murdered during a political meeting on Friday, this heir to large political families and a leading figure in conservative circles will have marked until his death Japanese public life.
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The shock provoked and the importance of reactions to the assassination on Friday July 8, of the former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, testify to the importance acquired by this native of Tokyo, heir to one of the most Large political families of the archipelago and holder of the longevity record at the head of the Japanese government, where he did everything to impose a most conservative agenda.
His assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, admitted “wanting to kill” Mr. Abe because he was “unhappy”. He denied having acted for political reasons. His reasons remain vague, which accentuates misunderstanding in the face of a gesture qualified as “barbaric act in the electoral campaign, which is the basis of democracy, and it is absolutely unforgivable”, by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mr. Abe between 2012 and 2017.
Death mowed the former head of government as he campaigned for the senatorial elections on July 10. Shinzo Abe pronounced a speech at a crossroads near the Yamato-Saidaiji station in Nara, in western Japan. He had to chain the interventions in support of the candidate for his training, the Liberal Democratic Party (the PLD, in power), a sign of the influence he kept in the Japanese political landscape and his lasting popularity with the members.
“Defender of a multilateral world order”
Reactions to his death came from around the world. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken praised a “visionary leader”. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “shocked and saddened beyond words”. The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, denounced on Twitter the “cowardly and brutal murder” by Shinzo Abe, “a great democrat and defender of a multilateral world order”.
The former Prime Minister was born on September 21, 1954 in a powerful political family from the department of Yamaguchi (South West). His maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1960. His grand-uncle, Eisaku Sato, was from 1964 to 1972. His father Shintaro Abe, was deputy and obtained his first ministerial post in 1974.
Politics does not seem to attract Shinzo Abe however. As a child, he aspires to become a baseball player or detective. Graduated in law to the modest Private University Seikei, then of political science at the University of South Carolina, in the United States, he begins by working for the Japanese giant of the steel Kobe Steel before becoming, in 1982, the Assistant to his father, who then directs Japanese diplomacy and seems promised to become Prime Minister. Shintaro died in 1991, at the age of 67, before achieving this goal. His son must then ensure the continuity of the political dynasty. A task assigned to him by his mother, Yoko, daughter of Nobusuke Kishi, who counts on him because she judged her husband too soft, even too progressive. Although he was volunteer to become a suicide bomber at the end of the war.
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