The Talk of Tokyo: Japan's Abe Resigns

The people speak out on the resignation of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

ByABC News
January 8, 2009, 1:22 AM

TOKYO, Sept. 13, 2007 — -- News this week that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will resign has sent his ruling Liberal Democratic Party into a state of confusion, and taken most Japanese by surprise.

Abe's tenure has been wracked by scandal and by the controversy over the country's support of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Abe is now hospitalized, suffering from exhaustion, one day after announcing his resignation.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party will hold an election to choose Abe's successor Sept. 23.

The debate over Abe's rise and fall has spread to every corner of the country.On the campus of Tokyo's Keisei University, where Abe went to school, the news spread like wildfire.

Seventeen-year-old Akiyo Omori heard the news in her classroom. "Our class teacher delivered the news," said Omori. "We were so surprised. I watched the news on TV and read reports on the Internet. I do not understand why he left at this point," Omori said. "It looks like he is running away from responsibilities, which does not look cool."

The campus buzzed, but remained calm as students heard the news about their distinguished graduate's abrupt departure from the prime minister's office.

"Some students were talking about him today," said Kaori Kubo, a 21-year-old who studies Japanese literature. "We were all excited when he became prime minister," Kubo said. "I am disappointed that he left in that manner and at this time without important business taken care of. Mr. Abe does not seem like a bad person but he seems little too fragile."

Twenty-two-year-old literature major Eri Kashioka shared the sentiment. "He seems like a nice person but I am not sure if he had the tenacity to do the job," said Kashioka. "I think people bullied him too much -- everyone from his party to the opposition party to the public. He was pushed to the point where he got sick. That is enough."

Atsuki Ono, a 22-year-old engineering major, was more sympathetic. He said Abe was someone nice who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and that many of the scandals that plagued his administration were not his doing. "There were problems... which were out of his control," Ono said. "Those problems existed before he took office."