Tokyo(Japan)- The former prime minister of Japan was assassinated on Friday in the city of Nara. He served in the office longer than anyone before stepping down in 2020.
Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, died on Friday at 67, after being shot while campaigning for a candidate ahead of national elections scheduled for Sunday.
Mr Abe served as prime minister from December 2012 to September 2020, the longest consecutive reign since Japan created a European-style government led by a prime minister in the late 19th century. He also occupied the job in an earlier stint from 2006 to 2007 and held the record for most total days in office.
The heir to a political dynasty, Mr Abe championed a revival in the economic and military strength of a country that began to stagnate in the 1990s after its meteoric rise from defeat in World War II.
“Ladies and gentlemen, Japan is back,” Mr Abe said in a February 2013 speech in Washington. “Japan is not, and will never be a tier-two country.”
He was a proponent of the U.S.-Japan military alliance and built a rapport with then-President Donald Trump, playing golf five times together and speaking dozens of times on the phone. Earlier, in 2016, he had guided then-President Barack Obama to Hiroshima, in the first visit by a U.S. president to the site of the atomic bombing, and he was the first Japanese leader to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
The police arrested a suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, on an initial charge of attempted murder.
The Japanese Fire and Disaster Management Agency said that Mr Abe had been shot in his right neck and left chest. Footage on social media showed Mr Abe, 67, collapsed and bleeding on the ground in the western city of Nara, near Kyoto.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who had been on the campaign trail in Yamagata Prefecture and returned to Tokyo after the shooting, said at a news briefing before Mr Abe’s death was announced that the attack was a “heinous act.” He added, “It is barbaric and malicious, and it cannot be tolerated.”
Mr Abe was giving a campaign speech on behalf of Kei Sato, 43, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party from Nara who was running for re-election in the Upper House of Parliament. Mr Abe had been speaking for less than a minute when two blasts were heard behind him.
Yoshio Ogita, 74, the secretary-general of the L.D.P.’s local chapter, was standing next to Mr Abe. He said he heard two loud sounds and saw a plume of white smoke rising into the sky.
“I didn’t know what had happened,” he said in a telephone interview on Friday afternoon. “I saw him collapse.”
Images shared on social media showed a man being tackled after the shooting near Yamatosaidaiji Station. The man was a Nara resident, according to NHK, the public broadcaster. The police said they had retrieved a crude weapon.
Mr Abe was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister. He served two terms, from 2006 to 2007 and from 2012 to 2020. He resigned in 2020 because of ill health.
Gun violence is rare in Japan, where just 10 shootings that contributed to death, injury or property damage were reported in 2021, according to statistics from the National Police Agency. In those incidents, one person was killed and four others were injured. The figures do not include accidents or suicides.