The death of a world leader

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Tuesday the 19th of July, 2022.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. First up: the death of Shinzo Abe.

Two weeks ago, a gunman shot the former prime minister of Japan at a campaign rally. He died later that day from the wounds he suffered. What does the assassination mean for Japan—and the region?

WORLD’s Josh Schumacher has our story.

JOSH SCHUMACHER, Reporter: On Friday, July 8, 2022, the world changed. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, stepped down a few years ago for health reasons. But he remained active in Japanese politics. That’s why he was on the streets of Nara, a city in Western Japan, that day. He was delivering a campaign speech on behalf of some of his fellow party members ahead of national elections for the upper house of parliament.

AUDIO: [First gunshot]

While he was speaking, a gunman snuck up behind the former prime minister. He fired one shot.

Shinzo Abe turned towards the gunman.

That’s when the gunman fired his second—and last—shot.

AUDIO: [Second shot]

Shinzo Abe fell back against a nearby traffic barrier while a member of his personal security detail tackled the gunman.

Photos from the incident showed Shinzo Abe’s white shirt stained with blood. It looked eerily like the Japanese flag.

Not that long after, in the offices of Tokyo Baptist Church a senior pastor burst into Mayami Matsushita’s office. She works as an administrative assistant there.

“Did you hear Shinzo Abe was shot?” the pastor asked.

MAYUMI: And I said, “no way,” and I searched the news. And I found out that it was true.

It was late in the morning—somewhere between 10 a.m. and noon. Mayumi and her coworkers at Tokyo Baptist, started praying for Abe to live—and for encouragement and peace for those around him.

Mayumi had met Shinzo Abe before and his wife back toward the beginning of his second stint as prime minister, in the early 2010s.  She served as an interpreter for the wife of the prime minister of Bhutan at an event the Abes attended.

She remembers Abe being passionate and energetic—charismatic, as well.

The shooting shocked her—and the rest of Japan. For two reasons, especially.

One: the attacker used a gun. And in Japan guns are prohibited, Mayumi says.

MAYUMI: So that kind of incident almost never happens in Japan. So it was kind of surreal.

Two: this was a prominent person. How couldn’t this have been prevented? she wondered.

MAYUMI: I was hoping that did he have a vest to protect himself? Or you know, I hope it was bad nightmare and that he will be saved.

Mayumi and her coworkers kept praying for Abe throughout the day. When news of the attack first came in, they’d just heard that he’d been shot and that his heart had stopped. They didn’t know much else.

At about 8pm that night, they found out that he’d died. The bullets had severely damaged his heart and punched two holes in his neck, damaging an artery.

Grief followed, but so did fear, Mayumi says. Politicians may think they could be at greater risk, but so will ordinary people.

MAYUMI: Like rest of us will think that anyone can have that kind of gun in their bag. And that can happen, you know, so many people, or some say that there will be imitators if they see that kind of news. So I think the safety will, like sense of safety will be threatened because of this.

As for the election that weekend, the public outpouring of grief for Abe may have contributed significantly to his party winning 63 of the 125 seats up for election in the 248-seat upper house. That gives its coalition 170 seats—more than enough votes to implement one of Shinzo Abe’s visions for Japan.

Here’s Cleo Paskal from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. She explains that Shinzo Abe wanted Japan to be a military force for good in the region.

PASKAL: The unstated thing is Japan's constitution limits its ability, or can be perceived as limiting its ability, to become a normal military power. And everybody knows, Abe wanted that to change.

Fumio Kishida, Japan’s current prime minister, has declared that he intends to use the LDP’s new parliamentary majority to amend the nation’s constitution.

Paskal explains that this, if it happens, would just be one more permanent change to the region that Abe will leave behind. The others include the creation of a security pact known as “the Quad,” with the United States, Australia and India. And Japan’s relationship with Taiwan.

PASKAL: The vision that he created of an Indo Pacific and putting the Indo in the Indo Pacific and creating the Quad, he did that… he changed the world.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Josh Schumacher.

Editor’s note: WORLD has corrected this transcript with the proper spelling of Mayumi Matsushita’s name and the circumstances in which she met Shinzo Abe.

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