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JAPAN is reeling from the assassination of its longest-serving former Prime Minister (PM), Shinzo Abe. He was campaigning for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party for the Upper House elections, in the city of Nara in western Japan, when he was shot from behind with an apparently home-made sawn-off shotgun.

The alleged assailant, reportedly a 42-year old local man, was arrested at the scene. There is no known motive at this time, but there are reports the suspect is a former member of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces. Abe was seen lying bleeding on the ground, before being taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Political violence, and gun violence in general, is extremely rare in postwar Japan, so this incident has deeply shocked the Japanese public. Gun ownership is tightly regulated, and mostly restricted to registered hunters. There have been occasional shootings by organised crime groups, typically targeting each other, but Japan has consistently had low rates of violent crime.

Responsible

Far-right groups have been responsible for a few attacks on politicians in the postwar period; in 1990, the then mayor of Nagasaki, Hitoshi Motoshima, was shot and wounded; and in 1960 Inejiro Asanuma, leader of the opposition Japan Socialist Party, was stabbed and murdered.

In the pre-war era, democratic politicians found themselves subject to frequent attacks and intimidation by militarists. PM Inukai Tsuyoshi was murdered by Imperial Navy officers in an attempted coup on May 15 1932.

Abe’s political legacy

Abe, 67, was the grandson of former PM Nobusuke Kishi, and was a scion of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in government for most of the postwar era. His first stint as PM lasted roughly a year, from 2006 to 2007, before