Category: Japan

Following the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party is facing tricky political questions in his home prefecture of Yamaguchi — and the answers are likely to impact a Lower House district realignment plan that was creating controversy within the party even before Friday.

Abe represented the Lower House’s Yamaguchi No. 4 district, an area that includes the port city of Shimonoseki. Under the election law, if a seat in the Lower House becomes vacant before Sept. 15, a runoff election should be held on the fourth Sunday of October.

In his jet-setting diplomacy — he visited about 80 countries during his term — Mr. Abe grew chummy with President Donald J. Trump, met dozens of times with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and, in 2018, became the first Japanese leader to visit Beijing in seven years when he met with China’s top leader, Xi Jinping.

Mr. Abe also hosted President Barack Obama when he made a poignant, historic visit in 2016 to Hiroshima, where the United States dropped an atomic bomb at the end World War II. Mr. Obama was the first American president to do so.

After the news of his death, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said on Twitter that the assassination was a “brutal and cowardly murder.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said on Twitter that he was “shocked and saddened beyond words” at Mr. Abe’s fatal shooting. “He was a towering global statesman, an outstanding leader, and a remarkable administrator,” Mr. Modi wrote. “He dedicated his life to make Japan and the world a better place.”

Before Mr. Abe’s death was confirmed on Friday, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken Jr., who was in Bali, Indonesia, for a Group of 20 meeting, said he was “deeply saddened and deeply concerned” by the shooting, adding that it was a “very, very sad moment.” The U.S. ambassador to Japan, Rahm Emanuel, also called Mr. Abe “an outstanding leader of Japan and unwavering ally of the U.S.”

Zhao Lijian, spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry, said at a regularly scheduled news briefing earlier on Friday that Beijing was “shocked” by the shooting.

Among other global figures, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, expressed his condolences at the G20 meeting, according to Reuters. Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, wrote on Twitter that he was “utterly appalled and saddened to hear about the despicable attack.” Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, called Mr. Abe “a good friend of Singapore.” Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India tweeted that he was “deeply distressed,” saying Mr. Abe was a “dear friend.” And President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan, in a Facebook post, called Mr. Abe “our good friend” and a staunch ally.

In 2018, in a moment perhaps emblematic of Mr. Abe’s assertive diplomacy, he stepped into a leading role after the Trump administration pulled out of what was called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a multilateral trade agreement initiated by the United States. In the absence of the United States, Japan marshaled the remaining nations into signing the sweeping trade deal.

But Mr. Abe’s long-held aspirations to strengthen Japan’s military and pare the pacifism that had dominated the country’s postwar policies — along with his balking at demands for an apology for his country’s wartime atrocities — wore on relations with Asian neighbors that had suffered from Japan’s imperial ambitions.

With his denial that the Japanese military had forced women into sexual slavery during the war and the push for Japanese textbooks to carry nationalist versions of history, relations between Japan and South Korea under Mr. Abe deteriorated to one of the lowest points in recent years.

Once again, COVID-19 cases are surging across Japan, fueled in part by the newer, immunity-escaping omicron subvariant BA.5, raising concerns that the nation’s seventh wave has begun.

Nationwide, daily new infections topped 45,000 on Wednesday — nearly double the figure from last week and on par with the level seen in mid-May. The surge comes as people are planning summer holidays and large, in-person events have begun to return. At the same time, the number of ambulance calls due to heatstroke is growing.