Dunno about him being a white or black hat, but coming at it from the perspective of living decades in Japan, I've seen a lot of uncritical pro-Abe posts here and elsewhere, apparently solely because Trump complements him. Just a few points:

• His Liberal Democratic Party is the establishment in Japan. It's been in power continuously, other than about 4 years combined, straight through since 1955. You don't do that without some serious corruption.

• Though he's made noises about defending Taiwan from China recently, not so long ago he also went out of his way to make it easy for Chinese interests to purchase major assets in Tokyo, and in 2018 signed agreements in Beijing that are widely seen as being lopsided in favor of China. He doesn't have a domestic image of being anti-China, the way he seems to be portrayed in overseas media—rather there are even (non-mainstream) voices accusing him of being in China’s pocket.

• Japan has an election coming up this very week (which is why he was out stumping). The inevitable fawning over an assassinated political leader will now make it more difficult for non-establishment candidates to criticize LDP positions, as it can be easily twisted around to "disrespecting the dead." If you look at who benefits from the assassination the most, it seems to me to be the LDP itself.

• By no means is he automatically popular among Japanese anons. Posts by Eri, who runs a Q Telegram channel, can probably explain it better than me (compilation by Yukkie on Gab): https://gab.com/Yukkie/posts/108611219289995189

• And don't get me started about his connection to Reverend Moon's Unification Church, where he even got Trump to make a speech.

It may well be possible he was a white hat. It's possible he turned or was turned toward the white hats, I dunno. But "Yay, what a great guy!" is too simplistic. At the very best, he's a career politician at the top of a party that's held onto the reins of power with an iron grip for over half a century, and has long been looked at askance by the anon community.

Anyway, it's not black and white.