Japanese people bid their final goodbye to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday, July 12 as a family funeral was held at a temple days after his assassination that shocked the nation.
Abe, the country’s longest-serving prime minister who stepped down two years ago, was shot on Friday during a campaign speech in the western city of Nara.
Hundreds of people, filled pedestrian walks outside of the Zojoji temple in downtown Tokyo to bid farewell to Abe, whose nationalistic views drove the governing party’s ultraconservative policies.
Mourners waved, shed tears, dropped flowers and took photos on their smartphones as a motorcade including a hearse carrying his body, accompanied by his widow slowly drove by the packed crowd. His widow, Akie Abe was seen lowering her head to the crowd.
Only she and other close family members, as well as Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and senior party leaders, attended the funeral at the temple, according to the Associated press.
The hearse made a tour of Tokyo’s political headquarters of Nagata-cho, where Abe spent more than three decades since he was first elected in 1991. It then drove slowly by the party headquarters, where senior party lawmakers in dark suits stood outside and prayed, before heading to the prime minister’s office, where Abe served a total of nearly a decade.
The suspect, Tetsyua Yamagami, was arrested on the spot Friday and is being detained at a local prosecutors’ office for further investigation.
Abe, the son of an earlier prime minister, became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006 at age 52. He left after a year in office due to health reasons but returned to power in 2012.
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