You wouldn’t have picked Shinzo Abe as globalization’s future champion when he became prime minister of Japan in 2012. He was a proud nationalist intent on rekindling Japanese patriotism, loosening the shackles on the country’s military, and playing down its past aggression. No free-market ideologue, he criticized his predecessor’s negotiations to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious trade pact with the U.S. and 10 other Pacific nations.
Yet by the time Mr. Abe announced his resignation last week, he had presided over a remarkable opening up of Japan to the world. As the global trading system is being undermined by China and the U.S., Mr. Abe has become one of its most effective defenders, consummating not just the TPP but several other trade pacts. While other countries have been erecting new barriers to foreign workers, Mr. Abe has lowered them.
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