As the country struggled to come to terms with the first assassination of a current or former leader in nearly 90 years, officials in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which Abe has dominated for a decade, insisted his death would not derail the democratic process. “We absolutely must not tolerate violence during elections to suppress free speech,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told hundreds of supporters in central Japan on the eve of upper house elections, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper. This, however, will be an election contest like no other in recent times, taking place immediately after a crime that will reverberate in the public consciousness long after Sunday. While media pundits constructed largely benign versions of Abe’s divisive political legacy, questions swirled around the circumstances that led to his death, aged 67, minutes after a campaign speech in front of a train station in western city of Nara. On Saturday, as on the previous day, Japan was playing a waiting game, longing for answers but lacking information from investigators holding the suspect while Abe, Japan’s longest-serving leader until he steps down in 2020, gave his last breaths. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, told police he initially planned to attack the leader of a religious group he accused of bankrupting his mother and destroying his family, Kyodo news agency reported, citing investigative sources. His mother, he said, had made several donations to the group, whose name police did not release, adding that she had visited several locations where Abe had given campaign speeches. Yamagami, a 41-year-old Nara resident, said he was also “dissatisfied” with Abe, whom he accused of promoting the group. On Saturday, a black hearse carrying Abe’s body accompanied by his wife, Aki, arrived at their Tokyo home from the hospital where staff fought for five hours to save his life after he was shot in the back and neck by nearby. Neighbors and senior party colleagues lowered their heads as the vehicle passed. In an image taken from a video, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gives a campaign speech in the city of Nara shortly before he was shot on Friday, July 8, 2022. Photo: AP A wake will be held on Monday, with Abe’s funeral at a central Tokyo shrine on Tuesday, attended by close family and friends, Japanese media reported. There was no immediate word on any public memorial service. His death has sparked criticism of security arrangements and will almost certainly spell the end of the closeness voters enjoyed with candidates at the campaign rally Abe attended on Friday. However, a debate on gun legislation is unlikely. Japan already has an almost zero-tolerance approach to gun ownership, and the gun that killed Abe is believed to have been homemade. That he was murdered at the hands of a gunman has only added to the sense of disbelief. Japan – a country of 125 million – recorded just 10 gun-related crimes last year, according to police, resulting in one death and four injuries. Eight of those cases were related to yakuza crime syndicates. In Tokyo last year, police confiscated 61 guns, but there was not a single firearm-related incident, injury or death. The killing will not dramatically affect the outcome of Sunday’s election, in which 125 of the 248 seats in the less powerful upper house are contested. The LDP was expected to win more than half the seats before Abe’s death, but a sympathy wave could increase its share of the vote, some analysts said. Less certain is how brightly Abe’s torch will shine in the LDP, whose conservative wing is now emotionally and ideologically bereft. His death leaves a political legacy unrivaled in modern Japan, but also a void at the heart of a party that has ruled almost continuously since Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, helped found it in 1955. In the weeks before his death, Abe – then the leader of the party’s largest faction – called on the government to double defense spending, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a warning that Japan’s security could not be ensured if invasion of China. Taiwan. He also reiterated the need for the Kishida government to revive his lifelong political ambition to revise the “pacifist” lines in the postwar constitution to recognize the legitimacy of the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan refers to its military. Largely uncritical media reports of his numerous public appearances led pundits to wonder if he was considering a bid for a third term as prime minister. “Although the party’s right wing is the largest, it lacks an obvious successor with comparable skills, charisma and determination to advance its agenda,” said James Brady, Japan analyst at US consultancy Teneo. Kishida, who has vowed to smooth the rough edges of Abe’s economic policies and create a “new capitalism,” could end up taking on the mantle of foreign policy hawk, Brady added. A strong electoral performance for the LDP, he said, “could catalyze Kishida to push for Abe’s unfulfilled goal of amending Japan’s constitution to allow a stronger role for the military.” On Saturday, a stream of people paid their respects at the spot where Abe fell. “I’m shocked that something like this happened in Nara,” Natsumi Niwa said after she and her 10-year-old son left flowers. The Japan Times, a newspaper sympathetic to Abe’s work, said the most appropriate response to Friday’s tragedy was simply to vote. “This was an act of terrorism and there is no place for such behavior in Japan,” it said in an editorial. “We live in a democracy where disputes and differences are resolved by vote…not violence.”
