If Shinzo Abe were to be judged on countries visited rather than yen printed or constitutional clauses circumvented, he would be a roaring success. In little more than 18 months – once he has completed a tour of Latin America that started in Mexico on Friday – he will have visited 47 countries.
That makes him peripatetic by almost any national leader’s standards, let alone those of Japan, where prime ministers practically have to beg parliament for permission to travel abroad. By comparison, Mr Abe’s two predecessors could manage only 18 countries between them in two-and-a-half years. Even Xi Jinping, China’s president and no slouch when it comes to foreign forays, has managed only 23.
Mr Abe’s Latin American trip, the first by a Japanese prime minister in a decade, follows several sweeps through Asia. In his first year in office, he pulled off the feat of visiting all 10 nations of the Association of Southeast Asian countries. In Asia, where China’s influence is increasingly felt and the weight of history always heavy, there is an implicit battle with Beijing for hearts as well as business opportunities.