said.
“I don’t necessarily think she was happy, or even excited, to have this role.”
Source: CNN Brasil
I’m James Harper, a highly experienced and accomplished news writer for World Stock Market. I have been writing in the Politics section of the website for over five years, providing readers with up-to-date and insightful information about current events in politics. My work is widely read and respected by many industry professionals as well as laymen.
