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,
Shinzo Watanabe Shinzo Watanabe Shinzō Watanabe (渡辺 信三 Watanabe Shinzō, 23 December 1935) is a Japanese mathematician, who works on probability theory, stochastic processes and stochastic differential equations. Watanabe received from Kyoto University in 1958 his bachelor's degree and in 1963 his Ph.D. under Kiyosi Itô. Watanabe became a professor at Kyoto University. He was also a visiting professor at Stanford University and participated in the organizing committees of international Japanese/Soviet seminars on probability theory. In 1989 he received the Autumn Prize of the Mathematical Society of Japan. In 1983 he was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in