Our reaction upon hearing the news of the shooting of former prime minister Shinzo Abe was one of shock and incredulity in equal measure. What followed was a frenzy of trying to piece news reports and gossip together to make sense of events, until his eventual death was announced a few hours later.
At first glance, Abe’s assassination harks back to the 1920s and 1930s when the assassination of sitting and former prime ministers (Hara Kei, Hamaguchi Osachi, Inukai Tsuyoshi, Takahashi Korekiyo, Saitō Makoto) was a feature of Japanese politics. We do not readily associate political assassination and violence with democratic and pacifist post-war Japan. In this light, it is not surprising that many reports focused on political violence in Japan as “almost unheard of”. However, like any country, sudden and extreme acts of political violence are not without precedent in Japan.
During Abe’s second period in power (2012-20), one of his most controversial initiatives was the reinterpretation of Japan’s exercise of its right to collective self-defence. This was seen as part of a steady shift towards a more militarised Japan, and resulted in two very public cases of people setting fire to themselves in June and November 2014 in protest. In the latter case, the person died.
