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Japan Prime Minister assassination attempt

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  • Registered Users Posts: 3,719 ✭✭✭seenitall


    What is happening with Japan, didn’t they just kill off a PM recently? What’s the story there, Japan used to be the last place on earth to have this kind of thing happening…….?



  • Registered Users Posts: 82,509 ✭✭✭✭Overheal


    The incident comes just nine months after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a homemade gun while he was campaigning for the LDP in Nara Prefecture, which borders Wakayama.

    The killing of Abe prompted police to revise rules for VIP protection by extending the power of central authorities and establishing a system to assess the level of danger.

    and

    Prior to the assassination of Abe, other major attacks on politicians in Japan include the fatal 2007 shooting of Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito by a senior member of a crime syndicate. Ito died the day after he was shot twice in the back at point-blank range outside Nagasaki Station.

    Five years earlier, LDP lawmaker Koki Ishii was stabbed to death by the leader of a right-wing group. In 1994, former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa was shot while in a hotel in Tokyo but was unhurt.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,366 ✭✭✭Star Bingo


    Damn, they don’t fcuk around. We’ve seen it before that n all



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,381 ✭✭✭Yurt2


    Long history of political assassinations in Japan. Head of the Socialist Party in the 60s was famously assassinated on live-TV with a katana sword. Several attempts on the Emperor's life in the inter-war years. The nationalist writer Yukio Mishima (worth reading despite his kooky politics) staged a failed coup in in the 70s, commited seppuku. Abe's grandfather when he was Prime Minister was stabbed in the same era. Lots of other targetted attacks on politicians over the years.

    It's not all Pokemon and politeness there. There's dark undercurrents in their society like anywhere else - their marketing is just better and tourists don't tend to see the underbelly.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,719 ✭✭✭seenitall


    Thanks for the replies, again I wasn’t aware of that history, Japan seemed like a stable democracy from a far away vantage point I guess. Interesting stuff.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 82,509 ✭✭✭✭Overheal


    It's not all Pokemon and politeness there. There's dark undercurrents in their society like anywhere else - their marketing is just better and tourists don't tend to see the underbelly.

    True of most countries to a degree but when you're talking Katanas and Sepekku, we can for sure say nobody does it like the Japanese.

    In the west we just snipe our assassination targets, diddy up a car bomb, or send a drone.



  • Registered Users Posts: 3,719 ✭✭✭seenitall


    So true! The car bombs, for example, are all the rage in Donetsk and Luhansk these days, I hear :D (although dunno if it counts as West, strictly speaking…….)



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,381 ✭✭✭Yurt2


    There's a certain aesthetic to be sure. Moments before the katana assassination I mentioned...




  • Registered Users Posts: 11,326 ✭✭✭✭the_amazing_raisin


    Historically politicians getting murdered in Japan was actually pretty normal, the last 70 years or so have been a bit of an exception

    "The internet never fails to misremember" - Sebastian Ruiz, aka Frost



  • Registered Users Posts: 16,710 ✭✭✭✭banie01


    Came to post pretty much this. The return of violence to Japanese politics is very unwelcome but it is a resurgence of a long tradition of violent factionalism in Japan. From the Meiji restoration right through to the 1930s Japanese politics was riven with assassination. It calmed a little during the Japanese push into China and then WW2, stayed low key during the US occupation before emerging again in the 60's with the Socialists and then Mishima's strange break.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,374 ✭✭✭SortingYouOut


    Morals aside, that's a pretty bad ass way to assassinate someone.

    Beverly Hills, California



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