The killer allegedly was angry that his mother bankrupted the family fortune by donating large amounts of money to the Unification Church (Moonies). Cults in general are a big phenomenon in Japan, so it should surprise nobody that Japan has the biggest congregation of Moonies in the world, more than Korea or the US.
Owing to their size, the Moonies wield considerable political clout in Japan. They have had some cozy mutual support arrangements with Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party for quite some time now.
I’m sure there’s a boatload more nuance to this story, but it seems like the shooter was angry about his mother’s donations to the Moonies, blamed the LDP, and decided that Abe was a suitably high-profile target for retribution.
Ah, this is what I wondered. I knew Abe was conservative and I wondered about the racist rumors but, because they didn’t touch me, I didn’t investigate further. Racism should be stamped out, but I don’t condone this action.
Japanese media is finally reporting that the “certain” religion is the Moonies and this only came after they confirmed it. Japanese media is not an example of the finest journalism in the world, and many articles are openly commenting on this, especially that foreign news reports were much faster to report on the connection.
Japanese politics are strange, which is my conclusion after following them for 40 years. Well, I’ve stopped paying that much attention the last 10 years, especially after I moved to Taiwan.
They aren’t the equivalent of Western politics but expecting them to be similar can deceive you into drawing the wrong conclusions. One of the mistakes is to think that political parties carry a lot of weight among the population. It didn’t seem that to me. While the LDP is undoubtedly more hawkish than whatever the opposition party is called at this moment; for the common person in the street, there isn’t much of a difference.
Abe wasn’t a particularly popular politician, but he happened to be in the right place at the right time, more than anything else. He happened to be there after the Fukushima incident and aggressively pushed Japanese being more assertive abroad. The later is complicated and not everyone agrees with it.
ISTM that the shock in Japan is less of this politician getting shot than the fact that someone shot him (and that it wasn’t an ultranationalist).
Note that most Japanese consider themselves sort of both of these, without really belonging to a particular movement. Japanese used to have Shinto weddings and Buddhist funerals, but Western weddings have tended to replace the Shinto ones. However, people will often visit Shinto shrines on New Year’s and other occasions, and will offer prayers.
I would have to look up how many people actually are registered members of Buddhist groups, but most people aren’t that into religion in Japan.
As @Isamu noted, there is the preWWII Shinto manufactured by the ultranationalists which gets wink-wink-nudge-nudge used by modern politicians to bolster their popularity by the far right. Again, most of the common people don’t really seem to care that much about it.
Yeah, I don’t know. Having lived in Asia for 30 plus years, I just don’t think of gunfire as a possibility. It’s just not in the back of my mind. I think my initial reaction would be to just wonder what the hell happened, rather than duck.
In general, I’d say, the Japanese view the job of governing as the job of the political types, and none of their business to butt into. So long as the political types aren’t trying to go to war or build nuclear weapons, the average person simply doesn’t care.
I’ve seen a variety of reports that the politicians have deals with ultranationalists, Yakuza, Moonies, etc. to vote for them. Supposedly, as much as 60% of everyone in the country votes, but I couldn’t tell you what the average person uses to guide them, when they choose who to vote for. I’d guess that the LDP largely coasts by on the idea that they simply need to be less insane than the other options. Probably some aspect of the deal with the ultranationalists is to harass the normal folk who would step up to run for office.