Tokyo, 27 September, /AJMEDIA/
A state funeral for former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is set to be held in Tokyo on Tuesday amid tight security, with more than 4,000 mourners in attendance, despite mounting opposition to the controversial ceremony for the country’s longest-serving leader.
Ahead of the state-funded event, the first of its kind for a former premier in 55 years, calls have grown to cancel the ceremony, with critics saying it lacks a legal basis and citing Abe’s complicated political legacy. The funeral is set to cost the taxpayer more than 1.6 billion yen ($11 million).
During the postwar period, Japan has only held a state funeral for a former premier once. The honor was given in 1967 to former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who led the country’s recovery from the war.
A private funeral for Abe took place four days after he was fatally shot during an election campaign speech on July 8 in the western city of Nara by a lone gunman. His remains were cremated.
The National Police Agency has mobilized up to 20,000 police officers to enforce strict security in the capital and particularly around the Nippon Budokan hall where the ceremony is to take place.
At a park near the venue, meanwhile, many members of the public gathered to lay flowers at a set of stands from early in the morning.
Opponents of the funeral have repeatedly held rallies in front of the prime minister’s office, parliament building and elsewhere and filed lawsuits demanding that the event be scrapped.
In the service starting at 2 p.m., Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his predecessor, Yoshihide Suga, who supported the deceased leader for years as chief Cabinet secretary, are scheduled to give memorial addresses.
Among the more than 700 foreign guests are U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach.
Kishida decided swiftly after Abe’s slaying to hold a taxpayer-funded funeral for him, but the premier has since faced harsh criticism over the decision, pushing down the approval ratings of his Cabinet.
Due to the principle of the separation of religion and state, the government has decided to hold the ceremony in a non-religious format. It will not ask the general public to mourn the former prime minister.
With the funeral splitting public opinion, some opposition parties will boycott the service. But while executives of the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, will not attend, Yoshihiko Noda, a CDPJ lawmaker who was Abe’s immediate predecessor as prime minister, is planning to participate.
Abe, who died at 67, was prime minister from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020.
Opposition lawmakers have argued that there is no legal basis for staging a state funeral for a former prime minister, while questions have also arisen about how much the event will end up costing.
Funerals for past premiers after Yoshida were mainly held jointly by the government and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which has been in power most of the time since its establishment in 1955. The funeral expenses were shared between them.
Kishida cited Abe’s longevity in office — over eight years in total — as one of the reasons for holding the state funeral, but political experts say his legacy is contentious, especially in light of a series of favoritism allegations and other scandals that came to light when he was in power.
Dubious ties between the Unification Church, a religious group often labeled as a cult, and the LDP, which Abe headed, have also affected the public mood ahead of the funeral.
Abe’s attacker, Tetsuya Yamagami, reportedly said he harbored a grudge against the organization and targeted Abe for his suspected ties to it. In 2021, Abe appeared in a video message aired at an event held by a Unification Church-affiliated group.
Nearly half of LDP lawmakers have admitted to having had some connection with the organization, sparking fears that the Unification Church might have wielded influence in the political arena.
