Japan honors Abe in a state funeral
In a ceremony that has become as contentious as the late former prime minister was in life, Japan paid tribute to the assassinated Shinzo Abe on Tuesday, September 27, with flowers, prayers, and a 19-gun salute — the nation’s first official funeral for a former prime minister in 55 years.
Abe’s widow, Akie, brought his ashes into the Nippon Budokan Hall in the heart of Tokyo to the sounds of a military band and the salute of the honour guard.
A sizable photograph of Abe was put over a bank of green, white, and yellow flowers inside the Budokan, best renowned as a performance venue, and it was covered in black ribbon. A wall of pictures close by showed him jogging alongside G7 leaders, holding hands with kids, and touring disaster zones.
Following Abe’s murder at a campaign rally on July 8, a reaction against current premier Fumio Kishida was sparked by discoveries concerning connections between lawmakers in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which he once led, and the Unification Church, which critics describe as a cult.
Kishida has apologized and promised to sever party links to the church after the incident caused his support ratings to drop to their lowest level ever.
However, even though Abe’s state funeral would mark the first such ceremony since 1967, the opposition has persisted due to the $11.5 million price tag that the state would bear during a difficult economic period for regular people.
The longest-serving prime minister of Japan was an unpopular leader plagued by scandals.
Unabashedly nationalist, Abe pushed Japan into a strong defensive position that many today regard as foresightful in light of the rising anxiety about China, while others criticized it as being overly hawkish.
Protesters brandished placards and chanted “No state funeral” to the sound of a guitar in one area of downtown Tokyo.
However, hundreds of mourners arrived at the burial venue in droves early in the morning, forcing organizers to open the hall 30 minutes earlier. On television, it was depicted that within hours, about 10,000 people had offered flowers and kneeled in silent prayer in front of Abe’s portrait, with many more people lining up in lengthy lines.