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Shinzo Abe had left power citing health reasons.
The assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday shocked the world and recalled a time when assassination seemed to be a political strategy in the Asian nation.
Although Japan today prides itself on its citizen security, a place where “one gets used to not thinking regarding violent crime”, according to BBC correspondent Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, there was a period when being involved with the affairs of State was risky.
In fact, if Abe’s death is confirmed to have been politically motivated, this would be the sixth Japanese president to be assassinatedincluding those who have died in office and those who have died following leaving office.
This is equivalent to 9% of the 64 leaders who have governed Japan since 1885. A higher proportion than that in the United States.
Thus, although 86 years have passed since a former Japanese president was assassinated (Takahashi Korekiyo in 1936) and 90 years since an acting ruler died as a victim of an attack (Tsuyoshi Inukai in 1932), political violence is not so foreign to Japanese society as you might think.
Japan without stereotypes
At first glance, the international image of Japan since the end of World War II might lead one to believe that it is a country oblivious to the political violence seen in other latitudes. However, experts warn, this is not the case.
“To say that this type of political violence is unprecedented in Japan is not true.rdad. It’s shocking, but it’s not unprecedentedHugo Dobson, professor of International Relations at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom), told the Inews website.
In fact, although during recent decades there have been no presidents or former presidents who have been assassinated, they have been victims of attacks, although they have survived.
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Nobusuke Kishi, maternal grandfather of Shinzo Abe, suffered an attack in 1960 when he was prime minister, but survived.
One of them was Nobusuke Kishi, Abe’s maternal grandfather, who as prime minister in 1960 was the target of an attack by a far-right activist who stabbed him several times in the thigh.
Later, Prime Ministers Takeo Miki (1975), and Morihiro Hokosawa (1994), as well as Deputy Prime Minister Shin Kanemaru (1992), who managed to survive, were also victims of attacks.
violent stages
In any case, although political violence in Japan is relatively uncommon today, there have been particularly turbulent periods in the country’s contemporary history.
From this perspective, the historian Manuel de Moya Martínez highlights two specific moments: the Meiji era (1868-1912) and the years around 1930.
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Hirobumi Ito was assassinated in 1909.
“Today’s Japan is very different from that of the last third of the 19th century or the Japan of the 1930s,” explains the historian to BBC Mundo.
“In the first case, it can be said that the transition from the feudal system to the modern State implemented by the government was not something simple. After the so-called Meiji restoration (1868), many sectors did not agree with the path the country was taking and violently opposed it. But following a few turbulent years, the administration prevailed and succeeded in establishing a new political system that was in place for decades.”
The Spanish historian indicates that later, during the Taishō era (1912-1926), a liberal democracy was established in the country but that it might not or did not know how to provide solutions to the problems that arose, so the system entered into crisis. .
“The Japan of the 1930s was dragging the effects of the economic crisis of 1929, whose consequences were felt both politically and socially. This was a process analogous to what happened in many European countries during those years”, points out the expert.
He explains that in those years the civil power had to deal with a military power that began to be very unruly.
“The military enjoyed great autonomy since the Meiji era (1868-1912), but in that context many officers began to advocate taking the reins of the country themselves. And within the Armed Forces some clandestine groups began to use terrorism as an instrument of subversion in order to aggravate the crisis of the political system and facilitate this path”, says De Moya Martínez.
He adds that, paradoxically, these murders and the violence gave justification to the extremists who promised to return social peace to the streets.
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Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi survived the attack, but died months later from an infection in his wounds.
In those years, Prime Minister Osachi Hamaguchi was assassinated. He initially survived injuries inflicted on him by a far-right militant in 1930, but died nine months later due to an infection in unhealed wounds.
A year later, in 1932, Prime Minister Tsuyoshi Inukai was assassinated, killed by a group of Navy officers while he was in the government residence in Tokyo. This event is considered a watershed in the history of Japan.
“Traditionally his murder (and all the background that had what became known as “Incident of May 15”) has been considered the event that came to signify the end of liberal democracy in Japan and the beginning of the militaristic period that preceded the Second World War,” says Manuel de Moya Martínez.
It clarifies, however, that this event cannot be reduced to a single fact, but rather it is a set of interconnected events.
“In the months prior to Inukai’s assassination there were several high officials who were assassinated. All of this occurred in the context that followed the economic crash of 1929 and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931,” he says.
Prior to this period, there were other leaders who died in attacks such as Hirobumi Ito, who was assassinated by a Korean nationalist at a train station in 1909or Hara Takashi, who was also fatally stabbed at a train station in 1921 by a far-right railway employee.
But, how has it been possible that with this record Japan has managed to decouple its image from political violence?
De Moya Martínez indicates that following the Japanese defeat in World War II, the country has known an economic boom and political stability that have partly contributed to distancing certain dynamics from the past.
“Those who in the 1930s had advocated violent actions once morest the political system came out very discredited with the defeat of 1945. Although in the last 70 years there have been assassinations and attacks, until now these have been more of an exception within a dynamic of stability that has prevailed”, concludes the historian.
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