A quiet town in the department of Yamaguchi, in the south-west of Japan, known for its gray wooden school of 1913 classified as a historical monument, Takibe welcomed Shinji Yoshida, candidate for the local partial legislative, on April 11. The young and ambitious politician, with an impeccable line, is aiming for the post long occupied by Shinzo Abe, the ex-Prime Minister assassinated in July 2022. He braves the rain to deliver a speech in front of around fifty supporters. At his side stand Akie Abe, the widow of the late head of government, and Hiroshige Seko, cacique of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. The public is very close, but dozens of police and agents, pistols in their belts and sharp eyes, are supposed to deter any aggression. Risk has been on everyone’s mind since Abe’s murder.
There is no incident to report. But almost at the same time, the Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, who enjoys even stricter protection, passes, him, close to the drama. He escapes an attack in the small port of Saikazaki, in the center of the country. The author of the attack, Ryuji Kimura, 24, slipped into the audience who came to listen to the head of government support a candidate in a local election, before throwing a metal tube filled with explosives in his direction. Immediately spotted, the craft is moved away. The explosion does no major damage, Kishida escapes unscathed.
Ryuji Kimura (d), suspected of throwing an explosive device at Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during an election event, sits in the back of a police car, April 17, 2023 in Wakayama, Japan
© / afp.com/STR
The case has rekindled the memory of the assassination of Abe, who was killed while delivering a campaign speech. The assailant had been able to approach him from behind, without arousing the suspicions of the protection service – strongly criticized later. “The problem lies in the specificity of election campaigns in Japan. The priority is the proximity between the candidate and the public, which creates vulnerability,” notes Yu Inamura, consultant at the Japan Detective Technology Institute. According to custom, the candidate shakes hands and exchanges a few words with his supporters.
For the current campaign, the measures have been reinforced, with some effectiveness, as evidenced by the police reaction to Saikazaki. But the concern is noticeable. The day after the attempted attack, the police tightened up their arrangements even more for the visit of the Prime Minister to Oita, in the South-West: increased numbers, installation of barriers and – an unprecedented event – random search of the public. In other places, the police carried out metal detector checks on the bags and organized surveillance from rooftops near the place of the speeches.
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The main difficulty is that these attacks are committed by people acting alone. “It is easier to thwart the projects of organizations with political or religious objectives”, observes Yu Inamura, who fears a mimetic effect of recent attacks. Abe’s assassin wanted to expose his ties to the Moon sect. That of Kishida was ulcerated by the minimum age, set at 30, to stand for election. “It is possible that Kimura was inspired by the attack on Abe to draw attention to the subject that worries him”, estimates Toshiki Koyama, specialist in terrorism at Teikyo University in Tokyo, for whom it is also necessary “to act to restore hope to a society where the feeling of a certain stagnation is spreading”. The government is limiting itself for the time being to promising increased resources for intelligence. “It’s difficult to strike a balance between tight security and free elections,” said public security expert Isao Itabashi.
The challenge is daunting for an archipelago not prone to violence, but not free from political aggression. Without going back to the 1930s and its procession of assassinations of ministers and coup attempts, Akihito – crown prince who became emperor in 1989 – was targeted on his wedding day in 1959, but also during a visit to Okinawa in 1975. In 1960, socialist leader Inejiro Asanuma was stabbed by a right-wing extremist. In 2006, the mayor of Nagasaki, Ito Iccho, succumbed to gunshots from a member of the underworld.
Fears are all the more acute as the G7 summit approaches in mid-May in Hiroshima. During the G20 in Osaka in 2019, Japan mobilized 32,000 police officers and traffic was banned in places. Difficult to imagine such a mobilization for the electoral campaigns.