Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was killed on Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind while he was giving a campaign speech, an attack that stunned a nation with some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere.
Abe, 67, was shot in the back minutes after beginning his speech in Nara. He was airlifted to an emergency hospital, but he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead despite emergency treatment that included massive blood transfusions, hospital officials said.
Police arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of the attack, which shocked many in Japan, which is one of the safest nations in the world and has some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere.
With a population of 125 million, the country had just 10 gun-related crimes last year, resulting in one death and four injuries, according to police. Eight of those cases were gang-related. There were no gun incidents, injuries or deaths in Tokyo that year, although 61 guns were confiscated.
“Japan is one of the most peaceful, non-violent societies on the planet,” Ian Berner, Canada’s ambassador to Japan between 2016 and 2021, told CBC News. “Murder of any kind is rare, let alone political assassinations of this nature.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his cabinet ministers hurriedly returned to Tokyo from campaign events around the country after the shooting, which he called “vile and barbaric.”
The head of Nara Medical University’s emergency department, Hidetada Fukushima, said Abe suffered extensive damage to his heart in addition to two neck wounds that damaged an artery, causing profuse bleeding. He was in cardiac and pulmonary arrest when he arrived at the hospital and never regained his vital signs, Fukushima said.
A family prays at a site outside Yamato-Saidaji Station in Nara, where former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot dead earlier on Friday. (Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)
Abe was Japan’s longest-serving leader before stepping down in 2020.
Public broadcaster NHK aired a dramatic video of Abe giving a speech outside a train station in the western city of Nara. He stands, dressed in a dark blue suit, fist raised, when two gunshots ring out. The video then shows Abe collapsed in the street with security guards running towards him. He holds his chest, his shirt is stained with blood.
Suspect arrested
The next moment, security guards jump on a man in a gray shirt, who is lying face down on the sidewalk. A double-barreled device is seen on the ground, looking like a hand-made weapon.
Nara Prefectural Police confirmed the arrest of 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami on suspicion of attempted murder. NHK reported that the suspect served in the Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years in the 2000s.
A man believed to be a suspect in the shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is detained by police officers at Yamato Saidaiji Station in Nara, Japan, on Friday. (The Yomiuri Shimbun/Reuters)
Police said the suspect used what appeared to be a homemade gun – about 40 centimeters long – and they confiscated similar weapons and his personal computer when they raided his nearby studio apartment.
Police said Yamagami answered questions calmly and admitted to attacking Abe, telling investigators he planned to kill him because he believed rumors about the former leader’s connection to a certain organization that police did not identified.
Other videos from the scene show campaign officials surrounding Abe. The former leader was still highly influential in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest Seiwakai faction. Elections for Japan’s upper house, the less powerful house of Japan’s parliament, are on Sunday.
A screenshot from a video shows an apparent weapon found near where the suspect in Friday’s shooting was taken into custody. (NHK)
“I use the harshest words to condemn [the act]Kishida said as he struggled to control his emotions. He said the government planned to review the security situation, but added that Abe had the highest protection.
Opposition leaders condemned the attack as a challenge to Japanese democracy. In Tokyo, people stopped on the street to pick up extra editions of newspapers or watch television coverage of the shooting.
When he resigned as prime minister, Abe said he had a relapse of the ulcerative colitis he had had since his teenage years.
Seeks to rewrite the constitution
He told reporters at the time that it was “embarrassing” to leave many of his goals unfinished. He talked about his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia and a revision of Japan’s constitution, which renounces war.
That last goal was a big reason why he was such a controversial figure.
His ultra-nationalism angered the Koreas and China, and his drive to create what he saw as a more normal defensive posture angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of rewriting the officially US-drafted pacifist constitution due to weak public support.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks to the media at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence on Friday in Tokyo following the shooting of Shinzo Abe. (Eugene Hoshiko/Associated Press)
Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship aimed at bolstering Japan’s defense capability. But Abe has made enemies by pushing his defense goals and other contentious issues through parliament despite strong public opposition.
Abe was a political blue blood who was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and a greater role in international affairs.
Many foreign officials expressed shock at the shooting.
Pedestrians are silhouetted against a large public video screen announcing the death of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday. (Toshifumi Kitamura/AFP/Getty Images)
Abe said he was proud to have worked as a leader for a stronger Japan-US security alliance and led the first visit by a sitting US president to the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima. He also helped Tokyo win the right to host the 2020 Olympics by promising that the Fukushima disaster was “under control” when it was not.
He won 6 national elections
Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at the age of 52, but his overly nationalistic first term ended abruptly a year later, also due to ill health.
The end of Abe’s scandal-ridden first stint as prime minister marked the beginning of six years of annual leadership turnover, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.
Doctors at Nara Medical University Hospital briefed the media on efforts to save Abe at a press conference Friday in Kashihara. (Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)
When he returned to office in 2012, Abe vowed to revive the nation and lift its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.
He won six national elections and built a firm grip on power, strengthening Japan’s defense role and capabilities and its security alliance with the United States. He also strengthened patriotic education in schools and raised Japan’s international standing.
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