Ave, Abe

Shinzo Abe, a longstanding firebrand of a Prime Minister in Japan, was assassinated yesterday while giving a campaign speech for a party member. [Link is to the Wall Street Journal, but pick whatever paper you'd like: this story tops all the major ones today.]

Abe was one of those foreign leaders often described by our press as 'conservative' even though he doesn't fit an American mold very well at all. He was the reason that Japan is as well-positioned as it is now to resist a resurgent China, keeping its 'self-defense forces' as close to being capable of real military operations as he could without violating Japan's pacifist constitution. Under his watch, Japan began building what was obviously a power-projection capacity, including its first aircraft carrier since World War II.

He was also a nationalist and a patriot, the kind who is willing to forgive his country for its sometimes-intense sins in order to celebrate its genuine glories. As far as I know he was unapologetic about this habit of character unto his death. A 'habit of character' of such strength in moral matters is either a virtue or a vice in Aristotelian terms; Abe was loved or condemned depending on what judgment individual people had of which category his habit properly belonged.

Though he was thereby an American ally, he was always Japanese first, as he ought to have been. Loyal to his ancestors and his people, he passes now to face a better judgment and a final one.