TOKYO: With prayers, flowers and flags draped in black ribbons, Japan on Tuesday said farewell to Shinzo Abe, a polarising figure who dominated politics as the country’s longest-serving premier, before being gunned down at a campaign rally last week.

Crowds packed pavements lined with a heavy police presence as the hearse carrying Abe, who died at age 67, departed from a central Tokyo temple on a procession through the city.

With nearly a dozen helicopters circling overhead, people bowed deeply, their hands clasped in prayer, as the hearse passed in a procession carried live on broadcaster NHK. Others clapped, cheered or waved.

“Thank you very much for your work for our country,” one man repeatedly shouted.

Hundreds had filed into the temple where Abe’s funeral was held on Monday evening and Tuesday morning, prior to the private ceremony, to pay their respects. His killing on Friday by an unemployed man wielding a homemade gun stunned a nation where both gun crime and political violence are extremely rare.

The funeral procession passed through the capital’s political heart of Nagatacho, where hundreds had lined up in front of the parliament building Abe first entered as a young lawmaker in 1993, after the death of his politician father.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and a group of cabinet ministers waited quietly in front of the office from which Abe, Japan’s youngest prime minister when he first took office, led the nation for two stints, the longest from 2012 to 2020, when he resigned due to health problems.

As the hearse slowly passed, Kishida bowed his head, a set of Buddhist rosary beads around his clasped hands. Abe’s widow, Akie, bowed back from the front seat of the hearse.

China slams Taiwan over funeral trip

China on Tuesday accused Taiwan of “political manipulation” after its Vice President William Lai attended former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s funeral — Taipei’s highest-ranking official visit to Japan in decades.“After the former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo unexpectedly passed away, Taiwan authorities seized it as an opportunity for political manipulation,” said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told reporters at a routine briefing.

“Taiwan is a part of China, there is no so-called Vice President.” The Chinese government had already made “representations” to Japanese officials at its embassy in Beijing as well as in Tokyo, Wang added. Taiwanese officials remained tight-lipped about the visit, likely to avoid further antagonising Beijing.

But Taiwanese media reported that Lai made the trip on the orders of President Tsai Ing-wen, in what one ruling party lawmaker called a “diplomatic breakthrough”.

While Japan does not formally recognise Taiwan, relations between the two have warmed in recent years, with Tokyo donating several batches of Covid vaccines to the island and becoming more outspoken about China’s growing influence in the region.

Japanese officials have also sought to downplay the visit, with foreign minister Yoshimasa Hayashi saying Tuesday that Lai had attended the funeral “as a private individual”.

“There has been no change to our country’s basic policy to keep our relationship with Taiwan as a non-governmental, working relationship,” Hayashi told reporters.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2022