Japan, where political violence is rare and guns are tightly controlled, has been deeply shocked by the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe. Japan’s longest-serving leader was shot dead in the city of Nara by an assassin with a homemade gun while on the campaign trail for parliamentary elections. The 41-year-old gunman’s motives remain unclear.
It was the first assassination of a sitting or former Japanese premier since the days of pre-war militarism in 1936. In 2007, the mayor of Nagasaki was shot and killed by a yakuza gangster and the head of the Japan Socialist Party was assassinated during a speech in 1960 by a rightwing youth with a samurai short sword. Last year 10 shootings that contributed to death, injury or property damage were reported; one person was killed and four others injured. Abe, who served two terms as prime minister, hailed from a wealthy political family that included a foreign minister father and a grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, who served as premier and who escaped narrowly being tried for war crimes.
Abe, who engaged in proactive diplomacy to build relations with neighbours in the region to counter China’s influence, nevertheless resisted calls for Japan to apologise for its second World War atrocities. In a speech marking the 70th anniversary of the war’s end, he said the country’s future generations should not be “predestined to apologise”.
Abe was a key figure in the revitalisation of Japan’s conservative and nationalist politics. He will be remembered for his “Abenomics” policy of aggressive monetary easing and fiscal spending which boosted the country’s stagnant economy, and for his determination to bolster Japan’s military to counter China’s growing clout. Attacking one of the great post-war national sacred cows, he sought unsuccessfully to revise the constitution’s pacifist provisions to allow Japan’s troops, its “Self-Defence Forces”, to fight overseas. Japan has lost a sterling champion – a committed multilateralist who was determined to root it in the democratic camp of nations.