A staunch conservative and member of the Nippon Kaigi organization, which holds negationist views on Japanese history, Abe took strong right-wing stances including downplaying atrocities in textbooks, denying government coercion in the recruitment of comfort women during the war, and seeking revision of Article 9 of the Constitution.

Among the items to which this team raised objections were anatomical dolls and other curricular materials "not taking into consideration the age of children", school policies banning traditional boys' and girls' festivals, and mixed-gender physical education.

[66] Abe returned to the LDP leadership at a time of political turmoil, as the governing DPJ had lost its majority in the lower house due to party splits over nuclear policies and the cabinet's move to raise the consumption tax from 5 to 10 percent.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was forced to rely on the LDP to pass the consumption tax bill and in return was pressured by Abe and the opposition parties to hold a snap general election.

[68] Abe campaigned using the slogan "Nippon o Torimodosu" ("Take back Japan"), promising economic revival through monetary easing, higher public spending and the continued use of nuclear energy, and a tough line in territorial disputes.

[83] After the first meeting of the Bank's monetary policy committee after he had taken office in April, Kuroda announced an aggressive program of easing intended to double the money supply and achieve the 2 percent inflation target at "the earliest possible time".

[86][87] The Abe Cabinet's first budget included a 10.3 trillion yen stimulus package, composed of public works spending, aid for small businesses and investment incentives, that aimed to increase growth by 2 percent.

[102] At the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos in 2014, Abe announced that he was ready to act as a "drill bit" to break through the rock of vested interests and "red tape" to achieve structural reforms of the economy.

[107][108][109] In November 2013, the Abe cabinet passed a bill to liberalize Japan's electricity market by abolishing price controls, breaking up regional monopolies, and separating power transmission from generation by creating a national grid company.

[123] Shortly after taking office Abe signaled a "drastic reshaping" of foreign policy and promised to pursue diplomacy with a global, rather than a regional or bilateral outlook based on "the fundamental values of freedom, democracy, basic human rights, and the rule of law".

[129][130] In September 2013, Abe intervened to aid Tokyo's bid to host the 2020 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, giving a speech in English at the IOC session in Buenos Aires, in which he extolled the role of sport in Japan and sought to reassure the committee that any ongoing issues with the Fukushima plant were under control.

[142] In January 2014, Abe became the first Japanese leader to attend India's Republic Day Parade in Delhi as chief guest, during a three-day visit where he and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to increase co-operation over economic, defense and security issues and signed trade agreements related to energy, tourism and telecoms.

[146] On 30 May 2014, Abe told officials from the ASEAN countries, the United States, and Australia, that Japan wanted to play a major role in maintaining regional security, a departure from the passiveness it has displayed since World War II.

[151] Abe's speech at the WEF in 2014 was interpreted as a criticism of PRC foreign and defense policy when he said that "the dividends of growth in Asia must not be wasted on military expansion" and called for greater preservation of the freedom of the seas under the rule of law, although he did not specifically refer to any one country during his remarks.

[155] Based upon the American body of the same name, the law to create the NSC was passed in November 2013 and began operating the following month when Abe appointed Shotaro Yachi as Japan's first National Security Advisor.

The cabinet inaugurated in December 2012 was the longest-serving and most stable in post-war Japanese history, lasting 617 days without a change in personnel until Abe conducted a reshuffle in September 2014, with the stated aim of promoting more women into ministerial posts.

"[170] In November 2014, while Abe was attending the APEC forum meeting in the PRC and the G20 Summit in Australia, rumors began appearing in the press that he was planning to call a snap election in the event that he decided to delay the second stage of the consumption tax increase.

[177] In his February policy speech, as the Cabinet weathered a Moritomo Gakuen school scandal, Abe called upon the new Diet to enact "most drastic reforms since the end of World War II" in the sectors of the economy, agriculture, healthcare and others.

[178][179] On a tour of the Middle East in January 2015, Abe announced that Japan would provide 200 million dollars in non-military assistance to countries fighting against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as part of a 2.5-billion-dollar aid package.

[180] Shortly after this, ISIL released a video in which a masked figure (identified as Mohammed Emwazi or "Jihadi John") threatened to kill two Japanese hostages, Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa, in retaliation for the move unless Abe's government paid 200 million dollars of ransom money.

[149] In late December 2015, foreign ministers Fumio Kishida and Yun Byung-se announced in Seoul that a deal had been reached to resolve the comfort women dispute, in which Japan agreed to pay 1 billion yen (US$8.3 million) into a fund to support the 46 surviving victims, and issued a statement that contained Abe's "most sincere apologies and remorse".

[226][227] Abe was publicly criticized by atomic bomb survivor Sumiteru Taniguchi in his speech at the Nagasaki memorial ceremony on 9 August, when he stated that the defense reforms would take Japan "back to the wartime period".

[237] At a press conference after his official re-election as LDP president, Abe announced that the next stage of his administration would focus on what he called "Abenomics 2.0", the aim of which was to tackle issues of low fertility and an aging population and create a society "in which each and every one of Japan's 100 million citizens can take on active roles".

[232] This new policy consisted of targets which Abe referred to as "three new arrows"; to boost Japan's GDP to 600 trillion yen by 2021, to raise the national fertility rate from an average of 1.4 to 1.8 children per woman and stabilize the population at 100 million, and to create a situation where people would not have to leave employment to care for elderly relatives by the mid-2020s.

[279] Writing of what he characterizes as the most serious failure of the Abe administration, co-director of the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies of Temple University in Japan Robert Dujarric, wrote: "The election of Donald Trump raised existential questions about the reliability of Washington as a guarantor of Tokyo's security.

The events of January 6th… reflected the fact that a substantial number of Republican voters believe that Trump had won the election and appeared to endorse his supporters' use of lethal violence to keep him in the White House, which was indeed very worrisome for the Japanese.

Abe's administration was credited with overcoming protectionist pressures within Japan and rallying the 10 other TPP member countries to support CPTPP, which largely kept the previous agreement intact and left the door open to an eventual US return.

[346] This was in line with a statement made almost 10 years earlier, in which Abe voiced his opposition to the inclusion of the subject of military prostitution in several school textbooks while denying any coercion in the "narrow" sense of the word, environmental factors notwithstanding.

[347] This statement provoked negative reactions in Asian and western countries; a New York Times editorial on 6 March 2007 commented for instance: What part of 'Japanese Army sex slaves' does Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have so much trouble understanding and apologizing for?… These were not commercial brothels.

[352][353][354][355] Writing in the London Review of Books, political scientist Edward Luttwak called Abe a "pragmatic Japanese Tory driving through reforms at home, while weaving an alliance aimed at containing China".