An assassin using a home-made firearm killed Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe at a campaign rally in Nara. Police immediately found and arrested the suspect, as can be seen in this video from Japan’s NHK and replayed by Fox News. No motive has yet been disclosed for a murder that current PM Fumio Kishida called “dastardly and barbaric”:
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Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a divisive arch-conservative and one of his nation’s most powerful and influential figures, has died after being shot during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan, hospital officials said.
Abe, 67, was shot from behind minutes after he started his speech in Nara. He was airlifted to a hospital for emergency treatment but was not breathing and his heart had stopped. He was later pronounced dead despite emergency treatment that included massive blood transfusions, hospital officials said.
Police arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of an attack that shocked many in Japan, which is one of the world’s safest nations and has some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere. …
Public television NHK aired a dramatic video of Abe giving a speech outside a train station in the western city of Nara. He is standing, dressed in a navy blue suit, raising his fist, when two gunshots are heard. The video then shows Abe collapsed on the street, with security guards running toward him. He holds his chest, his shirt smeared with blood.
In the next moment, security guards leap on top of a man in gray shirt who lies face down on the pavement. A double-barreled device that appeared to be a handmade gun is seen on the ground.
Abe served twice as Japan’s PM, first briefly in 2006-7 and then from 2012-20, becoming the longest tenured PM in post-war Japan. Abe turned the country’s economy around from its generation-long stagnation with his “Abenomics” program. Abe’s biggest goal was to rewrite the country’s constitution to allow for a more robust military and more projected power in the region to counter Japan, but that turned out to be too unpopular for Abe to succeed. Abe was also an outspoken supporter of Taiwan, which led to frosty relations with Beijing as well.
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Police released the name of the suspect in the assassination, but no motive:
Police arrested a suspect, a man from Nara in his 40s named Tetsuya Yamagami, and seized a gun. Yamagami was a member of the Japan Maritime Self Defense Forces for three years, defense officials told Japanese media. …
Japanese media reported that the suspect had told police that he was frustrated with Abe and aimed his firearm with the intent to kill the former conservative leader.
That seems a rather mild motive for this assassination plot. Firearms are largely banned in Japan, and from the video and other media reports, the weapon used today appears to have been homemade. If that’s the case, then this suspect went to a lot of trouble for someone who was “frustrated” by a man who didn’t even hold office at the moment. According to the Washington Post, shootings are not only rare in Japan, they’re usually from one particular milieu:
Firearms are strictly regulated in Japan, and gun violence is most often associated with the yakuza, the Japanese criminal network. Last year, eight of the 10 shootings in Japan were related to the yakuza, according to the National Police Agency, resulting in one death and four injuries.
Anyone trying to obtain a gun in Japan needs to apply for a permit, attend a class on gun safety and laws, and pass a written test. There is a full-day training course on safe shooting and practicing techniques. There are multiple rounds of checks and verification on the gun owner’s background and health, including information about their family, mental health, personal debt, and criminal record. The gun must be registered with and inspected by police.
This looks too clumsy to be a professional plot, which would tend to leave out both the Yakuza and a foreign-intel operation, but police are going to run down every lead. There are a lot of questions left, but if this was the work of a crank, we may not get many answers.
In the meantime, we pray for our allies in Japan and for the family and friends of Shinzo Abe.
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