Australia–Japan relations a lighting trip to Tokyo and started to develop a close relationship with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, following his predecessor's example. Abe later visited Turnbull in Sydney early 2017 during a pivot to South-East Asia, where both increased military, trade, cultural, and sporting ties. Both also discussed the South China Sea Crisis, North Korea, and their anxiety to co-operate with their mutual ally, the United States' new Trump Administration. Australian trade had shifted away from other Commonwealth countries toward Asia around the 1960s and 1970s. Japan in particular had emerged as the leading trading partner. In 1966–67, Japan surpassed the
Sanji Abe Sanji Abe Abe was born in Kailua, Hawaii in 1895 to immigrant parents from Japan, Matsujiro and Raku, who had arrived in the islands two years earlier as migrant workers from Fukuoka. He attended public schools there. He entered the police department as a Japanese interpreter in 1918, and as a member of the Hawaii National Guard was taken into the United States Army with his fellow guardsmen to serve in World War I. After the war, he rose to the rank of deputy sheriff. He was married to Asami Miyose Abe, with whom he had six children. In 1940,