Assassination of Shinzo Abe

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The native form of this person's name is Abe Shinzō.  This article uses Western name order when talking about people.

Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station, many hours after the shooting

On 8 July 2022, Shinzo Abe (Japanese: 安倍晋三), the former prime minister of Japan and a serving member of the Japanese House of Representatives, was assassinated, by Tetsuya Yamagami, while speaking at a political event outside Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara City, Nara Prefecture.

Background

Photograph of Shinzo Abe, taken March 14, 2022.

Shinzo Abe had became as Prime Minister of Japan between 2006 and 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020, when he resigned due to health concerns. He was the longest prime minister in Japan's history. His maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was a prime minister from 1957 to 1960, and like Abe, was the target of an assassination attempt. Unlike Abe, he survived.

Abe was the first former Japanese prime minister to have been assassinated since Saitō Makoto and Takahashi Korekiyo, who were killed during the February 26 incident in 1936, the first Japanese legislator to be assassinated since Kōki Ishii was killed by a member of a right-wing group in 2002, and the first Japanese politician to be assassinated during an political campaign since Iccho Itoh, then-mayor of Nagasaki, who was shot in April 2007.

Timeline

Abe's schedule

Abe was going to give a speech in Nagano for Sanshirō Matsuyama on 8 July 2022, but it got canceled on 7 July because of Matsuyama's misconduct. Instead, Abe planned to speak in Nara for Kei Satō. This change wasn't widely known, but NHK said it was advertised online and through loudspeakers. Nara police checked the new location the night before, and a local politician worried about its safety.

On 8 July, around 11:10 a.m., Satō started speaking near a station in Nara. Abe arrived at 11:19 a.m. and began speaking at 11:29 a.m. He had security from Tokyo and Nara police.

Assassination

Positions of Abe (purple) and Yamagami (blue) at the time of the shooting

Abe was shot twice while speaking at a political rally for a local Liberal Democratic Party candidate, Kei Sato, in the city of Nara, at 11:30 a.m. JST (UTC +9 hours), Friday, July 8, 2022. The assassin, named by police as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, was arrested at the scene. Yamagami apparently made no attempts to run from the police. He admitted to shooting Abe with a homemade gun, because he was "dissatisfied" with him as a representative, and said he had fully intended to kill him. Abe was airlifted to Nara University Medical Center, where after more than 6 hours of treatment, doctors pronounced him dead from his injuries at 5:03 p.m. JST. Abe's assassination is only the 6th murder of a politician in the entire history of modern Japan, a country where guns and other firearms are heavily regulated, and may not be sold to the public.

Treatment and Death

Paramedics reached Abe at 11:37 am, and an ambulance came at 11:41 am. He was flown to a hospital with a neck wound and internal bleeding. He showed no signs of life on arrival, possibly due to heart and lung failure. Abe's wife Akie arrived at the hospital at 4:55 pm. Abe was dead at the hospital at 5:03 pm, around five and a half hours after being shot.

Suspect

Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old unemployed man from Nara, was arrested for assassinating Shinzo Abe. Yamagami blamed the Unification Church for his family's problems and originally wanted to target the church's leader but couldn't reach her. He targeted Abe, seeing him as a supporter of the church.