Shinzō Abe the North Korean nuclear cards. So far, Abe has successfully visited the Philippines and Indonesia, and although China is not within the Southeast Asian region, Japan has also sought its support. However, relations with China continue to be tarnished by the Senkaku Islands dispute and Abe's visits to Yasukuni shrine (see below). Abe, in his two terms as the prime minister of Japan, sought to upgrade the strategic Japan-India relationship. Abe initiated the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between Japan, the United States, Australia and India in 2007. His three-day visit to India in August 2007 inaugurated a new bilateral Asian alliance,
National debt of Japan Noda of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) - passed a bill in June 2012 to double the national consumption tax to 10%. This increased the tax to 8% in April 2014. The originally scheduled 10% tax increase to be implemented in October 2015 has been delayed until at least October 2019. The goal of this increase was to halt the growth of the public debt by 2015, although reducing the debt would require further measures. The DPJ subsequently lost control of the Diet in late 2012, and Noda's successor Shinzo Abe, of the Liberal Democratic Party, implemented the "Abenomics"