Tue, Dec 06, 2016 page6

• First lady offers critics a hotline to Abe

  • Bloomberg
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  With high approval ratings stoking speculation that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could become Japan’s longest-serving in recent history, he faces the risk of becoming complacent. Enter Akie Abe, his wife of 29 years.

  The 54-year-old daughter of a confectionery magnate is known in Japan as “the household opposition” for speaking out against key Shinzo Abe policies, such as backing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact, exporting nuclear technology and expanding a US military base in Okinawa.

  “I want to pick up and pass on the views that don’t get through to my husband or his circle,” Akie Abe said in an interview last week at a restaurant she opened in central Tokyo four years ago. “That is a bit like an opposition party, I suppose.”

  Akie Abe eschews the image of a traditional Japanese prime minister’s wife, who defers to her husband and provides support from behind the scenes. Perhaps more surprising: Her open criticism of Shinzo Abe’s policies only seems to add to the appeal of the conservative 62-year-old leader.

  “She’s very, very unusual — I can’t think of anybody in Japan, or for that matter any first lady in the US, who did that,” said Jun Okumura, a former Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry official who is now a visiting scholar at the Meiji Institute of Global Affairs. “What’s interesting is that has not hurt [Shinzo] Abe in any way whatsoever. In fact, it has sort of softened his image. He can tolerate very different points of view, very different perspectives.”

  In the interview at her tiny organic restaurant Uzu, Akie Abe said she tries to choose the right moment to convey the critical opinions she hears from members of the public.

  “When he is being criticized by the opposition parties every day, if I go home and start nagging him again, he might ask me to stop it,” she said. “As his wife, there are times when I don’t want to attack him too much. Other times, I really feel I have to tell him something.”

  As the first Japanese prime minister’s spouse to make extensive use of social media, she has attracted both praise and scorn over her views on her Facebook page, where she has more than 100,000 followers. She never blocks other users, no matter how abusive.

  “Some people who have great expectations of me and who have opposite opinions to my husband attack me for not telling him things more forcefully. They ask me how I can stay with him when our opinions are different, and even tell me to get divorced,” she said with a laugh during the interview. “They should mind their own business.”

  Akie Abe’s actions often speak louder than her words.

  In August, she took an unannounced trip to Okinawa, without a police escort or secretaries, to visit protesters who oppose the construction of helipads for the US military.

  She said she did not consult her husband about the trip for fear he might oppose it.

  Another media storm followed after Akie Abe was seen later that month offering prayers at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the site of the devastating Japanese attack that drew the US into World War II. This prompted speculation that her husband would become the first Japanese prime minister to do likewise, but no such visit materialized.

  Since Shinzo Abe’s first 12-month stint as prime minister in 2006, Akie Abe has gotten used to life in the spotlight. She is now more comfortable with her husband staying on for a third straight term as party leader and prime minister, particularly to give the world a strong leader at a time when US policy is uncertain after US president-elect Donald Trump’s win.

  “The fact that my husband became prime minister again was not due to his efforts, but it was fate,” Akie Abe said. “Japan has a big role to play now.”
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