TOKYO -- "I couldn't shake that anxious feeling that I should be doing a little more," Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said at a news conference on Friday when he announced his resignation due to a flare up of a severe digestive ailment that has plagued him through his life. With only a little more than a year to go before his term expired as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which would also spell the end of his tenure as prime minister, what exactly was the nature of this anxious feeling that led to his premature resignation?
Abe made the decision to resign on his own Monday after a second medical exam this month at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo showed he lost almost 10 kilograms since the previous exam, Nikkei learned according to conversations with high-ranking officials. Abe first started noticing symptoms around June. "There are signs of recurrent disease," one of his doctors said in confidence after a June 13 physical.
