STORY – The shooting of the former prime minister during a street gathering shocked the archipelago and the world.
Tokyo
“Shinzo Abe is coming!” When young Senator Kei Sato announced on his Facebook page on Friday morning the surprise visit of the former Japanese prime minister to a banal street meeting in his constituency of Nara (western Japan), little did he know that he was the unfortunate instrument of the most tragic events in Japanese political life.
After a few seconds of speaking to a gathering of volunteers and spectators, a man comes forward and shoots the hierarch twice, hitting him in the neck and side. The on-site protection service tries to assert itself, completely overwhelmed, but only masters it after the fact. From the first aid, Shinzo Abe’s condition seems hopeless. Transported by helicopter to the nearby hospital in an absolute emergency, he was pronounced dead at 5:03 p.m. shortly after his wife Akie had visited him. “The authorities probably waited until his wife was there to break the news,” speculates a political lobbyist.
Japan thought it was the end of murder in politics, but it wasn’t.
Political scientist Michael Cucek
The attack seems to have happened rather accidentally. Shinzo Abe was originally scheduled to hold a meeting in another prefecture, in Nagano, before his party officials directed him to Nara prefecture the day before the meeting. There he was to deliver what the Japanese call a “gaito enzetsu,” a ritual election speech held in the middle of the street not far from the voters. “This last-minute change in schedule shows that the killer did not commit his crime intentionally,” said political columnist Takao Toshikawa. The assassin is quickly identified: it is Tetsuya Yamagami, a 42-year-old man who worked for the Japanese naval forces between 2002 and 2005.
A politician in a state of emergency
The assassin killed a politician of exceptional caliber. When he stepped down as prime minister on September 16, 2020, Shinzo Abe had broken the record for longevity in office, breaking a long line of short predecessors. Unlike most of them, he stayed in power not through benevolent neutrality but through action, managing to please two normally antagonistic parties: the Japanese electorate, more protectionist and conservative, who celebrated him at every election; and the international community, seduced by their voluntarism, their “free trade” creeds, and their sincere if not ostentatious loyalty to the democratic ideal in the face of the Chinese dictatorship’s expansionism.
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The tireless world surveyor Shinzo Abe had become a veteran of the G7. On Friday, his death was mourned by an impressive array of leaders from the Dalai Lama to Senegalese President Macky Sall, including Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden. But Shinzo Abe was also the subject of intense resentment for his dislike of Japan’s “post-war regime,” embodied in the “pacifist” 1946 constitution dictated by the American occupiers, which he dreamed of revising. His use of brutal political means, his personal dealings with the proud Japanese bureaucracy, even his involvement in several patronage scandals, notably the tragic Moritomo affair, had aroused the enmity and contempt of some Japanese.
Nevertheless, this attack seems almost unimaginable in today’s archipelago. The murder weapon, a makeshift rifle cobbled together by the assassin, is arguably the most unsettling element for the Japanese, for firearms, the use of which is extraordinarily policed, are literally non-existent in this society — even in its underworld: in 2021, the archipelago will be rued … a death by gunshot. In general, the Japanese political world is at peace. Conflicts are resolved behind the scenes through negotiation rather than violence. The poorly mobilized civil society does not indulge in the demonstrations to which Western democracies are accustomed.
“A Challenge to Democracy”
But during election campaigns, “normal” candidates are often the victims of verbal or physical harassment, “especially women from opposition parties,” says Koichi Nakano, a professor at Sophia University. On the other hand, the political scientist Michael Cucek observes that local political history is full of bloody episodes. “Before the war, Japan was famous for assassinating change. Also in 1960, Shinzo Abe’s grandfather and political idol, Nobusuke Kishi, was the victim of an attack that nearly killed him. Japan thought it was the end of murder in politics, but it wasn’t. That’s the fact of the day,” he said.
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In the days to come, Japan’s security services will no doubt come under fire for allowing the killer to work so easily without hampering his movements. “It reminds me of the attack on Ronald Reagan in 1981; The circumstances are similar, but in Reagan’s case, his bodyguards blocked their bodies and saved him,” recalls Takao Toshikawa. The latter predicts the medium-term rearrangement of the subtle balance of power in the Japanese political world: Shinzo Abe actually led the main trend of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), which itself was the main component of the majority. His lack of an heir, both biological and spiritual, in this world where power is often conferred by heredity, plunges Nagatacho, Tokyo’s political district, into uncertainty.
In the longer term, Japanese officials saw this mid-election thunderbolt as “a challenge to democracy.” Shinzo Abe certainly had many enemies. At times, at his street meetings, he aroused a militant hostility rare in Japan. But the lack of stated political motives by the killer on Friday seems to place this tragedy among the indiscriminate crimes, the act of a “lonely man” like many in Japan. “The question of such an act is: Why?” asks Michael Cucek. “Such a tragedy has struck one of the most protected politicians in the country. It’s a red flag for everyone else who doesn’t have an order service. If there is a risk to democracy, it is that the Japanese political world will become further cut off from ordinary citizens,” warns Koichi Nakano. On Friday evening, Fumio Kishida did not fail: he assured that the partial senator elections would take place this Sunday. Kei Sato, the young senator Shinzo Abe endorsed on Friday, should be elected. But he will remain heartbroken.
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