Japan ex-PM,Shinzo Abe assasinated
Japan’s former PM Abe assassinated
Local media has reported Shinzo Abe’s death at the hands of a gunman, now in custody
Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been pronounced dead after being shot during a public event, NHK has reported, citing the ruling Japanese Liberal Democratic Party. The death was also confirmed by a party source, who spoke to agency Kyodo News.
Abe was taken to hospital in grave condition after a gunman injured him during a public appearance in the city of Nara in western Japan. He was campaigning for a candidate in an upcoming parliamentary election.
Doctors said that significant blood loss from the gunshot injuries had led to his ultimate demise. Abe’s neck was seriously wounded in the attack, medics said, and some of the damage had gone deep enough to damage the heart. The politician was brought to hospital with no vital signs, and attempts to resuscitate him failed.
Chief cabinet secretary Hirokazu Matsuno was among the first to corroborate details of the attack on Friday, calling it “unforgivable” while noting that a suspect had been arrested.
NHK news identified the man as Yamagami Tetsuya, said to be in his 40s and to have served in Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years. He was arrested for attempted murder, and a weapon has reportedly been retrieved from the scene. The television channel said the police found items at the man’s home that may be explosives.
Witnesses said the gunman fired on at 67-year-old Abe from behind, and reported hearing two loud bangs before seeing the former leader collapse on stage.
Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, Abe resigned in 2020 due to health issues but remained an influential political figure, and was speaking on behalf of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party when he was shot.
The attack was condemned by public figures in Japan and internationally. Incumbent Prime Minister Fumio Kishida branded it a “barbaric act” that has no place in a modern society. Russia compared it to an act of terrorism and praised Abe for the role he’d played in improving relations with Moscow during his time in office.
2 thoughts on “Japan ex-PM,Shinzo Abe assasinated”
People around the world, when they heard this news, am sure took notice. However, compared to other political assassinations, the Abe shooting did not last long in the media. At least not in the West.
The condolences and tributes from leaders around the world came in. CBC, Canada’s national information and news carrier, interestingly, produced little on the event. As for Japan, one would have to have read and listened in Japanese for the real feel of how Abe’s own nation took his death.
My friend Sol, who’s more into things Japanese, says Abe was a very divisive figure in his own country. Internally, he was probably an ultra-nationalist. On the outside even, highly hawkish. His big dream was to first amend the West-imposed peace constitution so Japan’s military could take on offensive roles. His Liberal Democratic Party (a misnomer!) winning a reasonable majority (around 2015?) gave him the confidence to start with a preliminary re-interpretation of the constitution.
It was Abe’s last election win that marked the realization of an important prognostic dream friend Sol received about 40 years ago —- a dream (appropriately with very slow-moving imagery) which pointed to the tilting of Japan further to the right, including strengthening of its military capabilities (currently, development of hypersonic fighter jets and similarly advanced weaponry). Japan is important to the US, which still has 3 bases there.
Media stories in the West provided little background on the assassin’s motives, likely because that background was very unclear, which also is a hint about the veracity of what I provide, as follows: Seems that the assassin’s mother had become impoverished through donating most of her savings to a faction of a religious organization that the assassin also belonged to — the Unification Church of Sun Myung Moon (deceased 2012), and with this point the plot thickens. The fact that the assassin was a member of an opposing faction held some importance, as the issue was that Shinzo Abe had strong ties to the other faction of that organization, to which he had made large donations. Against which actions of Abe, the assassin held a strong grudge.
Shinzo Abe’s demise, therefore, wasn’t exactly a “those who live by the sword, die by the sword” scenario. On the other hand, there are facts that perhaps need mentioning. One is that Moon was born in North Korea at a time when Japan held the Korean Peninsula as a colony. That Moon was the founder of the Washington Times, and had spent 18 months in a US prison after being convicted of tax fraud and conspiracy. And perhaps a coincidence can be seen in the fact that Moon’s birthday was the 6th of January (same day as that of the recent insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington DC). Sol adds that, from the astrological view, the assassin was passaging through a stress period commonly known as the midlife crisis.
Just as Shinzo Abe was a controversial figure, so too was Sun Myung Moon. Moon had claimed that Christ had visited and told him to continue His work from 2,000 ago, that Moon was to henceforth be the Messiah and the Saviour of Earth. Thus ‘Unification’ was to stand for the unification of world christianity.
A real Ripley’s-Believe-It Or-Not story !!!
Abe and Moon are worlds apart! 😛
Except, they’re both shysters’!