Early polls on Sunday point to a strong victory for incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a protégé of Abe. This may now give him a mandate to push through measures ‘in the spirit of Abe’.
On CNN, a former adviser compared Abe’s assassination to that of US President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The assassination shocked the nation, and in its aftermath Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson funneled Kennedy’s political package through Congress. The same can now happen in Japan, which experienced its ‘JFK moment’ on Friday.
Abe was shot dead while giving an election speech in the city of Nara. A man, dressed in a gray T-shirt and beige pants, came at him from behind and fired twice with a homemade weapon. After the second shot, Abe fell to the ground. He was taken to a hospital but pronounced dead five hours later. He died from the effects of blood loss.
The assailant was immediately overpowered by officers. He was later identified as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami from Nara. He had been preparing his act for months, he told police. On Thursday, he had traveled to another speech by Abe in a town 200 miles away. After his arrest, the police found explosives and homemade weapons of the kind with which he had committed the murder in his apartment.
His motive had nothing to do with politics, he said. He had acted out of resentment against a religious group. He was angry that his mother had gone bankrupt after she made “a huge donation” to that group. Japanese media do not report which group it is.
Yamagami had initially wanted to kill a leader of that group, according to Japanese media, but then decided to kill Abe, because he thought he had something to do with the group. He initially considered bombing, but ultimately chose the gun he’d crafted.
Yamagami served three years in the Japanese Navy, learning how to handle weapons and explosives. From 2020 he worked in a factory, but in May he resigned.
The circumstances of the murder have raised questions about the security of politicians. Video footage shows that all of Abe’s security guards looked in the same direction during the attack: to the front, where a small crowd stood listening to the ex-Prime Minister. As a result, no one saw the perpetrator approach Abe from behind. The man was able to approach unimpeded and had time to fire twice before being overpowered.
Shinzo Abe first became prime minister in 2006. He unexpectedly resigned in 2007, “for health reasons.” In 2012, he became prime minister again, which he would remain until 2020. In September of that year, he resigned after strong criticism of his covid policy and after his government – including his former justice minister – was embroiled in a number of scandals. As a result, he missed the Tokyo Olympics, which had been moved to 2021. Abe had worked as prime minister to bring those games to Japan.
Abe made a name for himself worldwide with his strictly conservative approach to relaunch the stalled Japanese economy. His plan was nicknamed ‘Abenomics’. Abe was also the man who changed Japan’s agreed pacifist policy after World War II. He injected large sums into the military to make Japan more resilient to China’s growing influence.
The assassination of Abe was the first murder of a Japanese political leader since 1936. In Japan, gun violence is rare. In 2021, that was exactly one, while more than 45,000 people were killed by firearms in the United States that year.
Yamagami’s crime is considered an attack not only on Abe, but on democracy itself. In his condolences, US President Joe Biden promised Prime Minister Kishida “to protect democracy without succumbing to violence.” On Saturday, condolences poured in from around the world. The governments of China and Russia also expressed their condolences.