“INTIMATE EVENTS”
Paul Nadeau, who has been on campaign events with Abe in the past, said stump speeches like Friday’s are “almost intimate events”.
“The public is close by, they’re usually filling a town square in front of the train station,” said Nadeau, who previously worked for an LDP official and is now an adjunct professor at Temple University of Japan in Tokyo.
“You never got any feeling of insecurity or danger or anything like that.”
Iwao Horii, an LDP member who was standing next to Abe when he was shot, said preparations for the event were not unusual with about 15 party staff tasked with crowd control and security handled by the local police.
All major parties announced suspensions of election campaign activities after the shooting.
Several recent campaign events attended by Abe, who was Japan’s longest serving prime minister and one of the country’s most influential political figures, had drawn large crowds.
One ruling party source told Reuters on condition of anonymity that despite Abe’s high profile, the level of security he was provided had likely dropped since he left office in 2020.
Japan has very tight gun control laws.
The suspected gunman shot at Abe with a device that had a pistol grip and two pipes covered in black electrical tape, according to photos and video images of the incident.
A man in a black suit grabbed the suspect after the shooting, while two others – one carrying a briefcase – rushed to assist, photos showed.
Grant Newsham, a retired US Marine Officer and former diplomat at the Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, said he would expect more caution and somewhat tighter protection of senior politicians in Japan following the assassination.
“Questions will be being asked about security. Clearly security would have been far tighter for, say, (Prime Minister Fumio) Kishida,” added Robert Ward, a London-based senior fellow for Japanese Security Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
“But proximity to voters is a feature of Japanese campaigning. I’ve been at campaign rallies and the public is close. Perhaps this will change. If so, it would be a shame.”