<article><p>Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has died after being shot on Friday, the hospital treating him has confirmed.</p></article>

<p>Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has died after being shot on Friday, the hospital treating him has confirmed.</p>
<p>Abe, Japan&#8217;s longest-serving leader, was 67. Doctors said he died at 5:03 p.m. Japan time.</p>
<p>Abe was shot at about 11:30 a.m. while delivering a street speech in the western city of Nara ahead of Sunday&#8217;s upper house election.</p>
<p>He was rushed to Nara Medical University Hospital by helicopter, arriving at 12:20 p.m. in a state of cardiac arrest. A doctor at the hospital told reporters that Abe had two gunshot wounds to the neck, with one &#8220;reaching to the heart.&#8221; No bullets were found in his body, the doctor said. The hospital tried to stop the bleeding and administered blood transfusions, but the doctor said Abe &#8220;died of blood loss.&#8221;</p>
<p>Just before 3 p.m., Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had told reporters that Abe was in &#8220;serious condition&#8221; and that emergency measures were being taken to save his life. &#8220;It was a despicable and barbaric act that took place in the midst of an election, the very foundation of democracy,&#8221; Kishida said. &#8220;I condemn it in the harshest possible words.&#8221;</p>
<p>The Nara Prefectural Police arrested a 41-year-old man, identified as local resident Tetsuya Yamagami, at the scene. Video footage showed officers tackling the man, and what appeared to be a weapon on the pavement. Japanese news agency Kyodo was reporting that the suspected gunman is a former member of Japan&#8217;s Maritime Self-Defense Force.</p>
<p>Officials from Abe&#8217;s Liberal Democratic Party said the former prime minister was attacked from behind, and initially that the weapon seemed to be a shotgun. Police later told public broadcaster NHK that it was a handmade gun.</p>
<p>A witness who was at the scene near Nara&#8217;s Yamato-Saidaiji railway station said he heard two gunshot-like sounds, and saw smoke in Abe&#8217;s vicinity.</p>
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<p>Japan has strict laws on gun ownership and shootings are rare. According to a police white paper, there were 21 arrests for the use of firearms in 2020, with 12 of them being gang-related.</p>
<p>Abe, who left office in 2020, was still a lower house lawmaker and leader of the biggest faction in the ruling party, making him one of the country&#8217;s most influential politicians.</p>
<p>The former leader was stumping for the LDP ahead of the upper house poll. According to LDP headquarters, Abe had been scheduled to visit Nara, Kyoto and Saitama prefectures on Friday in support of the party&#8217;s upper house candidates. In Nara, where the LDP faces a tight race, the local party office said Abe&#8217;s visit had been decided on Wednesday.</p>
<p>As news of the killing broke, shocked world leaders began issuing <a title="" href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Asian-global-leaders-express-shock-over-Abe-shooting" target="_blank" rel="noopener">condolence messages</a>.</p>
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<p>Abe was born into a political family in 1954. His father, Shintaro Abe, was also a politician who served as minister of foreign affairs, agriculture and other posts. His grandfather was former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.</p>
<p>He started his career as a lawmaker in 1993, and served as a deputy chief cabinet secretary in the governments of Yoshiro Mori and Junichiro Koizumi in the early 2000s. In 2002, Abe accompanied Koizumi when he visited North Korea for the first time as Japan&#8217;s leader.</p>
<p>In 2006, Abe became Japan&#8217;s youngest postwar prime minister at the age of 52. Although he resigned the following year, he returned to power in 2012 and stayed until 2020, when he stepped down again due to health issues. His second period in power lasted 2,822 straight days, the longest streak in Japan&#8217;s history.</p>
<p>While in office, Abe implemented economic policies known as &#8220;Abenomics,&#8221; promoting women&#8217;s participation in the workforce, as well as business competition and trade &#8212; efforts widely credited with boosting the employment rate. Abe was also instrumental in bringing the Olympics back to Tokyo, and famously appeared at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games dressed as Super Mario.</p>
<p>Political leaders have been attacked in Japan before. In a 1960 case with haunting echoes, Inejiro Asanuma, the leader of Japan&#8217;s Socialist Party, was stabbed to death during a speech in Tokyo before a lower house election. In 2007, during a mayoral election campaign in the southwestern city of Nagasaki, incumbent Iccho Ito was shot and died the following day.</p>
<p>The rest of Asia has witnessed political assassinations as well. Park Chung-hee, the third president of South Korea, was shot by the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in 1979, after ordering the suppression of the country&#8217;s pro-democracy movement.</p>
<p>India&#8217;s first female leader, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was killed by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984. Ranasinghe Premadasa, the former president of Sri Lanka, was killed by the Tamil Tigers in a suicide attack in 1993. And in 2017, Kim Jong Nam, the half brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, was killed in a chemical attack as he was leaving Malaysia&#8217;s Kuala Lumpur International Airport for Macao.</p>
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<p><strong>The article was first published on <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/Japan-s-ex-PM-Shinzo-Abe-shot-reportedly-in-cardiac-arrest">Nikkei Asia</a>.</strong></p>
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Nation's longest-serving leader killed days before upper house election.

Japan's former prime minister Shinzo Abe assassinated

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