The shooting took place around 11.30am Friday at an intersection in front of the Yamato-Saidaiji train station in Nara as Abe was campaigning for a candidate from his Liberal Democratic Party for this weekend’s upper house election.
Video posted on social media appears to show a space at Abe’s back with few people present. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, approached from behind, according to a source involved in the investigation.
Police said Yamagami used a homemade firearm. The shooting came as a shock in a country known worldwide for its safety and where guns, and gun violence, are exceptionally rare.
“Security for Japanese VIPs seems to involve a lot of training for attacks with bladed or blunt weapons,” said Hideto Osanai of the International Bodyguard Association.
“In places like Europe and the US, they train intensively to check suspicious objects and monitor people’s hand movements, in case of guns.”
“I don’t think there are enough precautions for guns in Japan, with its strict gun laws,” Osanai said.
The National Police Agency has not provided details of security at the rally.
Sitting cabinet members, senior political party officials, prime ministerial candidates and other prominent figures are protected by the Security Police, a Tokyo Metropolitan Police division modelled after the US Secret Service.
The force was established after a 1975 attack on then-prime minister Takeo Miki. Security Police officers wear bulletproof vests under their suits and carry weapons including batons, according to a former police official who runs a security company.
As a long-serving prime minister, Abe was a prime candidate for such protection. Friday’s rally had both a Security Police presence and Nara prefectural police.
Japanese political campaigns planning street speeches talk with police about the site details and expected crowd sizes in order to determine how to deploy officers for security. The locations are checked in advance for suspicious objects.
But there are a number of complicating factors. Candidates often stand in elevated positions to be more visible to the crowd. They are often mobbed beforehand and afterward by voters wanting to shake hands.
“Politicians want to shorten the distance between themselves and voters as much as they can,” said a former police officer who has experience with such assignments.
Experts on security methods in other countries point to weaknesses in the country’s protocols.
In the US, security details for the president or other prominent figures consider the possibility of firearms or explosives and sometimes even deploy snipers of their own, according to an executive at a crisis management firm.
“They’re an order of magnitude ahead of Japan in terms of their ability to handle suspicious persons,” the executive said.
The National Police Agency has set up a team to review security at the event.
“I believe all possible efforts were made for security, but we will once again thoroughly examine the situation,” current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Friday afternoon.
Counterterrorism expert Isao Itabashi, who heads the Institute for Analysis and Studies at the Council for Public Policy in Japan, said: “A comprehensive analysis is needed of the reasons why the suspicious activity was not detected beforehand, conditions around the site, and deployment of security personnel.”
“There should be a discussion of countermeasures, such as choosing rally sites where safety can be assured if large crowds show up, without limiting the ability to campaign freely,” Itabashi said.