Japan’s Rulers Are Using Abe Shinzo’s Funeral for an Exercise in Political Propaganda
The Japanese government is pressing ahead with a state funeral for its former prime minister Abe Shinzo — essentially a state blessing for Abe’s legacy. In death as in life, Abe is strengthening the grip of ultranationalist militarism on Japanese politics.
The late former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo, photographed in 2017. (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff / Flickr)
When an assassin fatally shot former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo in front of an election rally in Nara on July 8, two days before a parliamentary upper house election in Japan, shock waves spread quickly around the world. Following a private funeral, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio announced that a “state funeral” for Abe would be conducted on September 27. It would, he insisted, demonstrate that Japan would not “submit to terrorism” while publicly recognizing Abe’s long contribution to the country, especially as prime minister in two stints, 2006–7 and 2012–20. No former prime minister has been honored in this fashion since the 1960s.
Some began to draw dark parallels with the assassinations or attempted assassinations of serving and former prime ministers in prewar Japan, such as those of Hara Takashi in 1921, Hamaguchi Osachi in 1930, Inukai Tsuyoshi in 1932, and Saito Makoto and Takahashi Korekiyo in 1936. Others recalled even more darkly the Aum Shinrikyo (Aum Supreme Truth) cult that carried out the March 1995 sarin chemical attack on the Tokyo subway, followed by the arrest, trial, and execution of its key members. Might twenty-first-century Japan be on the verge of going off the rails again now as it did with such dire consequences during other troubled times?
Stain or Statesman?
Abe may have been highly regarded outside Japan, especially in Washington, where policymakers appreciated his role as the most reliable (or obedient) of allies. However, within Japan itself, such was the miasma of scandals that thickened around his government that one expert could refer in early 2020 to his government, then in office for over seven years, as having failed in nearly all of its policies and constituting “a stain on Japan’s history.”
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