Shinzo Abe was a political blueblood groomed for power. Japan's longest serving prime minister, he was also perhaps the most polarising, complex politician in recent Japanese history.
Abe, who was assassinated Friday, angered both liberals at home and World War II victims in Asia with his hawkish push to revamp the military and his revisionist view that Japan was given an unfair verdict by history for its brutal past.
At the same time, he revitalised Japan's economy, led efforts for the nation to take a stronger role in Asia and served as a rare beacon of political stability before stepping down two years ago for health reasons.
“He's the most towering political figure in Japan over the past couple of decades,” said Dave Leheny, a political scientist at Waseda University. “He wanted Japan to be respected on the global stage in the way that he felt was deserved...He also wanted Japan to not have to keep apologising for World War II.”
Abe, who died after being shot during a campaign speech, was 67.
Police arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of the attack, which shocked many in Japan, one of the world's safest nations with some of the strictest gun control laws. Near the suspect was a double-barrelled device that appeared to be a handmade gun.
Abe believed that Japan's postwar track record of economic success, peace and global cooperation was something "other countries should pay more attention to, and that Japanese should be proud of,” Leheny said.
Abe was a darling of conservatives but reviled by many liberals in Japan. And no policy was more divisive than his cherished, ultimately unsuccessful dream to revise Japan's war-renouncing constitution. His ultra-nationalism also angered the Koreas and China, both wartime victims of Japan.
That push for constitutional revision stemmed from his personal history. Abe's grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, despised the US-drafted constitution, adopted during the American postwar occupation. For Abe, too, the 1947 charter was symbolic of what he saw as the unfair legacy of Japan's war defeat and an imposition of the victors' world order and Western values.
That constitution renounces the use of force in international conflicts, and limits Japan's military to self defense, although the country has a well-equipped modern army, navy and air force that work closely with the United States, Japan's top ally.
Poor public support for the changes doomed Abe's push, but the goal still enjoys backing from his ultra-conservative supporters.
Abe bristled against postwar treaties and the tribunal that judged Japanese war criminals. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.
He also was a driving force for Japanese conservatives' efforts to whitewash wartime atrocities and push for an end of apologies over atrocities.
Supporters point to his efforts to raise Japan's profile on the international stage, and his proposal for a new order of like-minded democracies as a counter to China's rise, something Washington and others soon endorsed.