Japanese Mourn Ex-PM Shinzo Abe a Day After His Assassination – Shinzo Abe, a former Japanese prime minister, was assassinated in the western city of Nara on Friday in an unusual act of political violence that shocked the country. On Saturday, a steady stream of mourners visited the scene.
A 41-year-old man shot and killed Japan’s longest-serving modern leader on Friday morning while he was giving a campaign address, an act condemned by the political establishment as an assault on democracy itself.
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A metal detector was installed at the location of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s stump speech in a city southwest of Tokyo on the final day of campaigning before Sunday’s legislative election, an uncommon security measure in Japan along with increased police presence.
After bringing flowers to the scene of the murder at a downtown train station with her 10-year-old son, Natsumi Niwa, a 50-year-old housewife, said, “I’m just shocked that this kind of event happened in Nara.”
With his rallying cry of Japan as a “beautiful nation,” Abe, a conservative and the architect of the “Abenomics” policies intended to revive the Japanese economy, inspired the name of her son, Masakuni, Niwa said. Japan’s word for nation is “kuni.”
At noon, there was a line of more than 100 people waiting to place flowers at a table where a picture of Abe giving a speech was displayed. To make room, local officials were shifting some of the offerings.
According to Japanese media, a vigil will be held on Monday, and close friends will attend Abe’s funeral on Tuesday. There was no immediate notification of a memorial service for the public. Police are rushing to figure out the killer’s intentions and strategy.
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Tetsuya Yamagami told police he thought Abe was associated with a religious group he blamed for wrecking his mother’s finances and breaking the family after being tackled and arrested shortly after the incident, according to local media reports quoting police sources.
