The former prime minister was pierced by projectiles resembling hunting pellets through his neck and shoulder, and his body was left lying on the asphalt.
In the last photograph released, a group of women tries to help him. The inevitable bloodshed is announced with an incipient red stain on the shirt.
Surprise and disbelief are the words that accompany the news. “Unthinkable in Japan,” exclaim commentators from half the world.
The lady now proceeds to make an act of contrition for her countrymen.
“This happened because it’s Nara. Here we are very friendly and the bodyguards let their guard down.
This would not have happened in a big city like Osaka. The fault lies with the bodyguards.”
The exact spot where Abe’s body fell has already been painstakingly swept away by forensic police and a photographer takes photographs of the pristine ground.
Authorities say Tetsuya Yamagami, the man captured after he shot, confessed to having a grievance against the former prime minister for supporting a religious group that demanded millions in donations from his mother and ruined the family.
The Unification Church, or Moon Sect, a cult of Korean origin with a tradition of friendship with conservative political figures, such as Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe, confirms that Yamagami’s mother belongs to the cult. But he says he knows nothing about donations.
Abe’s violent death evokes the 1960 bombing of his grandfather, and then Prime Minister, Nobusuke Kishi. It was six stab wounds, but Kishi survived.
Kishi managed the exploitation of the Japanese colonies in China and was Minister of Commerce during World War II.
When Japan was defeated he was imprisoned as a possible war criminal, but was exonerated to lend a hand in the reconstruction of the destroyed country.
