Japan, one of the countries with the fewest shooting victims, is shocked. Shinzo Abe, the longest-serving prime minister, has been shot dead, in broad daylight, on the street and in full view of the world. The last time a current or former Japanese prime minister was shot and killed was 90 years ago. A fact that reflects how rare and shocking armed violence is in the country, the result of strict control of access to firearms.
The attack on Abe occurred when a former member of the Japanese army fired a homemade shotgun, according to initial reports, at the politician when he was campaigning on behalf of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Nara, a city east of Osaka. Abe was giving a speech outside a train station ahead of this weekend's upper house elections. The former leader was seriously injured and taken to a local hospital, where he died a few hours later. He was 67 years old.
Shootings are rare on the island nation, though not entirely unheard of. Last year there were only ten incidents with a weapon, none in Tokyo, the capital; and one person was killed and four injured, according to the National Policy Agency. For civilians, obtaining weapons, primarily rifles and shotguns for sport or hunting, requires an extensive training process and background checks. The police usually carry pistols.
In order for Japanese citizens to purchase a gun, they must first attend an all-day class, pass a written exam, and complete a shooting range test, with a minimum accuracy of 95%. Candidates also undergo a mental health evaluation, conducted at a hospital, and the government does a thorough background check. Only shotguns and rifles can be purchased, and evaluations must be repeated every three years.
If gunshot deaths are hard to see in China, an attack on such a high-profile public figure as a former prime minister was virtually inconceivable in Japan. In any case, Japanese history does have some assassinations of political leaders. The most recent was in 2007, when the mayor of Nagasaki was shot dead by a yakuza gangster.
The suspect who shot Abe, identified as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, was immediately detained by the government's Security Police, tasked with protecting senior officials and politicians. As a former prime minister, Abe had a security detail, and at least one of them had a bulletproof shield, but in Japan it is common for politicians to move around with little security measures precisely due to the low crime rate.
"In Japan, these kinds of shootings are extremely rare, so it was easy to execute," William Cleary, a criminal law professor at Hiroshima Shudo University, who canceled one of his classes Friday after walking in and seeing the gunshots, told Bloomberg. “absolutely gloomy" faces of his students. "Obviously, security in the country was too lax and this will lead to a tightening of security, especially at outdoor speeches, given that we are in the middle of the elections," he added.
Images broadcast on television showed the attacker wielding a weapon that appeared to be made up of two tubes wrapped in black duct tape, which is believed to have been homemade. "This really shows the extent to which Japan's gun laws are working," said University of Tokyo law and society professor Daniel Foote, referring to the fact that the difficulty of accessing guns has led to the confessed murderer to make the gun himself. "Very few people have the ability to create such a weapon," the expert stressed.
The estimated total number of guns held by civilians in Japan was 310,400 in 2019, or 0.25 per 100 people, the lowest level among G-7 countries, according to GunPolicy.org. That compares with 393 million guns, or 120 per 100 people, in the US, and 3.2 million, or 5 per 100 people, in the UK.
In 1932, Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated in office by a member of the Navy who was plotting to provoke a war with the United States (they also tried to kill actor Charlie Chaplin, who was visiting Japan at the time). Abe's maternal grandfather and former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi was also the target of an assassination attempt, in 1960. He was attacked and stabbed during his last days in office by a man affiliated with right-wing groups. He survive.
In the same year, Japan Socialist Party leader Inejirō Asanuma was assassinated during a speech also by a young right-winger with a wakizashi, a short samurai sword.
There is another parallel between the two attacks on prime ministers, separated by nearly a century. Yamagami, who shot and killed Abe on Friday, also had ties to the military: he was a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force.
"This is a serious shock," said Hiromichi Watanabe, a senior LDP member speaking at party headquarters. "I can't believe something like this could happen in Japan."
