Former Japanese Prime Minster Shinzo Abe is dead after being gunned down while giving a public campaign speech.
The former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has died, aged 67, after being shot while making a speech in the western city of Nara.
Abe, the country’s longest-serving prime minister until he resigned in 2020, was flown to hospital by helicopter after the attack. It was the first assassination of a sitting or former Japanese premier since the days of prewar militarism in the 1930s.
Speaking before Abe’s death was announced, the prime minister, Fumio Kishida, condemned the shooting in the “strongest terms”, while Japanese people and world leaders expressed shock at the violence in a country in which political violence is rare and guns are tightly controlled.
“This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections – the very foundation of our democracy – and is absolutely unforgivable,” said Kishida, struggling to keep his emotions in check.
Footage and accounts broadcast by Japanese media showed Abe’s speech interrupted by two loud bangs – possibly from a shotgun – and smoke, with Abe stumbling to the ground after the second shot.
The hospital that tried to save him said he died at 5.03pm (0803 GMT), about five and a half hours after he was shot. A doctor said Abe had bled to death from two deep wounds, one on the right side of his neck. He had no vital signs when he was brought in.
Moments after the shooting, members of Abe’s security detail wrestled a man to the ground metres behind the former prime minister. The suspect was wearing a grey shirt, light brown trousers and grey trainers. His face was partly obscured by a surgical mask. He reportedly did not attempt to flee before being detained at the scene.
Police identified the suspect as Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old resident of Nara. According to local media reports, police said the weapon thought to have been used in the attack was homemade. A photograph showed two cylindrical metal parts that appeared to have been heavily bound with black tape lying on the road near the scene.
Abe was the longest serving Japanese Prime Minster over his two stints in office, and was an important player in world events. He was praised for his level-headedness and decency, often serving as a go-between for other world leaders at odds. Shinzo Abe was 67.
The assassin is quoted as saying 政治的信条以外の態度に対して不満があり、殺そうと思って狙った. I’m not 100% confident in the exact translation, but the gist of it is that he harbored dissatisfaction with Abe’s attitude for unspecified non-ideological reasons, and therefore decided to kill him.
This kind of reminds me of the shooting of Gabby Giffords, where the shooter held a personal grudge against her because she didn’t answer some nonsensical question he had asked at a prior public appearance. Mental illness seems like a likely factor.
Alternatively, he did it for political reasons but didn’t want his team to take the heat for it.Report
Actually, I think that was a description of his motives by the police rather than a direct quote. Now they’re saying that the assassin was targeting the leadership of a certain religious organization. Possibly related to Abe’s involvement in Nippon Kaigi, maybe a crazy conspiracy theory, or maybe a bit of both.Report
No, that’s not right. He had wanted to kill the leadership of a certain religious organization, but they were too far away, and then decided on Abe when he learned that Abe was coming to Nara. It’s unclear what, if anything, Abe had to do with the religious organization. It sounds kind of like he’d decided to assassinate someone and did some satisficing when choosing the target.Report
In my defense, he’s probably not making much sense to begin with, and I’m translating the media’s description of the police’s description of his statements.Report
He was apparently arch-conservative and divisive.
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Oh, they yanked it.
Probably for the best. Here’s the new one:
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Here’s a more sympathetic characterization from the Economist:
As prime minister from 2012 to 2020, Mr Abe transformed his country, serving longer than any other Japanese leader in the post-war era. He pushed Japan to play a more prominent global role and to take a more active role in its own defence, a shift from decades of pacifism following the second world war. After stepping down because of the recurrence of a chronic illness, he returned to Japan’s parliament and remained a major presence in Japanese politics, heading the largest faction in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
https://www.economist.com/asia/2022/07/08/abe-shinzo-has-been-assassinatedReport
The Economist had long been sympathetic (they did a big piece on/with him earlier this year, even), which in itself is, in a way, pretty damning.Report
I think it all depends on what you think the responsibility of a wealthy, influential country is to the rest of the world. My understanding is that there remain some really ugly ultra-nationalist ideas floating around in the Japanese political psyche that (conveniently) tend to get lost in translation to a Western audience. At the same time, does the existence of those forces relieve Japan of responsibility as a stakeholder in the world? Because to some degree that seems to be the actual alternative on the table and I’m not sure it’s the right one either.
You look at Germany for example which has done about as much as I think one can expect an ultimately self-interested political entity to do when it comes to atoning for its past. Nevertheless at a certain point endless guilt and keeping oneself in timeout for a hypothetical greater good can become an excuse for not taking an ownership of the future. It also can play into the more counterproductive, damaging tendencies of US foreign policy, which I think we here in America should have an interest in reforming.Report
Germany has passed laws and had their legislature acknowledge their war crimes. To my knowledge, Japan has not done much in that way.Report
Japan has a sizeable ultra-nationalist rightwing that is still very bitter about their defeats in WWII and works hard to make sure Japanese textbooks do not acknowledge their war crimes and other misdeeds during WWII. It is the equivalent of people who want to down play the War of Treason in the Defense of Slavery in the United States.Report
I think the practical question on this from our perspective is does the existence of those sentiments mean that Japan must forever be a de facto protectorate of the United States? And how do the downsides of that weigh against slightly increasing the probably still very low odds of a revanchist Japan going out on wars of conquest in a totally different Pacific than the one that existed in the 30s?
Not saying the answer is easy or that Abe was obviously correct, just that at some point we’re going to need accept that the post war settlements can’t last forever, and we need to decide what makes sense for the future.Report
Once we re-arm Germany and Japan…
Which I say tongue in cheek as maybe we should re-arm Germany and Japan… but the thing that makes international affairs unusually difficult is that we’ve no particular assurance that a re-armed German and Japan will align with our interests (which are continuously shifting) rather than theirs.Report
It’s simple:
If they align with their own interests instead of ours?
We’ll call them “Ultranationalist”.Report
twitter mob too.Report
One day your kids have to leave the nest, and all you can do is hope that you taught them well, and that they will do the right thing.
Though kidding aside I don’t think the decision is quite that stark. It’s hard for me to imagine a near future where either country goes rogue from US dominated alliances and institutions. There’s a lot of upside to having even more prominent seats at those tables and a lot of downside to walking away from them, particularly for countries with looming acute demographic crisis, and particularly for Japan, where it might mean navigating their relationship with China alone.Report
Of course… we’ll get some interesting sample data from Germany this winter.
But to be clear, I’m a multi-polar guy… the goal isn’t renewed hegemony, it’s managing the devolution to multi-polar which puts one crosswise with the entire DC consensus which despite all it’s ‘international institutionalism’ isn’t multi-polar; and frankly hasn’t faced up to the fact that we’re going multi-polar whether we want to or not.Report
Japanese politics in general is right-leaning but because they are a largely secular/areligious/not-Christian nation, it often does not translate well to the United States view of right-wing politics. Japanese right-wing moral panics are not like Evangelical right-wing moral panics except for the xenophobia perhaps.Report
Interesting. Thanks. I know zero about Japanese politics.Report
It’s weird. I can find lots of claims they haven’t acknowledge their war crimes but when I drill onto the examples claimed I find that they have.
My impression is there are elements of Japanese society that don’t want to accept blame, and that makes it easy to nut pick.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_war_apology_statements_issued_by_JapanReport
They definitely didn’t go the German route of sackcloth and ashes. There’s a whole weird belief that the Emperor was tricked into attacking, probably by Stalin. And China, Japan, and Korea absolutely hate each other, so any admissions of wrongdoing are half-hearted.Report
It’s easy to forget that the entire far east region in general but especially the Japanese/Korea/China region have national histories and grudges that go 4an astonishingly long way back in history.
Like, the US looks at Europe and says “Man those countries are old and set in their ways” but Japan/China/Korea are old nations in a way that makes most European nations look like wee babes.Report
Yeah, I get the point you’re making, but I sometimes worry that we mythologize the Other by thinking that way. Korea, Kuwait, and Killarney all have messy, human pasts that affect their cultures. You’re right that particular phrases like “right wing” might not be applicable in the same way, but it’s a short hop from that insight to caricatures of the inscrutable Asian.Report
South Korea and China basically find Japan’s apology incredibly mealy-mouthed and insincere. The Japanese don’t quite get this and do not really understand why they end up in the Nazi role in the East Asian equivalent of Indiana Jones movies.Report
You murder a few dozen million people and you get a rep.
Having said that, there’s something awkward about modern day Japan being cast as the villain compared to modern day China.Report
Only if Abe counts as a nut.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna10625961Report
What a bunch of losers! Don’t they know that if you fail to have an allergic response to conservative anything, it’s equivalent to Breaking Bread With Nazis?Report
Defending Imperial Japanese war crimes, as Abe did when claiming the “comfort women” chose to be prostitutes, really is like defending Nazis.Report
Bringing on the usual Trumpy screeching about NPR’s bias.Report
first draft: … ‘has been found dead at a hospital of apparent shotgun blast to neck and side after attending ultra-nationalist rally.’
I have no idea how internal Japanese politics work and who the shooter might be or what he represents… so, no comment… but probably related to Roe v. Wade, right? And technically not a shotgun, but more of a homemade short-barreled musket or unflared blunderbuss. And who am I to judge mostly peaceful 1st amendment acts of protest? But other than that, no comment because it’s not really about us. Or is it?Report
I like to think that Abe was an overall positive force on the world stage. If the big lesson of foreign policy from the aughts was that simply being a democracy with good intentions is not enough to be a positive force in world affairs, then the lesson of the teens was that neither is simply being an enthusiastic participant in global capitalism, and nothing more. Japan has a lot to give as a force for stability, which I believe Abe appreciated and that making that his legacy will be making that idea mainstream in Japanese politics.Report
In general, I think the assassination of political leaders is bad for global security and stability even when the murderer is also domestic and may or may not have done it for domestic reasons. Below is a small thread about how Abe changed Japan’s role in international affairs
https://twitter.com/alessionaval/status/1545336618826862592?s=20&t=Ytw97rGvIYWjOy5yJ_1tsQReport
Hope he’s wrong, fear he’s right:
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The alleged assassin appears to be a mentally ill individual with an unspecified grudge as Brandon points out. That is possibly the best outcome for motive. Of course, people can still take advantage of the situation and impute knowledge.Report
If the guy was mentally ill, that’s probably the best possible horrible situation (out of legion horrible ones).
I suppose we can now slide back to explaining how right-wing Abe was. You know that he visited the Yasukuni Shrine?Report
Right wing in Japan is so utterly different from right wing in the Anglosphere as to make it maybe not an apples to oranges comparison but at least an apples to pears one.Report
Anything without our fundies is largely different but the xenophobia stays the same. Japan’s relationships with South Korea were frosty under Abe.Report
When you see a country with *THAT* many enemies with *THAT* long of a history, it’s easy to reach conclusions.Report
Didn’t Abe play a major role in liberalizing immigration, at least relative to Japan’s low baseline?Report
I can’t say how much I hate this take. Its only positive is that it admits right up front that it has no basis in reason. Otherwise, it’s the refined essence of Twitter: ‘here’s my opinion based on a feeling’Report
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You know there have been assassinations every year since then that didn’t lead to world wars, right? And that Abe wasn’t a sitting monarch, and that there’s no indication his assassin was trained by Japan’s enemies?Report
We’re due.Report
How many data points are you basing this on?Report
CW: Headline Gore
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IIRC, early reports in the Japanese media used similar language: It sounded like a gun went off, he collapsed, draw your own conclusions.Report
Given it was an improvised gun, it’s possible the look and sound of what happened didn’t “seem” like someone being shot… at least in terms of how people perceive it.
There also may be different headline/reporting conventions in other countries as well as translation issues, especially between languages that don’t share structural elements.Report
I think they were just reluctant to report anything not known for certain. You can absolutely say “Abe collapsed after being shot” in Japanese, and later headlines did so.Report
They normally only use that construction when a police officer is involved in the handling of the device that makes noises that sound like gunshots.Report
From what I understand, this ties into the Unification Church.
More colloquially known as “The Moonies”.
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So this won’t be covered in the Washington Times?Report