Roughly nine months following the fatal attack on Japan’s longtime Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, an explosion at a public appearance by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida caused a stir on Saturday. Kishida was brought to safety unharmed, the Japanese television station NHK reported on Saturday from Wakayama Prefecture. Shortly before the scheduled start of the speech, the smoke bomb exploded with a loud bang. A man was overpowered.
The Kyodo news agency, citing police investigators, reported that a 24-year-old suspect had been arrested. Nothing was initially known regarding the background. Images from NHK showed police officers apparently wrestling a man to the ground and taking him away. People fled the event at the Saikazaki fishing port, some 65 kilometers southwest of Osaka. According to footage obtained by NHK, the object thrown was a metal cylinder.
Prime Minister Kishida is currently campaigning. By-elections for the lower house are scheduled for April 23 in some regions of the country. In a video distributed by the NHK broadcaster, Kishida said in a subsequent appearance at a different location that the police were investigating the background to the loud explosion. He regrets that so many concerns have been raised. “We are in the middle of an important election for our country. We must continue together.”
In early July 2022, ex-Prime Minister Abe was shot at a campaign event and succumbed to his injuries shortly therefollowing. In Japan – a country where both gun crime and political violence have been extremely rare – the crime caused dismay and sparked a discussion regarding security measures to protect politicians.
The foreign ministers of the G7 countries will meet in the Japanese holiday resort of Kariuzawa on Sunday. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo said there were no changes in security arrangements for this meeting. A G7 summit will be held in Hiroshima in May.
