Shinzo Abe entered the history books as Japan’s longest-serving premier on Wednesday, but many of his ambitious goals, including a constitutional revision to strengthen the military, appear far from reach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wednesday marks Abe’s 2,887th day in office, topping the record previously set by Taro Katsura, a revered politician who served three times between 1901 and 1913.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The 65-year-old is also the second-longest-serving leader of the Group of Seven major economies behind only German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been in office since 2005.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Abe’s grip on power remains firm as he passes the landmark, with his tenure likely to last until at least September 2021 and no clear successor yet on the horizon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the premier has plenty of unfinished business, saying earlier this year after a cabinet reshuffle that he hoped to “take on the challenge to create a new country”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He has reiterated his long-cherished ambition of revising Japan’s post-war constitution to change the status of the country’s Self Defense Forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But opposition parties have refused to move forward with procedures for the revision, and Abe has seen his reputation tarnished by the resignation of two cabinet ministers and a cronyism scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He is currently mired in a row over inviting too many of his supporters to a costly cherry blossom viewing party, forcing the government to scrap the annual event next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday to mark the record, he was peppered with questions about the latest scandal, which shows little sign of going away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Shinzo Abe entered the history books as Japan’s longest-serving premier on Wednesday, but many of his ambitious goals, including a constitutional revision to strengthen the military, appear far from reach. Wednesday marks Abe’s 2,887th day in office, topping the record previously set by Taro Katsura, a revered politician who served three times between 1901 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74852,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-74851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":74853,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74851\/revisions\/74853"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}