Despite Abe’s slaying, political life carries on
Wake is Monday; candidates remain on campaign trail
A day after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at a political rally, the police in Japan faced sharp questions about the adequacy of his security, even as parliamentary candidates resumed campaigning Saturday, in a sign that despite the tragedy, political life was carrying on.
White vans bearing large photos of politicians and blaring their names from loudspeakers rode through the streets. Candidates fist-bumped with supporters and posed for selfies. And politicians, many from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, made their final appeals to voters before an election Sunday, in the shadow of deep mourning.
Standing on a truck in the glitzy Ginza fashion district of central Tokyo, Akiko Ikuina, an LDP candidate and former pop idol running for a seat in Japan’s Upper House, cried as she said that “those of us who are left behind must help make Abe’s vision for our country come true.”
It is common during Japanese campaign stops for politicians to mingle freely with voters, keeping almost no distance between themselves and the crowd.
But the ease with which a lone gunman could carry a homemade tape-wrapped weapon up to Abe, once one of the world’s most powerful leaders, may lead some in Japan to rethink that openness.
As current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida made his final campaign appearances in Yamanashi and Niigata prefectures Saturday, the police body-scanned residents and prowled roofs.
In the wake of Abe’s assassination — in a country where gun deaths are a rarity — Japan was only beginning to process the shock.
Early Saturday, Akie Abe, Shinzo Abe’s widow, accompanied his body to his home in Tokyo from the hospital in Nara where he died. Abe’s parliamentary office said a wake would be held Monday, followed by a funeral Tuesday at one of Tokyo’s largest Buddhist temples.
The police said little Saturday. In the absence of much new information about the suspect in custody, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, rumors swirled on social media.
The Nara prefectural police continued to question Yamagami. At a news conference Saturday, police said they had found multiple bullet holes in a vehicle used by the LDP candidate for whom Abe was campaigning, but they did not elaborate.
On Twitter, Toshio Tamogami, a former chief of staff for Japan’s air force, seemed to ask the question that was on the country’s mind after seeing videos on TV and social media that showed the gunman walking past security before pointing a large, improvised gun in Abe’s direction.
“How did the police, protective detail and other security not notice the criminal who approached with a gun from behind?” Tamogami wrote.
Mourners lined up at a makeshift memorial on Saturday to pay their respects to Abe at the site near the Yamato-Saidaiji railway station where he was assassinated.