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Former Japan PM Shinzo Abe Shot Dead
Japan’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe died in hospital on Friday, local media reported, hours after being shot at a political campaign event in an attack condemned as “absolutely unforgivable”.
Citing a senior member of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, national broadcaster NHK said “former prime minister Abe died at a hospital in Kashihara city, Nara, where he was receiving medical treatment. He was 67.”
The death was also reported by other broadcasters as well as the Japanese news agencies Jiji and Kyodo.
The assassination of the country’s best-known politician comes despite Japan’s strict gun laws and with campaigning underway ahead of upper house elections on Sunday.
Earlier Prime Minister Fumio Kishida abandoned the campaign trail and flew to Tokyo by helicopter where he addressed reporters in a voice that wavered with emotion.
“Former prime minister Shinzo Abe was shot in Nara and I have been informed he is in a very grave condition,” he said.
“I pray that former prime minister Abe will survive,” he added, condemning “a barbaric act during election campaigning, which is the foundation of democracy.”
“It is absolutely unforgivable. I condemn this act in the strongest terms.”
The attack came before noon in the country’s western region of Nara, where Abe, 67, had been delivering a stump speech with security present, but spectators able to approach him easily.
Footage broadcast by NHK showed him standing on a stage when a man dressed in a grey shirt and brown trousers begins approaching from behind, before drawing something from a bag and firing.
At least two shots appear to be fired, each producing a cloud of smoke.
As spectators and reporters ducked, a man was shown being tackled to the ground by security. He was later arrested on suspicion of attempted murder, reports said.
Local media identified the man as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, citing police sources, with several media outlets describing him as a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the country’s navy.
He was wielding a weapon described by local media as a “handmade gun”, and NHK said he told police after his arrest that he “targeted Abe with the intention of killing him”.
Witnesses at the scene described shock as the political event turned into chaos.
“The first shot sounded like a toy bazooka,” a woman told NHK.
“He didn’t fall and there was a large bang. The second shot was more visible, you could see the spark and smoke,” she added.
“After the second shot, people surrounded him and gave him cardiac massage.”
Abe was bleeding from the neck, witnesses said and photographs showed. He was reportedly initially responsive but subsequently lost consciousness.
Officials from the local chapter of Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party said there had been no threats before the incident and that his speech had been announced publicly.
Kishida said “no decision” had been made on the election, though several parties announced their senior members would halt campaigning in the wake of the attack.
The attack prompted international shock.
“This is a very, very sad moment,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters at a G20 meeting in Bali, saying the United States was “deeply saddened and deeply concerned”.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha was “very shocked” at Abe’s shooting, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “deeply distressed” by the news.
July 8, 2022
Yoshihide Suga to succeed Shinzo Abe as Japan’s minister
Japan’s governing party on Monday anointed Yoshihide Suga, the current chief cabinet secretary, as its choice for the next prime minister, settling on what it saw as a safe pair of hands to grapple with the country’s many economic and strategic challenges.
Two weeks after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said he was stepping down because of ill health, Mr. Suga was overwhelmingly elected as leader of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party during a conclave of members of Parliament and select delegates at a luxury hotel in central Tokyo.
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The party handily controls Parliament, virtually guaranteeing that Mr. Suga, 71, will be elected prime minister this week during a special session of the legislature.
“Due to his illness, the prime minister has had to step down midcourse. However, we cannot allow a political vacuum as the nation faces the crisis of the coronavirus’s spread,” Mr. Suga said in a brief speech after the vote tally was announced.
“I recognize that it is my duty to continue to advance the framework pushed forward by Prime Minister Abe so that we can overcome this crisis,” he added.
Monday’s vote put the party’s imprimatur on a decision that had been made not by its broad rank and file, but in Tokyo’s back rooms by its political elite, perhaps well before Mr. Abe had even decided to resign late last month after a record-long tenure in office.
Mr. Suga became the odds-on favorite to succeed Mr. Abe not long after the prime minister’s announcement. A path was cleared for him inside the party when his most serious competitor, Taro Aso, the deputy prime minister and finance minister and a former prime minister himself, said he would not stand for election.
Mr. Aso, a sharp-elbowed political boss with a history of hair-raising gaffes, controls one of several major factions within the party. His decision to stand aside for Mr. Suga raised suspicions that the move was part of a quid pro quo that would grant him some control over choosing the new cabinet.
September 14, 2020
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resigns for health reasons
Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving Japanese prime minister in history, has resigned, citing health reasons.
“Even though there is one year to go in my tenure and there are challenges to be met, I have decided to stand down as prime minister,” said Abe at a press conference in Tokyo on Friday, adding that he would like to apologize to the people of Japan for being unable to fulfill his duties during the coronavirus pandemic.
Abe suffers from colitis, a non-curable inflammatory bowel disease, which was also a factor in his sudden resignation as prime minister in 2007, ending his first term after just over a year in office. On Monday morning, Abe visited Keio University Hospital in Tokyo for what was his second hospital visit in a week.
“For almost eight years I controlled my chronic disease, however, this year in June I had a regular check-up and there was a sign of the disease,” he added. “I made a judgment that I should not continue my job as prime minister” said Abe. “I need to fight the disease and need to be treated.”
Markets reacted negatively to the announcement. Japan’s benchmark Nikkei index closed down 1.4% Friday after the news broke. It initially tumbled more than 2% before paring losses. The Japanese yen, a traditional safe currency haven, rose 0.3% against the US dollar.
Following his previous resignation in 2007, Abe was reelected in 2012. Since then he has been the dominant force in Japanese politics, winning a landslide third term in 2017 and a fourth in 2019, despite multiple scandals and plummeting popularity.
Under Abe, his right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has also seen major success, benefiting from the fracturing of its long-term rival Democratic Party, which split in two in 2017. Abe leaves the LDP in control of both houses of parliament, with a large majority in the lower House of Representatives.
That success should guarantee an LDP successor to Abe. Japan is not a presidential system, instead the country’s leader is chosen by parliamentarians, so the next LDP leader, whoever that is, should have an easy path to becoming prime minister. Abe said he will remain in office until a successor is chosen.
Abe was often upstaged in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike, a former governing party conservative who is seen as a potential prime minister candidate by some. But she would have to first be elected to parliament to be in the running for the top job.
The end of Abe’s scandal-laden first stint as prime minister was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.
When he returned to office in 2012, Abe vowed to revitalize the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.
Perhaps Abe’s biggest failure was his inability to fulfill a long-cherished goal of his grandfather to formally rewrite the U.S.-drafted pacifist constitution. Abe and his ultra-conservative supporters see the U.S.-drafted constitution as a humiliating legacy of Japan’s World War II defeat.
He was also unable to achieve his goal of settling several unfinished wartime legacies, including normalizing ties with North Korea, settling island disputes with neighbors and signing a peace treaty with Russia formally ending their hostilities in World War II.
August 28, 2020
Japan planning for one-month virus emergency extension: PM
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday the government would plan for an approximately month-long extension of a state of emergency declared over the coronavirus pandemic.
Abe put in place an initial month-long state of emergency for seven regions on April 7, later expanding it to cover the entire country.
But with the measures due to expire on May 6, Abe said he had instructed his minister for the virus outbreak Yasutoshi Nishimura to plan for an extension.
“After receiving this report from the panel of experts, I asked Minister Nishimura to use extending the current framework of the state of emergency by about one month as the base scenario for swiftly drafting plans that will fit the needs of the regions,” Abe said.
An expert panel advising the government is reviewing the situation in different parts of the country, he added.
“We will listen to their opinions and we hope to make a decision on May 4th.”
Abe said Japan had so far managed to avoid the sharp increase in infections seen in some other parts of the world, but cautioned that vigilance was still needed.
“The view of experts is that we will continue to need the cooperation of the Japanese people for the foreseeable future.”
An extension of the state of emergency had been widely expected, despite the comparatively small scale of the outbreak in Japan, with nearly 14,300 infections recorded and 432 deaths so far.
The state of emergency is significantly less restrictive than measures seen in parts of Europe and the United States. It allows governors to urge people to stay at home and call on businesses to stay shut.
But officials cannot compel citizens to comply, and there are no punishments for those who fail to do so.
Despite the relatively small scale of Japan’s outbreak, there have been persistent fears about a spike in infections that could quickly overwhelm the country’s healthcare system
Doctors’ associations have warned that hospitals are already stretched thin, with officials in Osaka even calling for donations of raincoats to serve as protective equipment for health workers stuck using trash bags.
Measures have been implemented to try to ease the pressure, including sending coronavirus patients with mild symptoms to hotels for quarantine, rather than keeping them in overcrowded hospitals.
The government has also said it is increasing testing capacity but continues to face criticism for the relatively low numbers of tests being carried out, in part because of stringent criteria.
May 1, 2020