Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was taken to hospital on Friday after he was shot from behind by a man with a shotgun while delivering a speech in the western city of Nara, public broadcaster NHK reported. Abe, 67, appeared to be in cardiac arrest, Kyodo Network and News Agency reported. Gunshots rang out and a white plume of smoke could be seen as Abe gave a campaign speech outside a train station, NHK reported. An NHK reporter at the scene said they could hear two consecutive bangs during Abe’s speech. The Chief Cabinet Secretary will brief the media at 04:00 GMT. Abe served two terms as prime minister to become Japan’s longest-serving prime minister before stepping down in 2020 citing health problems. However, he remained a dominant presence in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), controlling one of its major factions. His protégé, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, faces an upper house election on Sunday in which analysts say he hopes to step out of Abe’s shadow and establish his premiership. Abe was best known for his signature “Abenomics” policy of bold monetary easing and fiscal spending. It also boosted defense spending after years of decline and expanded the military’s ability to project power abroad. In a historic change in 2014, his administration reinterpreted the post-war, pacifist constitution to allow troops to fight overseas for the first time since World War II. The following year, legislation ended the ban on exercising the right of collective self-defense or defending a friendly country under attack. Abe, however, fell short of his long-held goal of revising the US-drafted constitution by writing the Self-Defense Forces, as Japan’s military is known, into the pacifist Article 9. He was instrumental in winning the 2020 Olympics for Tokyo, cherishing the desire to preside over the Games, which were postponed by a year to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Abe first took office in 2006 as Japan’s youngest prime minister since World War II. After a year plagued by political scandals, voter anger over lost pension records and elections for his ruling party, Abe resigned, citing ill health. He became prime minister again in 2012. Abe comes from a wealthy political family that included a foreign minister father and an uncle who served as prime minister. (Reporting by Chang-Ran Kim; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Christian Schmollinger and William Mallard)
