With friends off the hook from childhood, it often happens that decades later you end up only meeting at funerals. With Japan Something similar happens, it is difficult for it to appear on the international agenda if it is not due to a tragedy. The last one that led to the front pages was the nuclear accident in Fukushima, now the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The news has taken us by surprise, as much as the murder of Olof Palme in Sweden, which, despite the distance, is quite similar because of the pacifist culture of both countries and because of the way it is carried out. But beyond the astonishment, at Abe’s funerals there are readings of his legacy that we can rescue.
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It is true that Japan catches us far away, even more in Europa, where we have the feeling that the more the axis of attention shifts to the Pacific, the more the alliance on both sides of the Atlantic weakens. But it shouldn’t be like that, Japan is a retaining wall in the region of the rising sun. pressured by China and threatened by the missiles of North KoreaAbe, the longest-serving prime minister, helped stem the escalation in this turbulent-ridden region, even with insight to circumvent the flirtation of Donald Trump with the Korean regime. When he had to leave office due to health problems two years ago, Japan was already leading the new idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific area, a sort of community of interests with the aim of promoting the transition to democracy based on exchange and the economic progress of the area, generating a new counterpoint to the authoritarian China.
As remote as those problems seem to us, the echo of their convulsions carries the mourning from Japan to here. At the farewell ceremony, she was tempted to write about the legacy of Boris Johnson, but the contrast between the two is devastating. A good man leaves with Abe, a politician with a vision beyond his trenches. With the lack they make us!