Shinzo Abe.
While nearly forty thousand people die in one calendar year in the United States in connection with an assault led by a firearm, in Japan the number is in the low teens at most. In 2014, for example, the numbers are juxtaposed at 33,600 and 6. The abysmal difference is surely due to the different laws governing firearm possession. In America more than liberal, in Japan strict, prohibiting handguns in personal possession. Gun violence is very uncommon in the land of the rising sun, and politically motivated armed attack is quite rare. Yet a few days ago Tetsuya Yamagami struck former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the neck with two shots from his home-made short rifle, causing fatal injuries. This inadvertently put Japan on the front pages of the world press. Among other things, this was because the assassination took place a few dozen hours before the election itself and the victim was a high-profile, committed figure. Abe had a total of nine years as prime minister and had campaigned for the Liberal Democrats (LDP), whom he had historically led to electoral victory twice. Postponing the election was in play, but national pride and an unwillingness to give in to a manipulative act of violence ultimately prevailed.
On Sunday, July 11, 2022, the LDP won Japan's upper house election, winning a comfortable majority of 146 seats out of 248, along with Komeito (a conservative party that proclaims humanitarianism). In a possible collaboration with two other groups, a two-thirds majority could change Japan's distinctly pacifist 1947 constitution after many years. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida can therefore achieve what Shinzo Abe has been striving for for years.
"