TOKYO – In the early hours of Wednesday a man set himself on fire in front of the official residence of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in New York for the United Nations General Assembly. The man was taken to the hospital unconscious. The local media reported this, explaining that the author of the gesture, whose personal details are not known at the moment, before setting himself on fire told the police that he was against the state funeral organized for the former premier Shinzo Abe, murdered in early July in the city of Nara, during an election rally.
Attack on Shinzo Abe, so the killer killed the former prime minister of Japan
by Carlo Pizzati
The state ceremony wanted by the current Prime Minister Kishida, scheduled for September 27, is strongly contested by a part of the country’s public opinion, which sees Abe as a divisive figure for his policies considered nationalistic, and the proponent of revisionism which has led to a growing increase in military spending over the course of his two mandates, damaging relations with neighboring countries, primarily China and South Korea. The costs incurred for the organization of the ceremony are also worrying, estimated at about 1, 66 billion yen (11.7
million euros), with representatives of 160 nations expected. In a recent survey by the Kyodo Agency, 60.8% of the population found the ceremony inappropriate.
Japan says goodbye to Shinzo Abe: a vigil in the night, private funerals and a funeral procession through the streets of Tokyo
by Anna Lombardi
Abe was the longest-serving Japanese prime minister ever, with his 8 years and 8 months spread over two terms, the first, shorter, between 2006 and 2007, and subsequently between December 2012 and September 2020. Abe is He was murdered at the hands of 41-year-old Tetsuya Yamagami, a former member of the Self-Defense Forces, with the aid of a homemade pistol. The attacker said he resented the former premier for his ties to the Unification Church, a religious organization with several million believers in South Korea, Japan and the United States, to which his mother also belonged. of Yamagami, causing serious financial problems for his family.