It was exactly a month ago today that Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Nara by 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami. As the passions of that event begin to settle, this is an opportune occasion to reconsider both the benefits and the costs of an administration which lasted longer than any other in Japanese history.
In the weeks since Nara resident Tetsuya Yamagami used a homemade gun to shoot and kill former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in front of his city’s Kintetsu Yamatosaidaiji Station, the nation and the world have been grappling with the question of why the assassination occurred.
When former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi formed a bond in the mid-1960s with Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon over their shared anti-communist views, little did he know that he was sowing the seeds that would eventually take the life of his beloved grandson, Shinzo Abe.
A roundup of the most significant news stories from Japan reported in the last half of January 2020.
Yasuhiro Nakasone, who served as prime minister from 1982 to 1987 and died this past November 29, broke the back of Japan’s labor movement.
Eclipsed for many decades by its much larger Tokyo rival, Osaka is reclaiming its former status as Japan’s second metropolis. The recent G20 Summit held in Osaka which briefly put the city’s name on the lips of a global audience was indicative of its rising prominence, and is not likely to be the last time in the coming years that it will become the focus of the world’s attention.
One small town’s desperate fight to prevent their community becoming a dump for highly radioactive materials from Fukushima.
