‘A huge loss to Japan’: Abe assassination shakes famously safe country

The assassination of Japan’s former prime minister Abe Shinzo while campaigning for a local politician in Nara has shocked a country rarely exposed to political violence. But even as leaders have said that parliamentary elections will be held as planned on Sunday, the searing loss of the country’s longest-serving prime minister – still a force in national politics – is raising uncomfortable questions around everything from security to social stability.

In the wake of the assassination, by a former navy member who had a homemade gun, Japanese streamed to the site near Yamato-Saidaiji Station, putting their hands together in prayer and bowing deeply. Others placed flowers and candles to honor the fallen leader. Memorials have filled social media, while TV programs have provided wall-to-wall coverage.

Tributes have poured in from leaders around the world, underscoring the global profile that Mr. Abe cut during his eight years in office. In India, a local tweeted a picture of his “humble tribute” to Mr. Abe, a sand art portrait created at Puri Beach with the words “we will miss you.” Many Taiwanese, meanwhile, offered their gratitude for his strong support of them. Queen Elizabeth shared her “fond memories” of his visit to the United Kingdom in 2016, while Prince William honored the former leader’s “warmth and generosity” during a 2015 visit to Japan.

If there was a common factor among Japanese, it was a deepening sense of unease.

“It’s really eerie as [the assassination] appears to portend the advent of a sinister time,” Tanaka Ryusaku, a freelance journalist, posted on his website. 

Kogumasaka Takashi, a city councilor from Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party in the western city of Shimonoseki in Yamaguchi prefecture, says residents have been unsettled by Mr. Abe’s assassination. Mr. Abe was scheduled to travel there on Monday.

“Locals were very much looking forward to his visit,” he says. “He was very friendly and approachable to anyone.”

Mr. Kogumasaka vividly recalls Mr. Abe’s visit to the city in 2007, shortly after he recovered from an illness that interrupted his one-year stint as prime minister. “Mr. Abe was talking to local residents in a gracious manner,” he says, adding emphatically that the death of Mr. Abe, whose second term stretched from 2012 to 2020, is “a huge loss to Japan and locals.”

A rare shooting

Shooting incidents are rare in Japan, which has some of the world’s strictest gun laws. The estimated total number of guns possessed by civilians in Japan was 310,400 in 2019, or 0.25 per 100 people, compared with 393 million guns, or 120 per 100 people, in the United States, according to GunPolicy.org. And of the eight gun-related homicides in Japan in 2020, seven were caused by yakuza gangsters, according to the National Police Agency. The last political assassination to make headlines was in 2007, when Nagasaki Mayor Ito Iccho was shot by a gangster while campaigning for his reelection.

About a minute into his stump speech on Friday, Mr. Abe was shot twice by Japanese navy veteran Yamagami Tetsuya, according to local reports. Authorities arrested the gunman on the scene, and say he confessed to the killing shortly after, claiming he was “frustrated with the former prime minister.”

The assassination will likely prompt Japan to increase security at political events, which has historically been quite modest. Indeed, video showed Mr. Abe speaking informally near the train station as residents stood close by and others wheeled by on bicycles. 

“I could not believe this,” says a Shimonoseki resident who declined to be named. “This is a huge incident. I wonder what will become of Japan and what will become of Yamaguchi,” the area where Mr. Abe was scheduled to visit.

“I feel nothing but sympathy for his wife,” she adds, referring to Abe Akie.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, who had been mentored by Mr. Abe, fought back tears as he spoke to reporters at his office in Tokyo following the confirmation of Mr. Abe’s death. The “barbaric act that took the life of former Prime Minister Abe during an election campaign, which serves as a base for democracy, should never be tolerated.”

“I don’t even have any words as I’m filled with sorrow,” he added.

Tokyo-based journalist and author Hayashi Masaaki said the images of the fallen leader powerfully affected people. For him, the first step in responding was for candidates to keep campaigning.

Abe’s legacy

Mr. Abe’s tenure was one of pushing Japan to adopt a higher profile on numerous issues, from playing a greater security role on the global stage to boosting a long-stagnant economy.

In 2015, he successfully backed legislation to allow overseas combat missions in support of allies, despite enormous public protest. He also was the first prime minister to host an American president, Barack Obama, at Hiroshima, where the U.S. first dropped an atomic bomb. 

Under Mr. Abe, Japan signed major trade pacts with the United States and the European Union and completed the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement with 10 other Pacific Rim countries, even after the U.S. withdrew. After Mr. Abe took office, Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average more than doubled, thanks to monetary easing measures by the Bank of Japan, the policy that he strongly supported.

But Mr. Abe faced his share of failures and controversy as well. He never achieved his longtime goal of revising Japan’s postwar constitution to get rid of Article 9, which renounced war. His “womenomics” campaign, which aimed to sharply increase women’s participation in the workforce, also fell short. He was met with international protest with his visit to the Yasukuni Shrine in 2013, which commemorates Japan’s 2.46 million war dead, including several convicted war criminals. Relations with South Korea were deeply strained. The Japanese public also took a dim view of his commitment to holding the Tokyo Olympics amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But larger issues of democracy and stability were on the minds of many in Japan as they absorbed their former leader’s killing.

The Japan Times editorialized that “this was an act of terrorism and there is no place for such behavior in Japan. We live in a democracy where disputes and differences are resolved by voting in elections, not with violence.”

U.S. President Joe Biden echoed the importance of Japan’s and America’s shared commitment to democracy. He described Mr. Abe as “a champion of the Alliance between our nations and the friendship between our people.” 

“Above all, he cared deeply about the Japanese people and dedicated his life to their service,” he said in a statement. “Even at the moment he was attacked, he was engaged in the work of democracy.”