On July 8, 2022, a shooting that shocked the world in Nara City, Nara Prefecture, Japan. The victim was former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot in the heart by a gunman while giving a speech near Nara Station and died instantly.
According to Japanese media reports, the gunman who shot Abe was named Tetsuya Yamagami, a former member of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force. The day before the shooting, he had appeared at Abe's speech at Okayama, but he was unable to do so because of tighter security measures.
The fact that a former prime minister of a country was shot dead by assassins in broad daylight is appalling enough. And even more incredible is that the Japanese media dug up a video:
As early as 7 years before Abe's assassination, in 2015, a then-lawmaker reminded Abe at a parliamentary meeting to beware of assassins, and was finally ridiculed by Abe as "slandering Japan".
So, who is this lawmaker, and how does her political career intersect with Abe? As a left-wing member of the House of Representatives, what are her political standpoints? How exactly was Shinzo Abe assassinated?
Shinzo Abe
The famous "machine gun" in Japanese politics once made political enemies cry
The Japanese congresswoman named Kiyomi Tsujimoto, was a former member of the Senate of the Constitutional Democratic Party, a member of the Chinese Medicine Hospital, and is currently a member of the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentarian Alliance. She was born in April 1960 in Yoshino-ku, Nara Prefecture, Japan—yes, the same Nara prefecture where Abe was assassinated.
The person who reminded Abe to beware of assassins was born in the place where Abe was assassinated, which is simply a script that the screenwriter of the movie could not write.
Of course, Japan does not have a vast territory like the mainland, and this can only be regarded as a coincidence. However, Kiyomi Tsujimoto's political views have always been against right-wingers, and she can be regarded as a representative of the Japanese civilian class entering the political arena.
According to reports, during the time of Tsujimoto Kiyomi University, that is, in the early eighties, there was already a problem of right-wingers tampering with textbooks in Japan - the Nanjing Massacre was written as the "Nanjing Incident" and the invasion was written as "import and export", which aroused the dissatisfaction of many local Japanese students.
The media generally believe that since then, Kiyomi Tsujimoto has embarked on a-for-tat confrontation with Japanese right-wingers.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto
After graduating from Waseda University, Kiyomi Tsujimoto entered politics and joined the Japan Social Democratic Party, a party founded in 1945, the year of Japan's defeat, with the aim of re-establishing a new order in Japanese politics after the war.
Even the Social Democratic Party has experienced a process of restructuring and reconstruction, but because of its founding time and experience in multi-party coalition government, it established its ruling position at an early stage - opposition to war and permanent peace.
It can be regarded as an old left-wing party in Japanese politics.
The SPD's proposition determines that relations with the mainland are good, but it is precisely because of this that it can only be a small political party in Japanese politics. The Japan-China Friendship Parliamentary Union, where Kiyomi Tsujimoto now serves, was also led by the Social Democratic Party.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto
Of course, being pro-China does not mean everything, and political parties' ideas are often linked to their own interests and political goals.
Shinzo Abe and current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (hereinafter referred to as the Liberal Democratic Party), formerly known as the Japan Liberal Party, merged with the Democratic Party of Japan in 1955 to form the current political party, whose political position is to oppose socialism, yearn for liberalism, and maintain the current capitalist social system.
This proposition naturally went head-to-head with the SPD, and the two sides continued to be in opposition for many years.
However, the LDP is the largest party in Japan's Diet and has dominated Japanese politics for a long time. As the most eloquent member of parliament in the SPD, Kiyomi Tsujimoto can only participate in politics as an opposition party.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto
However, her kung fu is very good, because of her generous speech, sharp political questions, and always grasp the main points, she has been awarded the title of "machine gun", often leaving the other party speechless and even crying.
Tomomi Inada, who has served as defense minister since 2016, is an alumnus of the law faculty of Waseda University at Kiyomi Tsujimoto, and the two are similar in age but have almost exactly opposite political views. Kiyomi Tsujimoto once asked Tomomi Inada in a public parliamentary question, crying, and walked off the stage in tears. This woman is really not easy to mess with!
However, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, no matter how sharp her words, is also a Japanese politician killed from the bottom, and the political resources at hand are very limited.
Those familiar with Japanese politics know that Japanese politics has always been firmly controlled by its domestic political gatekeepers, and various political transactions have been played happily for many years, and power has even been transferred back and forth between several families.
Tomomi Inada
According to the summary of domestic media, there are many political gatekeepers in Japan, the five largest of which are the Hatoyama family, the Aso family, the Fukuda family, the Koizumi family and the Abe family.
Although these families belong to different political parties and have not been in the same political opinions, from the election of Junichiro Koizumi as cabinet minister in April 2001 until Yukio Hatoyama resigned as prime minister in June 2010, the top positions in Japanese politics have all been held by members of these families (Junichiro Koizumi, Shinzo Abe, Yasuo Fukuda, Taro Aso, and Yukio Hatoyama).
Subsequent prime ministers except Shinzo Abe have also been the spokespersons of these Japanese political gatekeepers.
Shinzo Abe, as the longest-serving prime minister in Japanese history, is an authentic gatekeeper and is in complete opposition to Kiyomi Tsujimoto.
Shinzo Abe
My grandfather and uncle were both prime ministers, and he broke the record for the longest tenure in office
A video can be seen online of Kiyomi Tsujimoto's "showdown" with Shinzo Abe at a December 2015 meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet.
That year, Japan's defense budget was overspent, and the prime minister's security efforts were not conspicuous. Kiyomi Tsujimoto therefore warned Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on stage:
"Now that the risk of terrorist attacks in Japan is very high, as the prime minister, I hope (Abe) can stay at the prime minister's residence, and I recommend that you do not go to movie theaters, gymnasiums, concerts and other places, because the security work is not very good..."
As soon as this remark came out, the lawmakers behind Abe booed one after another. Kiyomi Tsujimoto's words not only "buried" Abe's frequent appearances to participate in social events, but also reflected the ineffective work of Abe's security team, which can be described as killing two birds with one stone and poking at the sore spot of the Liberal Democratic Party.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto
And Abe did not show weakness after coming to power, and his first words in response to Kiyomi Tsujimoto were: "First of all, I want to affirm your (Tsujimoto's) efforts to belittle Japan." One sentence caused the audience to burst into laughter.
Then Abe said unhurriedly: "But I want to make it clear here that we in Japan are a safe country, even if there is a threat you mentioned." ”
At this time, Abe stood on the stage, and his face did not change when he said the "Japanese security theory", and his heart did not beat. If it weren't for the House meeting, he could even say to Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who was from the civilian class: "I'm here to be proud, who are you?" ”
This confidence comes from his family with a deep background.
It is well known that Shinzo Abe broke the record for the longest time as prime minister of Japan (7 years and 10 months) during his second term as prime minister. And his record-breaking object Eisaku Sato (Japan's 62nd and 63rd prime ministers) is his third grandfather - yes, the younger brother of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi.
Shinzo Abe
The eldest brother of the Sato family did not enter politics, and the old Nobusuke Nikaishi and the third elder Eisaku Sato were later Japanese prime ministers. They are brothers of a mother, and both the Kishi and Sato families are from Yamaguchi Prefecture, Honshu Island, and the families have raised each other, resulting in the two brothers having different surnames.
Kishi had committed heinous crimes in the northeast of the mainland during the War of Aggression against China, and later survived when he fell out with then Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and returned to Japan.
Nicknamed "Showa Demon", he was supposed to be a war criminal tried at the Tokyo International Tribunal, which is probably an important reason why Shinzo Abe often visited the Yasukuni Shrine many years later.
Kishi has a daughter named Yoko, who married Shintaro Abe, the son of Senator Hiroshi Abe, after World War II. Hiroshi Abe and Nobusuke Kishi had a strong relationship, and the two formed a family of sons and daughters for political purposes, and after several generations of development, the later Abe family became the first gate in Japanese politics.
Shinzo Abe
Shintaro Abe and Yoko Kishi married and gave birth to two sons: the eldest son Hironobu Abe was born in 1951, and the second son born in 1954 was Shinzo Abe.
Under such a family background, as long as Abe grows smoothly and seriously engages in politics, he will sooner or later ascend to the position of Japanese prime minister in the future. In fact, it is. Shinzo Abe graduated from the Department of Political Science of Seikei University's Faculty of Law, and later went to California to study gold-plated, and soon after returning to China, he entered politics.
After years of political immersion, he defeated Taro Aso in the September 2006 general election, was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party, and was elected the 90th prime minister of Japan at the end of the same month. He was also the first prime minister in Japanese history to be born after World War II.
However, he was not very proficient in business when he first took office, and was forced to step down after more than a year as prime minister. But in 2012, Shinzo Abe, who was already very mature at this time, successfully brought the LDP back to the top and returned to the throne of prime minister.
Until 2019, he surpassed his third maternal uncle Eisaku Sato and became Japan's so-called "first postwar prime minister".
Shinzo Abe
Ignoring the importance of security had the consequences of being assassinated as outgoing Prime Minister
Such a life experience is so smooth that we can even say that Shinzo Abe's starting point in life is the end of life that countless Japanese people cannot achieve. What Kiyomi Tsujimoto has seen as a lawmaker is nothing more than Abe's casual glance-up in his political career.
It is also necessary to explain the background of the life of Japanese people. Since Japan was the first to be recognized by the United Nations and one of only a few developed countries in Asia at present, the standard of living of the Japanese people is relatively high, and even the livelihood of most people at the bottom can be guaranteed.
Of course, there are factors such as the hard work and willingness of the Japanese, but more importantly, Japan's social structure has long been as stable as stagnant water - the upper class controls political, economic, and cultural resources, and its internal circulation is impermeable, and it is simply impossible for ordinary people to complete the leap in life;
The lives of people at the bottom are mainly in the technical industry, and the lives of small businessmen and small employees are also very stable, and even many ancestral craftsmen have been doing this business since their grandfathers, and their sons, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren are still doing this business...
There is such a line in the classic Japanese anime "Doraemon", the author borrowed Doraemon's mouth and said: "Every Japanese is like this, from the moment he is born, you know what school he will study, what profession he will do, what wife he will marry, where he will die..."
Japanese
This is a true portrayal of Japanese society. Even for a politician like Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who can become a member of parliament, the background of a middle-class family restricts her further development.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who is now in her sixties, has not left politics, and her current status is a member of the Japan-China Friendship Parliamentary Alliance, which is what we call "pro-China parliamentarians" in our country - compared with the Abe family, whose ancestors were war criminals, the Tsujimoto family understands things better in this regard.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto herself has been working hard for Japan-China friendship.
When she was elected to the House of Representatives in 2006, she explicitly opposed former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to the Yasukuni Shrine, and her exact words were as follows:
"Yasukuni Shrine is the organ that guided Japan to war. A Japanese who was drafted into the army and died on a small island in China or the Pacific Ocean was of course saddened by their families. But aren't the Asian people sad that they have lost their loved ones by their aggression? Don't they have affection? ”
Kiyomi Tsujimoto
Japan established the Constitutional Inquiry Commission in 2001 with the aim of amending the Peace Constitution and possessing nuclear weapons of its own.
Kiyomi Tsujimoto, who has been trying to save the Peace Constitution, which will be abrogated by the Japanese right, scolded Tomomi Inada for crying because Inada believed that "the development of nuclear weapons is the need of Japan's own protection, which has been traumatized by nuclear weapons."
She simply said: "The number of Japanese who died in the atomic bomb was far less than that of the Japanese army." You speak like this without conscience, and you must withdraw your statement! ”
The current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was also intimidated by her. At the end of February this year, the House of Representatives of the Japanese Diet passed the budget for fiscal year 2023, of which the defense budget is as high as 6.8 trillion yen (about 480 billion yuan).
Kiyomi Tsujimoto broke the news to the media that Japan had ordered the "Global Hawk" UAV from the United States, but the Americans not only did not deliver it, but even spent hundreds of billions of yen in maintenance costs in Japan.
If you know, then these Japanese taxpayers' money, are they going to pay "protection fees" to the Americans? Are the Japanese people so unlucky?
Fumio Kishida
From this point of view, her reminder of Abe is relatively polite.
But Abe apparently did not pay attention to this. He himself has always been a "social expert", often appearing in crowded places, on the one hand, to achieve political goals to solicit votes, on the other hand, to express his pro-people position as a gatekeeper and to enjoy with the people.
However, his security team has not been updated in time for many years, and the candidates are roughly the same as the old ones.
Moreover, Abe's choice to resign in August 2020, when Japan's new crown pneumonia epidemic was very serious, has always been regarded as a "delaying measure".
Japanese political commentators analyzed that Abe did not want to blame Japan's epidemic prevention problems, so he resigned as prime minister for physical reasons.
Shinzo Abe
He was not yet 70 years old at the time, and he still had time to run for president of the Liberal Democratic Party and prime minister of Japan, a move to avoid being set on fire, so as to trade time for space and gain valuable political resources for himself.
After retiring from the front line, Abe has not been idle, but has helped political allies lobby and run around, giving the LDP a platform for newcomer politicians. This also confirms the authenticity of Abe's "retreat as progress".
Many photos and videos of Abe giving speeches, events and even leaflets in public can be found online. And the earliest photo can even be traced back to 1980, when Abe was a newcomer and began to use this method to extract political resources, which shows his political consciousness.
From his 20s to his 60s, Abe's set of "fun with the people" has been playing for more than 40 years, and he himself enjoys it. He probably won't remember a meeting in late 2015 when Kiyomi Tsujimoto told him to remind someone of the assassination.
So, his political life, and his entire life, ended with an assassination.
Shinzo Abe
On the morning of July 8, 2022, in the square in front of the Kintetsu Station of Yamato Nishidaiji Temple in Nara Prefecture, Shinzo Abe's desperate place.
The station is a crossroads, with a chaotic stream of passing cars and pedestrians. But Abe is still good at this mouthful, and the more people he has, the more excited he is, which means that his speech can be heard by more people.
At about 11:30 a.m. that day, Abe's speech officially began. Standing on a platform tens of centimeters high on the road on the north side of the station, he greeted the surrounding residents under the not tight encirclement of several guards.
At this time, dozens of journalists stood in front of him, taking pictures of him with cameras, or taking notes with notebooks and recording his speeches with voice recorders.
Shinzo Abe's last words in his life were canvassing for a Senate surnamed Sato in Nara Prefecture (not sure whether he is related to Abe), hoping that everyone would support Sato.
speech
What he didn't know was that about seven or eight meters behind him, a reporter-like man raised a black, camera-like cylinder and aimed it at him. Japan's gun ban is very strict, and no one would have thought that this guy was holding a homemade double-barreled shotgun.
Moemi Ishida, a female special police officer who was once blown up in the Abe Guard Group, who was known as "0.2 seconds reaction to solve the enemy", stood next to Abe at this time and did not react.
Then came two dull gunshots separated by two seconds. Toruya Yamagami's first shot was empty, and the second shot hit Shinzo Abe's heart.
Those who have watched the video of Abe's assassination may realize that Abe's guard regiment was seriously slow to respond, and before the second shot, everyone's feet seemed to be glued to the ground, and they did not have time to react.
And the first shot is missed, if Abe's guard group can really "kill the enemy in 0.2 seconds", then Toru Yamagami will never have the opportunity to fire the second shot - the second shot that took Abe's life.
assassin
The shotgun killed a large area, and after this shot, the fine bullet not only hit Abe's back heart, but even hit his neck, causing Abe's head and neck to be instantly soaked with blood, and his cardiopulmonary function quickly stopped.
An hour later, doctors announced Abe's death. Ironically, after the Japanese government announced that it would hold a state funeral for Abe on September 27, the film "Toruya Yamagami" directed by Japanese left-wing radical director Masao Adachi will be released on the day of Abe's state funeral.
You heard it right, not "Shinzo Abe", but "Toruya Yamagami"!
In fact, Shinzo Abe and the Japanese political gatekeeper family he represents have always had huge opposition in China.
Shinzo Abe
In early September 2022, about 280,000 people across Japan signed a petition to the Japanese government calling for the cancellation of Shinzo Abe's state funeral. People everywhere also took to the streets, holding banners to express their dissatisfaction with the Japanese government.
And all this, Tsujimoto Kiyomi saw in his eyes. As early as 7 years ago, she reminded or warned Abe to beware of assassins. And now, when Abe really dies and he is buried by the Japanese government as a former prime minister of Japan, there will be hundreds of thousands of Japanese people opposed.
If everything could be repeated, would Abe heed Kiyomi Tsujimoto's advice?
But alas, there are no ifs in this world.
Resources
[1] Yin Zi.7 years ago, lawmakers reminded Abe to beware of terrorist attacks Abe: This is to belittle Japan[N].Check out the news Knews,2022-07-11.
[2] Martian Phalanx. Paying "protection fees" under the guise of military purchases, Kishida is called "American dog" by the Japanese people[N].Baidu News,2023-03-07.
[3] Global Times. will be released on the day of Abe's state funeral"[N].Global Network,2022-09-10.
[4] Yihan. Japanese media: Abe became Japan's longest prime minister after World War II[N].Observer.2019-08-24.