Japan is bidding farewell to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was killed on the campaign trail in July, with a rare state funeral that has divided the nation.
Some 4,000 mourners — including United States Vice President Kamala Harris and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — are attending Tuesday’s ceremony for Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister.
The event began at 2pm local time (05:00 GMT) with Japan’s Self Defense Forces firing 19 shots in honour of the influential politician as his wife, Akie Abe, carried his ashes into Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan hall. Security has been tightened in the Japanese capital, with schools in the vicinity of the funeral venue closed and some 20,000 police officers mobilised to ensure security for the event.
At a nearby park, thousands of Japanese people were lined up to gather offer floral tributes to Abe.
But the state funeral has also prompted protests in downtown Tokyo, with demonstrators criticising Abe for his legacy of divisive policies as well as the $11.5m bill for the event. A recent poll conducted by the Mainichi newspaper shows that some 62 percent of respondents do not approve of holding a state funeral for Abe.
Revelations about ties between Abe, his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Unification Church have also spurred outrage. Abe’s assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, blames the church – which critics call a “predatory cult” – for his family’s financial ruin and has told investigators that he shot Abe on July 8 because of the prime minister’s support for the church. Since then, Japanese media has reported extensively on how the church has forcibly extracted exorbitant donations from its followers in the country.
An internal LDP survey has meanwhile found that nearly half the governing party’s 379 national legislators also have ties with the church and affiliated groups. These range from attending the church’s events to receiving donations and accepting volunteers for election support.
The disclosures have caused Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s approval ratings to plunge below 30 percent.
In a bid to address the anger, Kishida has shuffled his cabinet and ordered LDP legislators to sever ties with the Unification Church.
But he has defended the state funeral as necessary, citing Abe’s “achievements” over his eight years in office and the receipt of some 1,700 messages of condolences from more than 260 countries and regions. Some 700 foreign dignitaries, including Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese, are attending Tuesday’s event.
Japanese opposition parties are boycotting the funeral, however, saying Abe is also not deserving of the honour.
They point to contentious policies such as his push to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution and his nationalistic rhetoric that has soured relations with neighbouring countries, including South Korea. At the time of his resignation for health reasons in 2020, Abe was also mired in scandals in which he was alleged to have misused political funds and engaged in cronyism. He was also facing criticism at the time for his poor handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his determination to hold the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics despite the outbreak of the disease.
“Kishida’s decision to honour Abe with a state funeral without consulting the Diet or judiciary smacks of exactly the arrogance of power that the public associates with Abe. By a 2-1 margin the public opposes the state funeral and much of this opposition can be attributed to Abe’s toxic legacies and limited achievements,” said Jeffrey Kingston, professor of history and Asian studies at Temple University in Japan.
“Polls suggest few believe Kishida has handled the Church issue competently and this is part of the reason he has plunged in the polls. Supporters hope it will all blow over but the media spotlight may sustain the anger and now there are the Olympic bribery scandals that provide further reminders about the sleazy ways and means of the Abe government.”
Source: Aljazeera.com
