After the 1985 Plaza Agreement pushed up the yen exchange rate sharply, the Japanese economy suffered a serious slowdown that proved very difficult to reverse. The only Japanese Prime Minister to oversee a period of consistent growth and high employment over the past thirty years was Shinzo Abe during his second term, which began in 2012.
Abe’s economic program (which I helped the Prime Minister develop) quickly became known as Abenomics. Assisted by the monetary policy of the Bank of Japan under the then government. Haruhiko Kuroda increased employment more than under any other Japanese government in the 21st century, creating nearly 5 million jobs between 2013 and 2019.
At the same time, approximately 3 million new female workers entered the workforce during this period. To put his economic policies on a secure footing, Abe sought to strengthen national security by promoting the idea of a free and open Indo-Pacific.
