Abe offers condolences over Lee Teng-hui's death

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his condolences on Friday following the death of former Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui

He praised Lee for his contributions to a bolstering friendship between Japan and Taiwan.

"As a person who had built the foundation of Japan-Taiwan relations, many Japanese people feel a special attachment towards him," Abe said.

Lee strove to create a separate, non-Chinese identity for Taiwan, angering not only China, which considers the island part of its territory, but also members of his Nationalist Party who hoped to return victorious to the mainland.

He later openly endorsed formal independence for the island, but illness in his later years prompted him to largely withdraw from public life.

Physically imposing and charismatic, Lee spanned Taiwan's modern history and was native to the island, unlike many who arrived with Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, at the end of the Chinese civil war.