TIMELINE: Ten months of highs and lows for Japan PM Abe

(Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's conservative ruling camp suffered a devastating defeat in elections for parliament's upper house on Sunday, but the soft-spoken, hawkish leader insisted he would stay in his post despite the drubbing.

Here is a timeline charting highs and lows for Abe since he took office last September:

* September 26, 2006: Abe is chosen as prime minister with approval ratings of around 60 percent. He pledges to boost Japan's role in global security and revise the pacifist constitution. At 52, he is Japan's first prime minister to be born after World War Two and its youngest leader since the war.

* October 8-9, 2006: Abe makes a fence-mending trip to China and South Korea for meetings with their leaders and manages to improve ties frayed by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Beijing and Seoul as a symbol of Japan's wartime militarism. Abe has paid respects at Yasukuni in the past, but declines to say whether he will do so as prime minister.

* December 21: Abe's point man on tax, Tax Commission Chairman Masaaki Homma, resigns after media reports that he is living with a mistress in an upscale government-subsidized apartment.

* December 27: The minister for administrative reform, Genichiro Sata, quits after a group of his political supporters filed "inappropriate" financial statements.

* January 27, 2007: Health Minister Hakuo Yangisawa calls women "birth-giving machines" in a speech, prompting public outrage and calls for his resignation from both opposition and ruling party lawmakers. Both Abe and Yangisawa apologize, but Abe keeps the minister in the job.

* March 5: Abe remarks that there is no proof that Japan's army or government kidnapped women to act as sex slaves for soldiers during World War Two, sparking outrage in the United States and across Asia.

* April 13: A visit to Japan by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao further thaws ties between the two neighbors and boosts Abe's ratings. Wen's trip is the first by a Chinese premier since 2000.

* April 26-27: Abe travels to the United States for a meeting with U.S. President George Bush at Camp David, his first U.S. trip as prime minister.

* May 28: Abe's public support rate slumps to 32 percent, its lowest level since he took office after a government agency acknowledges that data on 50 million pension premium payments had been mixed up, meaning that some retirees could be short-changed.

* May 28: Scandal-tainted Farm Minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka, under fire for a series of funding scandals, hangs himself.

* June 15: Abe's support rate falls below 30 percent -- seen by many analysts as a crisis level -- for the first time since taking office. Jiji news agency finds 28.8 percent support for his cabinet, down 10.6 percentage points from May.

* July 3: Defence Minister Fumio Kyuma resigns two days after provoking outcry by saying that the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of two Japanese cities "couldn't be helped".

* July 7 - Media report that Abe's new farm minister, Norihiko Akagi, fudged financial statements for the office of a political support group that was no longer in use. Akagi denies wrongdoing and Abe defends him.

* July 29 - In his first big electoral test since taking office, Abe's coalition loses its upper house majority, punished by voters angered by the scandals, gaffes and bungling of pension records.

Source: Reuters

(Additional reporting by George Nishiyama in Tokyo)