Shinzō Abe

Shinzō Abe (安倍 晋三, Abe Shinzō, IPA: [abe ɕiɴzoː]; born 21 September 1954) is the current Prime Minister of Japan, re-elected to the position in December 2012. Abe is also the President of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and chairman of the Oyagaku propulsion parliamentary group.

Abe served for a year as Prime Minister from 2006 to 2007. Hailing from a politically prominent family, at age 52 he became Japan's youngest post-war prime minister, and the first to be born after World War II, when he was elected by a special session of the National Diet in September 2006. Abe resigned on September 12, 2007, for health reasons. He was replaced by Yasuo Fukuda, beginning a string of prime ministers, none of whom retained office for more than a year before Abe staged a political comeback.

On September 26, 2012, Abe defeated former Minister of Defense Shigeru Ishiba in a run-off vote to win the LDP presidential election. Following the LDP's landslide victory in the 2012 general election, Abe became the Prime Minister again. He is the first former Prime Minister to return to the office since Shigeru Yoshida in 1948. Abe was re-elected at the 2014 general election, retaining his two-thirds majority with coalition partner New Kōmeitō Party. On the 70th anniversary of Japan's defeat in World War II, Abe's cabinet decided to succeed the former government's position on Japan's wartime past and included the statements of "apology", "colonization", "aggression", and "remorseful regret" to the sufferings affected during the war.