Shinzo Abe, the former prime minister of Japan, was shot and killed while giving a speech in western Japan on Friday. His body was returned to Tokyo on Saturday.
Despite receiving emergency care, which included numerous blood transfusions, Abe died from blood loss after being attacked in the city of Nara. The attacker, a former navy officer from Japan, was taken into custody by police on the spot on suspicion of murder. The homemade gun he used was taken away by police, and his apartment later yielded several more.
According to police, the assailant admitted to planning the shooting because he thought Abe was affiliated with a group he disliked. According to Japanese media, the man had grown to despise the religion his mother was an ardent follower of. The group was not identified in the reports.
Abe’s home in the affluent Shibuya neighborhood of Tokyo was where many mourners gathered and bowed their heads as the black hearse carrying his body and his wife, Akie, arrived.
The nation was shocked by Abe’s murder, which raised concerns about the former prime minister’s security before Sunday’s parliamentary election.
Police said on Saturday that an autopsy revealed Abe died from massive bleeding brought on by damage to arteries beneath both collar bones from a bullet that struck his upper left arm.
Some people who watched assassination-related videos on social media and television noticed that nobody was paying attention to the area behind Abe as he spoke.
According to Fumikazu Higuchi, a former investigator with the Kyoto Prefectural Police, the video appeared to show inadequate security for a former prime minister and scant at the event.
Higuchi stated on a Nippon TV talk show that “it is necessary to look into why security allowed Yamagami to freely move and go behind Mr. Abe.”
Experts also noted that Abe was less safe riding in a campaign vehicle because his visit to Nara was hastily organized the day before, as opposed to standing on the ground.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, the assailant, can be seen in social media videos standing just a few yards (yards) behind Abe across a busy street, looking around constantly, with the homemade gun hanging from his shoulder.
Yamagami can be seen firing the first shot, which produced a cloud of smoke but seemed to miss Abe, a few minutes after Abe had taken the stage and begun speaking, as a local party candidate and their supporters stood and waved to the audience.
A second shot was fired as Abe turned to investigate the noise. The bullet appeared to have missed a bulletproof briefcase raised by a security guard who was standing behind the former leader and instead struck Abe’s left arm.
With his left arm tucked in as if to cover his chest, Abe collapsed to the ground. Through loudspeakers, campaign leaders pleaded for medical professionals to perform CPR on Abe, whose heart and breathing had already stopped by the time he was airlifted to a hospital where he was later pronounced dead.
Yamagami, a forklift operator who worked under contract at a warehouse in Kyoto, was described in the Asahi newspaper as a reserved individual who avoided mingling with his coworkers. Asahi was informed by his apartment’s next-door neighbor that Yamagami had never lived there, but that he did recall hearing noises resembling a saw being used several times late at night over the previous month.
A day after the majority of other world leaders released their statements, Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who at first had a tense relationship with Abe, sent a message of condolence to Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Saturday.
According to a statement published on the website of China’s Foreign Ministry, Xi praised Abe for his efforts to advance China-Japan relations and claimed that he and Abe had come to a crucial understanding regarding fostering stronger ties. He also assured Kishida that he is ready to cooperate with him in furthering the establishment of good neighborly relations.
Abe was still very powerful in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party even after leaving office and was in charge of its biggest faction, but many people disliked him because of his extreme nationalist views.
Abe cited a relapse of the ulcerative colitis he had battled since he was a teenager as the reason for his resignation as prime minister. He admitted at the time that it had been challenging to abandon many of his plans, particularly his failure to find a solution to the problems involving Japanese who had been kidnapped by North Korea years earlier, a territorial dispute with Russia, and a revision of Japan’s constitution that forbade war.
His push to establish what he saw as a more conventional defense posture infuriated many Japanese, and that ultra-nationalism infuriated the Koreas and China. Due to a lack of public support, Abe was unable to officially rewrite the pacifist constitution, which was the country’s founding document.
His legacy, according to loyalists, was to strengthen ties between the United States and Japan in order to increase Japan’s capacity for defense. But Abe alienated people by pushing through parliament his defense priorities as well as other controversial issues in spite of strong public opposition.
Abe was prepared to carry on Nobusuke Kishi’s legacy as the previous prime minister. His political rhetoric frequently centered on transforming Japan into a “normal” and “beautiful” country with a more powerful military and a larger role in world affairs.
Japan is renowned for having strict gun regulations. With a population of 125 million, there were only 10 gun-related criminal cases in it last year, according to the police, with one death and four injuries. Eight of those incidents involved gang activity. In the same year, there were no gun-related incidents, injuries, or fatalities in Tokyo, but 61 guns were seized.
Abe took great pride in his efforts to fortify Japan’s security ties with the United States and in arranging for Barack Obama to make the first visit of a sitting U.S. president to the city that had been atomically bombed, Hiroshima. He also contributed to Tokyo winning the right to host the 2020 Olympics by falsely claiming that the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster was “under control.”
At age 52, he was elected as Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006. However, his overly nationalistic first term came to an abrupt end a year later, also due to his health.
Abe’s scandal-riddled first term as prime minister came to an end, and six years of annual leadership change that were characterized by instability and “revolving door” politics began.
Abe promised to revive the country and lift its economy out of its deflationary slump when he took office again in 2012 using his “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing, and structural reforms.
He strengthened Japan’s defense role and capability as well as its security alliance with the United States by winning six national elections and establishing a firmhold on power. Additionally, he increased the focus on patriotism in the classroom and improved Japan’s standing abroad.
Following the murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday, President Joe Biden expressed his condolences.
