The assassination of the former prime minister poses a “challenge to parliamentary democracy” and to a society with strict gun laws
Nearly 62 years ago, Japan witnessed the assassination of Inejirō Asanuma, the leader of the Socialist Party, in what is believed to be the first deadly political attack in the country’s contemporary history. The killer’s name was Otoya Yamaguchi. He was only 17 years old, but he was already a young far-right, so convinced of his ideas that he had no qualms about going on stage where Asanuma took part in a debate and stabbed him repeatedly with a wakizaki, a kind of Japanese short saber.
For the next six decades, political violence has been counted almost on the fingers of both hands. At least the high voltage. Eight attacks have been recorded in which the victims died or were seriously injured. Almost all of them were attacked with knives. Cases like this Friday, which ended with the two-shot assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are very rare. For one fundamental reason: the extraordinary complexity of acquiring a weapon in Japan, where there is hardly any shooting. For example, last year ten were counted and eight of them were related to the yakuza. There was a dead person. The contrast with societies such as the United States is very large.
The law is extremely strict and prohibits their possession, except in the case of compressed air pistols. The number of armories to obtain them is limited to three in each of the country’s 40 prefectures, and all their equipment is subject to the control of the authorities. Sellers are not allowed to sell pistols and customers must return used or expired cartridges to them before purchasing new ones. The procedure for obtaining the permit is long. You have to pass a training course, shooting tests, mental health tests and an examination where relatives and colleagues are even questioned. If the applicant has a crime on his criminal record, he can forget it. The same happens when contacts with ideological and radical groups are discovered. Every three years the license expires and this whole process starts again.
Abe’s death was a special shock to a peaceful society, where crime rates are very low. And it immediately opened up the debate about the threat of crime and the latent risk of political violence, even without knowing whether the author of the former prime minister’s death was acting under some sort of paranoia.
The Washington Post reports from Tokyo that gun violence is an “extremely rare incident” in Japan. The head of government himself, Fumio Kishida, has warned that measures will be needed to combat the phenomenon. Tomoko Yoshino, chairman of the Japanese Trade Union Federation, yesterday expressed concern that “violence during the election period poses a serious challenge to parliamentary democracy. There are many policy problems, but the solution must be based on genuine political debate at all levels of society.”
Source: La Verdad
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