The country’s longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, passed away today after being shot twice while giving a speech in the south of Japan earlier today.
Ahead of the Sunday parliamentary elections, the 67-year-old, who held office for a total of nine years over two terms, was assassinated in the city of Nara at around 11.30 a.m. as he organised support for the local candidate. Six hours later, just after wife Akie had gotten to his bedside, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party made the announcement of his passing.
Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old navy veteran, was apprehended on the spot while brandishing what seemed to be a homemade shotgun on charges of attempted murder. Police claim that since then, he has confessed, telling them that he was “dissatisfied” with Abe and that he planned to kill him.
Witnesses claimed Yamagami approached Abe from behind and fired two shots, the second of which knocked Abe to the ground just as he was ready to begin speaking. Before being transported to the hospital by helicopter, Yamagami was tackled by several members of Abe’s security detail as others applied chest compressions to the lawmaker.
Prime Minister Kishida called the shooting an attack on ‘the foundation of democracy’, describing it as ‘heinous’, ‘barbaric and malicious’, and ‘absolutely unforgivable’. ‘I would like to use the most extreme words available to condemn this act,’ he added.
The shooting is a deeply shocking development in the life of Japan’s best-known politician, taking place a country that prides itself on its low levels of violent crime and has extremely tough gun laws.
Kishida said the motivation for the attack is unknown, but the fact that it was carried out so close to the upcoming elections and during a campaign speech ‘cannot be ignored’.
Kishida said ‘no decision’ had been made on the election, though several parties announced their senior members would halt campaigning in the wake of the attack.
Abe first took power in 2006 at the age of 52 – the youngest ever to hold the job – but was mired in scandal and abruptly stepped down while suffering debilitating bowel condition, ulcerative colitis.
He then regained the premiership in 2012 and held the role for the next eight years, before stepping down in 2020 when the bowel condition reemerged.
However, he remains a senior figure within the Liberal Democratic Party which has dominated Japan’s political scene since the end of the Second World War.
‘Former prime minister Abe was shot at around 11:30 am,’ in the country’s western region of Nara, chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters.
‘One man, believed to be the shooter, has been taken into custody. The condition of former prime minister Abe is currently unknown.
‘Whatever the reason, such a barbaric act can never be tolerated, and we strongly condemn it,’ Matsuno added.
The suspected gunman, who was tackled at the scene and arrested, is a former soldier who was in the Japanese self-defense forces and appears to have built the improvised weapon used in the shooting, Radio 4 reported.
Several Ministry of Defense officials confirmed that Yamagami had been working for the Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years until around 2005.
It was reported that Abe had his security team around him during the speech on Friday, but the attacker was able to pull this gun out and shoot him at close range ‘without being checked.’
The former leader had been delivering a stump speech at an event ahead of Sunday’s upper house elections when the sound of gunshots was heard, NHK and the Kyodo news agency said.
‘He was giving a speech and a man came from behind,’ a young woman at the scene told NHK.
‘The first shot sounded like a toy. He didn’t fall and there was a large bang. The second shot was more visible, you could see the spark and smoke,’ she added.
‘After the second shot, people surrounded him and gave him chest compressions.’
NHK showed video of Abe making a campaign speech outside a train station when two shots rang out, after which the view was briefly obscured and then security officials were seen tackling a man on the ground.
A puff of smoke behind Abe could be seen in another video shown in NHK.
A Kyodo photograph showed Abe lying face-up on the street by a guardrail, blood on his white shirt. People were crowded around him, one administering chest compressions.
TBS Television reported that Abe had been shot on the left side of his chest and apparently also in the neck.
The term heart failure means the heart cannot sufficiently pump blood and supply necessary oxygen to the rest of the body. In Japan, officials sometimes use the term to describe situations where victims are no longer alive but before a formal declaration of death has been made.
The government said a task force had been formed in the wake of the incident.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who belongs to the same political party as Abe, is on his way to Tokyo on a helicopter from his own campaign destination of Yamagata, in northern Japan. Matsuno said all Cabinet ministers are to return to Tokyo from their campaign trips.
‘We are all saddened and shocked by the shooting of former prime minister Abe Shinzo,’ US Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said in a statement.
‘The US government and American people are praying for the well-being of Abe-san, his family, and people of Japan.’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s special advisor Gen Nakatani told reporters ‘terror or violence can never be tolerated,’ Jiji reported.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and U.S. officials expressed shock and concern over the shooting.
Our thoughts, our prayers are with him, with his family, with the people of Japan,’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken said while attending a Group of 20 foreign ministers meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
‘Abe-san has been an outstanding leader of Japan and unwavering ally of the U.S. The U.S. Government and American people are praying for the well-being of Abe-san, his family, & people of Japan,’ Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel wrote on Twitter.
Political violence is rare in Japan, a country with strict gun regulations. The gun used in the shooting appeared to be home-made firearm, NHK said.
In 2007 Nagasaki Mayor Iccho Itoh was shot and killed by a yakuza gangster. The head of the Japan Socialist Party was assassinated during a speech in 1960 by a right-wing youth with a samurai short sword.
‘I thought it was firecrackers at first,’ one bystander told NHK.
Tetsuya Yamagami, a resident of Nara, was named by police as the shooter’s suspect.
Prior his resigning in 2020 due to ill health, Abe had spent two terms as prime minister, making him the longest-serving leader in Japanese history.
Abe, the longest-serving prime minister in Japan, was in office from 2012 to 2020 before being forced to resign due to ulcerative colitis, a crippling digestive illness.
He announced his resignation as prime minister in 2020 after claiming that a long-standing health issue had reappeared.
Since he was a youngster, Abe has had ulcerative colitis, which he claims can be managed with medication.
It was “gut wrenching,” he told reporters at the time, to abandon so many of his objectives. He discussed his failure to address issues with Japanese who had been kidnapped by North Korea years before, a territorial conflict with Russia, and a change to Japan’s constitution that forbade war.
He was very divisive because of that last objective.
His zeal to normalise Japan’s defence posture infuriated many Japanese, and his 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.
Abe’s supporters claimed that his legacy would be a closer partnership between the United States and Japan, which would improve Japan’s defence capabilities. However, Abe also alienated people by ramming his defence priorities and other controversial measures through parliament in face of vocal popular resistance.
Abe is a political dynamo who was raised to carry on his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi’s legacy as prime minister. His political discourse frequently centred on transforming Japan into a “normal” and “beautiful” country with a stronger military and a greater influence in world affairs.
Rahm Emanuel, the American ambassador to Japan, expressed shock and sadness over the shooting. ‘Abe-san has been an outstanding leader of Japan and unwavering ally of the U.S. The U.S. Government and American people are praying for the well-being of Abe-san, his family, & people of Japan,’ he wrote on Twitter.
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