Shinzo Abe, Japan’s former prime minister, dies after being shot

The former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has died, aged 67, after being shot while making a speech in the western city of Nara.

Abe, the country’s longest-serving prime minister until he resigned in 2020, was flown to hospital by helicopter after the attack. His death was first reported by the public broadcaster NHK.

It was the first assassination of a sitting or former Japanese premier since the days of prewar militarism in the 1930s.

Speaking before Abe’s death was announced, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida condemned the shooting in the “strongest terms”, while Japanese people and world leaders expressed shock at the violence in a country in which political violence is rare and guns are tightly controlled.

“This attack is an act of brutality that happened during the elections - the very foundation of our democracy - and is absolutely unforgivable,” said Kishida, struggling to keep his emotions in check. …

Japan has close to “zero-tolerance” of gun ownership – an approach that experts say contributes to its extremely low rate of gun crime. There were six reported gun deaths in 2014, according to the National Police Agency, and the number rarely exceeds 10, in a country of 126 million people.

Airo Hino, political science professor at Waseda University, told Reuters such a shooting was unprecedented in Japan. “There has never been anything like this,” he said.

Senior Japanese politicians are accompanied by armed security agents but often get close to the public, especially during political campaigns when they make roadside speeches and shake hands with passersby.

In 2007, the mayor of Nagasaki was shot and killed by a yakuza gangster. The head of the Japan Socialist party was assassinated during a speech in 1960 by a rightwing youth with a samurai short sword. A few other prominent postwar politicians were attacked but not injured.