Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has announced that he's resigning.

Not that it will make one bit of an impression, but I'm glad to hear it. I have close to zip interest in the politics of Japan, but Mr. Abe's attitude toward adoption ticked me off from the gate and I'll be happy to see the back of him. I'm pretty sure, however, that whoever replaces him will be just about as negative toward the option of adoption for kids or families.

It's a Japanese thing, you see, to look down the nose at adoption. As this admittedly dated, but by no means no longer valid report illustrates, there's a true and historic aversion to adoption in Japan.

And as I wrote recently, the antipathy is apparently quite pronounced in the Prime Minister and his wife.

A childless couple, the Abes have revealed that fertility treatments were a part of their lives for some time, and Mrs. Abe confessed she, "felt strong pressure to bear children because her husband is a third-generation politician."

She said she considered adoption, although it's not mentioned if this was a consideration also for her husband, but "wasn't able to go through with it mentally ...".

Those few Japanese who do adopt are known to be very quick to cover their tracks and secret away all evidence of building a family this way. Until 1988, however, this was almost impossible as all official documents of an adopted child were compiled in such a way that it amounted to the same as having "adopted" stamped all over everything in big, bold letters.

Because of the shame tied to adoption, it's reported that adoptions often occur surreptitiously with, "children handed off privately between families, sometimes with the help of a doctor, lawyer or broker who - for a price - will fake a birth certificate ...", a true recipe for disaster.

''It's all done in secret,'' she said. ''Adoption is not the Japanese way.'' As a result, she said, some people go to great lengths - even moving to a place where they are not known, and feigning pregnancies with pillows - to conceal an adoption.

So with little understanding and no regard for the politics of Japan, I'm sitting here watching the sunset from my island a heck of a long way away from the land of the rising sun and thinking: Sayonara, Abe-san ... I hope your replacement thinks better of the parent-less children in your country.