'Japan is back.' Can Shinzo Abe stay the course? or Where Will the Nationalism of Shinzo Abe Really lead Japan?

In September 2007, Shinzo Abe must have thought he had blown his chance to alter the course of Japan's postwar politics.
A year earlier, he had become the country's youngest prime minister and the first to be born after the end of World War II. But after just 12 months, he was forced to step down.

At the time of his resignation Abe had been pushing really hard for a revision of Japan's pacifist constitution which is widely unpopular and speaking of a beautiful Japan, whatever that was supposed to mean.  Many saw it not only as a return to Japan's militaristic past but a promotion of Abe's ideology of historical revisionism and war crimes denial.  

During his campaign to regain the Premiership Abe tempered his beliefs so that voters wouldn't view him as driven by his nationalist conservative leanings.  That's all changed in the last several months as he's once again began to push hard for changes in the constitution that he believes will drag Japan into the top tier of nations on world policy and influence.   At the same time he seems intent on antagonizing North and South Korea along with China with various statements he's made but especially with his visit to Yasukuni Shrine in December where 14 convicted Class A War Criminals are enshrined.   

Abe, they say, is a product of the postwar era of growth and optimism whose time, after a false start seven years ago, has finally arrived. His agenda is driven by a desire to recapture the spirit of national pride that spurred the country's transformation from pariah to global economic power.
His goal, they add, is not to see a return to the dark days of 1930s militarism, but for Japan to finally join the club of "normal" democratic states – able to defend its interests at home and abroad, with force if necessary.

How is he a product of optimism when his actions seek out a nationalism that led to Japan's eventual defeat in World War II.  He wants to reform Japan's education system so that it instills patriotism and removes from junior and senior high school history textbooks any references to Japan's imperialist policies from 1910 to 1945.

Abe's worldview develops

It was in that early postwar period, too, that a young Abe formed a view of his country's relationship with the world that he has carried through to this day.
A black-and-white photograph from the era shows Abe, then a kindergartner, seated on the lap of his maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, whose beliefs about Japan's place in the postwar world order would have a profound influence on his grandson – more so than those of Abe's own father, Shintaro Abe, who served as foreign minister from 1982 to 1986.

Nobusuke Kishi who served as Prime Minister was a member of Tojo's War Cabinet was like Shinzo Abe unabashed nationalist given that he considers this man to be his mentor is it any wonder Abe holds these beliefs. 

Mr. Kishi, who served in the wartime cabinet of Gen. Hideki Tojo, was arrested by the Allied Occupation forces for suspected war crimes but was never charged. He went on to become Japan's prime minister in 1957.
In Abe's eyes, his grandfather remained a misunderstood figure, particularly among those angered by his decision to strengthen the military alliance with the US in 1960 with revisions to their bilateral security treaty. Others railed against Kishi's plans to begin what his grandson hopes to finish – revision of the postwar Constitution.