Police in the Japanese city of Nara, where former prime minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated on Friday, have said they are investigating whether a man arrested at the scene acted alone and if security at the campaign event was sufficient.
Moments before he was fatally shot from behind on Friday, Mr Abe, 67, was doing what he'd done for decades: getting up close to the crowds and stumping for a local candidate.
As is typical in Japan, where violent crime is rare and guns are scarce, security appeared to be light on Friday morning as Mr Abe spoke at an intersection outside the Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara.
No roads were blocked off and traffic passed freely in front and behind Mr Abe's position as he spoke to the crowd of a few hundred, according to witness accounts and footage taken at the scene.
Dressed in a dark jacket despite the summer heat, Mr Abe called on the crowd to re-elect Kei Sato, a candidate in Sunday's upper house election.
Members of Japan's version of the secret service, the elite Security Police, appeared to be standing at Mr Abe's right and just behind him in their dark suits as the two-time prime minister lauded Mr Sato's pandemic response.
"During the pandemic, he heard everyone's concerns," Mr Abe said, as the younger politician bowed and waved.
"He was the type of person who didn't look for reasons not to do something."
They were to become the last words the former premier would speak publicly.
Behind him a wiry man, wearing glasses and beige cargo pants, strode into the road.
He opened fire with a homemade gun that appeared to be wrapped with black electrical tape, and a cloud of white smoke blew towards Mr Abe and the crowd.
"I thought it was fireworks when the first shot went off," said Takenobu Nakajima, who runs a local printing company and was at the station to support Mr Abe's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.
"It almost felt like a burst of wind."
For a moment, Mr Abe appeared unaffected. The man, identified as 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, fired again almost immediately.
Gunman believed Abe was part of a 'specific organisation'
After the second shot, members of the Security Police tackled Yamagami and pinned him to the ground. Like most people in the crowd, he wore a mask.
Senior police officers named the suspect on Friday and said he had used a handmade gun.
Police said the gunman had admitted to shooting Abe with a handmade firearm he had fashioned out of metal and wood.
Police said he was a Nara resident who they believed was currently unemployed.
Yamagami told police he had worked at Japan's Maritime Self-Defence Forces for three years, but those claims were also under investigation, officers said.
He also told police he had learned about Mr Abe’s visit online.
Investigators found "several" other handmade guns at his one-room flat in Nara city, police added.
The suspect said he bore a grudge against a "specific organisation" and believed Mr Abe was part of it, and that his grudge was not about politics, the police said, adding it was not clear if the unnamed organisation actually existed.
Several Japanese media outlets described the organisation as a religious group.
Mr Abe was pronounced dead around five and a half hours after the shooting.
He was taken to hospital in cardio pulmonary arrest and showing no vital signs. He was declared dead at 5pm having bled to death from deep wounds to the heart and the right side of his neck.
It was the first killing of a sitting or former Japanese leader since a 1936 coup attempt, when several figures including two ex-premiers were assassinated.
Post-war Japan prides itself on its orderly and open democracy.
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 passers-by.
ABC/wires
