NARA, Japan (AP) – Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a divisive arch-conservative and one of his country’s most powerful and influential figures, has died after being shot during a campaign speech in western Japan on Friday. said hospital officials.
Abe, 67, was shot in the back minutes after he began 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 alleged gunman at the scene of an attack that surprised many in Japan, which is one of the safest nations in the world and has some of the strictest gun control laws everywhere.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his cabinet ministers hurriedly returned to Tokyo from campaign events across the country after the shooting, which he described as “costly and barbaric”.
The head of the emergency department at Nara Medical University, Hidetada Fukushima, said Abe suffered significant heart damage, in addition to two neck injuries that damaged an artery, causing extensive bleeding. He was in a state of cardiorespiratory and pulmonary arrest when he arrived at the hospital and never recovered his vital signs, Fukushima said.
Abe was Japan’s longest-serving leader before leaving office in 2020.
NHK public television broadcast a dramatic video of Abe making a speech in front of a train station in the western city of Nara. He is standing, dressed in a navy blue suit, raising his fist, when two shots are heard. Then, the video shows Abe collapsing on the street, with security guards running towards him. He grabs her chest, her shirt smeared with blood.
The next instant, security guards jump on a man in a gray shirt lying face down on the sidewalk. On the ground is a double-barreled device that looked like a handmade pistol.
Police in Nara prefecture have confirmed the arrest of Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, on suspicion of attempted murder. NHK reported that the suspect served in the Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years in the 2000s.
Other videos of the scene showed campaign officials around Abe. The former leader still had great influence in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and led his largest faction, Seiwakai. Elections for Japan’s upper house, the least powerful in parliament, are set for Sunday.
“I use the harshest words to condemn (the act),” Kishida said as he struggled to control his emotions. He said the government planned to review the security situation, but added that Abe had maximum protection.
Opposition leaders condemned the attack as a challenge to Japan’s democracy. In Tokyo, people stopped on the street to grab additional editions of newspapers or watch TV coverage of the shooting.
When he resigned as prime minister, Abe said he had a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis he had since he was a teenager.
At the time, he told reporters it was “heartbreaking” to leave many of his goals unfinished. He spoke of his failure to resolve the issue of the Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia and a revision of the Japanese constitution renouncing war.
This last goal was a great reason why he was such a divisive figure.
His ultranationalism irritated Korea and China, and his drive to create what he saw as a more normal defensive stance angered many Japanese. Abe failed to achieve his beloved goal of formally rewriting the pacifist constitution drafted by the U.S. due to lack of public support.
Loyalists said his legacy was a stronger relationship between the United States and Japan that sought to strengthen Japan’s defense capacity. But Abe became enemies by forcing his defense goals and other controversial issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.
Abe was a blue-blooded politician who was prepared to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi. His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and a more important role in international affairs.
Many foreign officials were shocked by the shooting.
Abe said he was proud to work while leading a stronger security alliance between Japan and the United States and the first visit by an incumbent U.S. president to the atomic bomb-bombed city of Hiroshima. It also helped Tokyo gain the right to host the 2020 Olympics by promising that a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant was “under control” when it was not.
Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, at the age of 52, but his first stage, too nationalist, ended abruptly a year later, also because of his health.
The end of Abe’s first period, laden with scandals as prime minister, was the start of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and policies. long-term.
When he returned to office in 2012, Abe promised to revitalize the nation and get its economy out of the deflationary crisis with its “Abenomics” formula, which combines fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.
He won six national elections and gained solid control of power, strengthening the role and defense capability of Japan and its security alliance with the United States. It also intensified patriotic education in schools and raised the international profile of Japan.
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Yamaguchi and Klug reported from Tokyo.
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