now for a look at the situation from japan and in the broader picture what the shooting of shinzo
abe could mean for the country we're joined now by jeffrey kingston professor of asian studies at
temple university japan professor kingston thanks so much for agreeing to talk about this developing
story yeah it's just uh an awful shock it is it is innate is in grief um officially um they're saying
the former prime minister is in cardiac arrest um but that usually means the worst has happened
okay well um could you talk a little bit more about that that insight you're giving us into
the language that's being used in terms of cardiac arrest what that means from
in terms of whether he's succumbed to his injuries perhaps
it appears so that they say he's had heart failure so i think you know he has died from his wounds
okay right uh no official word on that if that's the case professor when would the
reports uh start to change the language start to change
um i imagine either later tonight or to early tomorrow um you know i this is a lot for everybody
to digest um you know i've been living here since 1987 and this is one of the most unbelievable
shocking events um you have to go back 30 years to the mayor of nagasaki being
shot by a gangster for his comments implicating the emperor in the outbreak of world war ii um
so you know this doesn't happen at all in japan um you know i was in the center of shibuya
you know when this came down and um you know you could tell the crowd everybody was um
you know feeling the the grief and the pain people were watching the the news reports um
so you know uh abe was a polarizing figure but he was a political giant in japan
he served as prime minister for eight years uh led the ruling ldp party back from the abyss and
he put his conservative stamp on japanese politics and he had a fairly you know strong support rates
through much of his tenure so i think that a lot of people evaluated his performance highly
but you know you stay in power for eight years you're going to have your detractors
we don't know much about the attacker yet and exactly what his motive was
right um i think you laid out his legacy pretty uh clearly there and about the suspect you say
we don't know much is without speculating too much is there any um word out there about affiliations
or anything like that possibly uh it's too early to speculate you see things on twitter but i i'd
rather not uh you know repeat those um you know he was with the you know maritime self-defense forces
uh abe uh was a strong advocate of revising japan's pacifist constitution and that was
very controversial uh he also was an advocate of revising japan's shared history with asia which uh
created trouble relations in the region and um you know the abe administration had
a fair share of scandals and many of his signature policies were not as popular as he was
the current prime minister kishida was his foreign minister for many years
when he ran to become the president of the party last autumn he and other candidates were quite
negative about the legacy of abenomics and said it polarized society created
you know exacerbated disparities um and didn't really have a lasting uh impact on growth so
you know even within his own party there are questions about the legacy
but on the day of his death i think people are feeling grief and shock this is something that
just you can't really imagine happening in japan i recall when john kennedy was assassinated
and walking home from school and you just saw everybody crying on the streets there was this
collective grief you're not seeing something like that in japan but i think you know people here are
you know more um emotionally restrained perhaps than americans but i think people feel it deeply
well grief in japan ahead of elections this weekend that are crucial to the conservative
uh party that that prime minister abe led um could you speak to that uh what how this could
impact the election well i mean i think that this the ldp was already expected to do quite
well in the upper house elections and this will probably generate a strong sympathy vote
so that prime minister kishida's political position will be strengthened and you know i think
he honors the legacy of abe he is moving forward with abe's desire to revise the constitution and
also boost military spending and strengthen japan's international security alliances
so in a sense you could say that kishida will have a strength in hand to move forward
on that agenda in the coming year and i think the upper house elections will go very well
for the ruling party well shock and grief around the world fair to say uh professor thank you so
much for sharing your time uh out of this very busy day and uh very sad day thank you thank you