Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, has passed away at the Nara Medical University Hospital, hours after being shot at a political campaign event, on Friday, local media reports.
The attack reportedly came before noon in the country’s western region of Nara, where Abe, age 67, had been delivering a stump speech with security present, but spectators able to approach him easily.
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency had confirmed that Mr Abe had a bullet wound on the right of his neck, and also suffered subcutaneous bleeding under the left part of his chest.
At a press conference earlier, Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, condemned the attack, describing it as, “barbaric and malicious”.
The assassination of the country’s best-known politician comes despite Japan’s strict gun laws and with campaigning under way ahead of upper house elections on Sunday.
Japan has seen “nothing like this for well over 50 to 60 years”, Corey Wallace, an assistant professor at Kanagawa University who focuses on Japanese politics, told AFP.
He said the last similar incident was likely the 1960 assassination of Inejiro Asanuma, the leader of the Japan Socialist Party, who was stabbed by a right-wing youth.
The suspect identified the man as 41-year-old, Tetsuya Yamagami, citing police sources, with several media outlets describing him as a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, the country’s navy.
He was wielding a weapon described by local media as a “handmade gun”, and NHK said he told police after his arrest that he “targeted Abe with the intention of killing him”.
The news has come as an international shock.
Reacting to the assasination of the former Japanese PM, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said, “This is a very, very sad moment,” adding that, the United States was “deeply saddened and deeply concerned”.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha was “very shocked” at Abe’s shooting, while Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “deeply distressed” by the news.
Late Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, held office in 2006 for one year and again from 2012 to 2020, when he was forced to step down due to the debilitating bowel condition ulcerative colitis.
He is a hawkish conservative who pushed for the revision of Japan’s pacifist constitution to recognise the country’s military and has stayed a prominent political figure even after his resignation.