Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan, assassinated at campaign event
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was fatally shot while making a campaign speech in western Japan. A suspect has been arrested.
NARA, Japan — Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who opened fire on him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech — an attack that stunned a nation with some of the world’s strictest gun-control laws.
The 67-year-old Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020, collapsed bleeding and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara, although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said.
Nara Medical University emergency department chief Hidetada Fukushima said Abe suffered major damage to his heart, along with two neck wounds that damaged an artery. He never regained his vital signs, Fukushima said.
Prefectural police in Nara arrested the suspect at the scene of the attack and identified him as Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, a former member of Japan’s navy. Public broadcaster NHK reported that he said he wanted to kill Abe because he had complaints about him unrelated to politics.
Dramatic video from NHK showed Abe standing and giving a speech outside a train station in Nara ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election. As he raised his fist to make a point, two gunshots rang out, and he collapsed holding his chest, his shirt smeared with blood as security guards ran toward him.
Guards leapt onto the suspect, who was face down on the pavement. A double-barreled device that appeared to be a handmade gun was seen on the ground.
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated Friday on a street in western Japan by a gunman who shot him from behind as he delivered a campaign speech — an attack that stunned a nation with some of the world’s strictest gun-control laws.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet ministers hastily returned to Tokyo from campaign events around the country after the shooting, which he called “dastardly and barbaric.” He pledged that the election, which chooses members for Japan’s less-powerful upper house of parliament, would go on as planned.
“I use the harshest words to condemn” the shooting, Kishida said, struggling to control his emotions. He said the government planned to review the security situation but added that Abe had the highest protection.
Even though he was out of office, Abe was still highly influential in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest faction, Seiwakai.
Opposition leaders condemned the shooting as an attack on Japan’s democracy. In Tokyo, people stopped on the street to grab extra editions of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper or watch TV coverage of the shooting.
When he resigned as prime minister, Abe said he had a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis he’d had since he was a teenager. He told reporters at the time that it was “gut-wrenching” to leave many of his goals unfinished. He spoke of 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 war-renouncing constitution.
That last goal made him a divisive figure. His ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to normalize Japan’s defense posture angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.
Born into a prominent political family, Shinzo Abe, who was shot at a campaign event, holds the record as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.
Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger U.S.-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan’s defense capability. But Abe made enemies by forcing his defense goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.
Abe — who studied at USC for three semesters — 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 bigger role in international affairs.
Many foreign officials expressed shock over the shooting — especially because of Japan’s strict gun laws.
With a population of 125 million, the country had only 10 gun-related criminal cases last year, which resulted in one death and four injuries, according to police. Eight of those cases were gang-related. Tokyo had no gun incidents, injuries or deaths in the same year, although 61 guns were seized.
“This is shocking,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken told reporters in Bali, Indonesia, where he is attending a summit of foreign ministers from the Group of 20 leading nations. “It’s profoundly disturbing in and of itself. It’s also such a strong personal loss for so many people. For the United States, Prime Minister Abe was an extraordinary partner and someone who clearly was a great leader for Japan, the Japanese people, but also so admired as a global leader.”
Abe said he was proud of working as premier for a stronger Japan-U.S. security alliance and shepherding the first visit by a serving U.S. president to the nuclear-bombed city of Hiroshima. He also helped Tokyo win the contest to host the 2020 Olympics by pledging that a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant was “under control” when it was not.
Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at 52, but his overly nationalistic first stint abruptly ended a year later, also because of his health.
The end of Abe’s scandal-ridden first stint as prime minister was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.
World leaders have reacted in shock over the shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during a campaign speech.
When he returned to office in 2012, Abe vowed to revitalize the nation and get 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 rock-solid grip on power, bolstering Japan’s defense role and capability and its security alliance with the U.S. He also stepped up patriotic education at schools and raised Japan’s international profile.
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