Ten things to know about Japan ex-Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe that was assassinated

Ten things to know about Japan ex-Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe that was assassinated

Japan’s former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was in heart failure after apparently being shot during a campaign speech Friday in western Japan, NHK public television said Friday.

1. Shinzo Abe was born on 21 September 1954 in Tokyo to a prominent political family with significant economic influence throughout pre-war, wartime and post-war Japan.
2. He was the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history.
3. He served as Chief Cabinet Secretary from 2005 to 2006 under Junichiro Koizumi and was briefly leader of the opposition in 2012.
4. His maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was de facto “economic king” of occupied China and Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state in Northern China, in the lead-up to World War II, and during the war, had served as Vice Minister of Munitions in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō
5. His paternal grandfather Kan Abe was a Yamaguchi landowner who served in the House of Representatives during World War II.
6. Abe was elected to the first district of Yamaguchi Prefecture in 1993 after his father’s death in 1991, winning the most votes of the four Representatives elected in the SNTV multi-member district. In 1999, he became Director of the Social Affairs Division.
7. On 26 September 2006, Abe was inaugurated as Japanese Prime Minister
8. Abe generally took a hard-line stance with respect to North Korea, especially regarding the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens.
9. On 26 December 2012, Abe was formally elected as prime minister by the Diet, with the support of 328 out of 480 members of the House of Representatives.
10. Abe was assassinated with a homemade firearm by a former Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force officer on 8 July 2022 while delivering a campaign speech in Nara.