TOKYO, Japan
With flowers, prayers and a 19-gun salute, Japan honoured slain former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Tuesday at the first state funeral for a former premier in 55 years – a ceremony that has become as controversial as he was in life.
The ceremony started at 2:00
p.m. (0500 GMT), with Abe’s ashes carried into the Nippon Budokan Hall in
central Tokyo by his widow, Akie, to music from a military band and the booms
of the honour-guard salute, which echoed inside the hall.
Thousands of mourners flooded
to designated spots near the venue from early morning to pay their last
respects.
Within hours, about 10,000
people had laid flowers, television showed, with more waiting in three-hour
long queues.
“I know it’s divisive and
there are a lot of people against this, but there were so many people lined up
to offer flowers,” said Yoshiko Kojima, a 63-year-old Tokyo housewife.
“I felt that now the funeral
is actually taking place, many people have come out to pray for him.”
Abe’s killing at a July 8
campaign rally set off a flood of revelations about ties between lawmakers in
the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) he once ran and the Unification
Church, which critics call a cult, sparking a backlash against current premier
Fumio Kishida.
With his support ratings dragged to their lowest ever by the controversy, Kishida has apologised and vowed to cut party ties to the church.
But opposition to honouring
Abe with a state funeral, the first such event since 1967, has persisted, fed
by an $11.5-million price tag to be borne by the state at a time of economic
pain for ordinary citizens.
In one part of downtown Tokyo,
protesters waved signs and chanted “No state funeral” to the tune of a guitar.
Inside the Budokan, better
known as a concert venue, a large portrait of Abe draped with black ribbon hung
over a bank of green, white and yellow flowers. In the centre was a Japanese
flag made of flowers.
Nearby, a wall of photos
showed Abe strolling with G7 leaders, holding hands with children and visiting
disaster areas.
A moment of silence was
followed by a retrospective of Abe’s political life and speeches by leading
ruling party figures, including Kishida and Yoshihide Suga, Abe’s successor and
Kishida’s predecessor as prime minister.
In remarks representing Abe’s
friends, Suga noted that many people in their 20s and 30s had showed up to
offer flowers.
“You always said you wanted to
make Japan better, that you wanted young people to have hope and pride,” Suga
said, his voice trembling.
Japan’s longest-serving prime
minister was a divisive figure who was dogged by scandals.
An unapologetic nationalist,
Abe pushed the country toward a muscular defence posture that many now see as
prescient amid growing concern about China, but others criticised as too
hawkish.
About 4,300 people were
expected at the funeral ceremony itself along with at least 48 current or
former government figures, including U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Some 20,000 police were deployed,
nearby roads were closed and even some schools shut as Japan sought to avoid
the security blunders that led to Abe’s shooting with a homemade gun by a
suspect who, police say, accused the Unification Church of impoverishing his
family.
The state funeral for Abe, who
received a private funeral days after his assassination, was the first for an
ex-premier since one in 1967 for former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida.
Kishida has explained the
decision as a way of honouring Abe’s achievements, as well as standing up for
democracy, but ordinary Japanese remain divided. Only 30% of respondents in a
recent poll by TV Asahi agreed with hosting the funeral, against 54% opposed.
Kishida also cited the chance
to conduct diplomacy as a reason for the funeral, and spent Monday night and
Tuesday morning in meetings with leaders.
Even without the recent
revelations about the Unification Church, it would be hard to imagine any
circumstances where a majority of Japanese would favour honouring Abe with a
state funeral, said Tobias Harris, a senior fellow at the Center for American
Progress and the author of a biography of the former premier.
“He was someone who almost
welcomed and invited controversy and saw his mission as overturning a
longstanding consensus or set of consensuses” about how Japan was run, Harris
said.
Many Japanese were “attached
to the postwar regime that he wanted to overturn”, Harris said. - Reuters
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