Yamagami, a former member of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force, used a handmade gun, constructed using metal pipes and tape as though he had foraged materials in an apocalyptic wasteland. The strangeness of the crime didn’t stop at the motive. The story goes that Moon and Kishi hit it off through shared anti-communist sentiment, and a familial connection to the church was passed down through the generations, with Abe sending a congratulatory video message to the group as recently as last September. The Unification Church was founded by Korean Sun Myung Moon and was reportedly introduced to Japan by Abe’s grandfather, the bloodthirsty former prime minister, Nobusuke Kishi. Reports suggest she also donated a significant amount of money to its cause 20 years ago. Although police have yet to disclose the name of the group, investigations have shown Yamagami’s mother was a member of the Unification Church, a cult-like outfit with an estimated 300,000 members in Japan and financial interests in various sectors of society. Reports have revealed the act was more personally motivated: Yamagami claimed Abe supported a religious group that had bankrupted his family. The initial speculation centered around assailant Tetsuya Yamagami’s possible objections to Abe’s vision of redrawing Japan’s pacifist constitution - namely, Article 9, which states that Japan forgo all wartime potential - or his continued influence on Japan’s domestic economic policy. Japan needs to understand how and why this was able to happen. An armed gunman was able to get within three meters of a stumping politician - and to fire two unanswered shots almost three seconds apart - before security stepped in. Curiously, in some quarters, it was business as usual, with images of politicians fist-bumping members of the electorate and smiling for selfies less than 24 hours after Abe was pronounced dead.īut the friendly veneer of Saturday campaigning obscures a darker reality. He was then back on the trail with heightened security on Saturday, including a metal detector at one of the locations, while other major parties held back senior figures from public rallies on the eve of the Japanese House of Councillors election.īut in a vow to uphold the democratic process, and in a defiant stance against violence, campaigning largely continued. In the aftermath of the shooting, a visibly shaken Fumio Kishida called his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) campaign ministers back to Tokyo. And while this rings true, it could also reframe Japan’s notions of domestic security. The geopolitical rhetoric has focused on the barbarism of the crime painting it as an attack on democracy itself.
Though I have commented on Abe, his lineage and his former administration’s policies in less than favorable terms, watching one of the most influential Japanese statesmen of his generation gunned down in broad daylight was a harrowing experience.
DEMOCRACY 3 ASSASSINATION TV
Waking up rather bleary-eyed, I switched on the TV and was startled awake by the images presented to me. In the wake of Shinzo Abe’s assassination, however, one must question if it’s time for change. That Japan was so safe a society the need for excess security during a public appearance by the longest-serving prime minister of the modern era was deemed superfluous. Until a few days ago, it seemed genteel, quaint even, that Japanese politicians could give campaign speeches on street corners and freely shake the hands of passersby.
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