- Rupert Wingfield-Hayes
- BBC News, from Nara
6 hours ago
image source,Getty Images
Since the news of Shinzo Abe’s shooting this morning, there has been a steady stream of messages from friends and acquaintances, all asking the same question: How could this happen in Japan?
I feel the same way myself. Living here, I’m used to not thinking about violent crime.
The identity of the victims only makes the news even more shocking.
While Shinzo Abe is no longer Japan’s prime minister, he remains an important figure in public life and may be the best-known Japanese politician of the past three decades.
Who wants to kill Abe? Why?
I tried to come up with an equivalent event – another act of political violence that shocked the local population equally. What comes to mind is the 1986 shooting of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
I’m not exaggerating when I say people don’t think about violent crime here.
Yes, Japan has Yakuza, famous organized violent crime gangs, but most people never come into contact with them. Plus, even gangsters shy away from guns because the penalties for illegal possession make owning a gun an unworthy option.
It is extremely difficult to own a gun in Japan. It requires a clean criminal record, mandatory training, psychological assessments and extensive background checks, including police interviews with neighbours.
Therefore, gun crime is virtually non-existent here. On average, Japan has fewer than 10 gun-related deaths each year. There were only three in 2017.
No wonder, most of the attention was on the gunman and the weapons he used.
Who is he? Where did he get the gun from? Japanese media reported that the 41-year-old gunman was a former member of the Self-Defense Forces.
But a closer look shows that he only served three years in the Navy. The gun he used was even weirder. Photos on the ground after the shooting showed what appeared to be a homemade weapon. Two steel pipes are held together with black electrical tape, and some sort of handmade trigger. It looks like it was made from blueprints downloaded from the internet.
So, was this a deliberate political attack, or the act of a lunatic, someone who wanted to get famous by shooting famous people? So far, we don’t know.
image source,Getty Images
The Japanese are proud of their national security, and the assassination of Abe is even more shocking
Of course, Japan has also had political assassinations. Most famously, in 1960, then Japan’s Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma was stabbed in the stomach by a samurai-wielding right-wing fanatic. While right-wing extremists still exist in Japan, Abe, a right-wing nationalist, is unlikely to be targeted.
In recent years, we’ve seen another type of crime becoming more common here, silent, lonely males who hold a grudge against someone or something.
In 2019, a man set fire to the building housing a popular anime studio in Kyoto, killing 36 people.
The man told police he held a grudge against the studio because it “stealed his work”.
In another case in 2008, a disgruntled young man drove his truck into a shopping crowd in Tokyo’s Akihabara district, then got out and started stabbing onlookers, killing seven.
Before the attack, he had posted online saying “I will kill people in Akihabara”, “I have no friends, I am ignored because I am ugly. I am worth less than garbage.”
It is unclear whether the Abe assassination falls into the first or second category. But we are almost certain that this assassination will change Japan.
Given that Japan is very safe, the security here is very lax. During the campaign, like the one (Abe) is involved in, politicians stand on street corners giving speeches and shaking hands with shoppers and passersby.
That’s almost certainly why Abe’s attackers were able to get so close and pull the trigger.
From now on, all this is bound to change.