Japan Holds Funeral For Assassinated Ex-Leader Shinzo Abe

Japan is holding a rare and controversial state funeral for assassinated former prime minister Shinzo Abe, its longest-serving modern leader and one of the most divisive.

A tense Tokyo was under maximum security, with angry protests opposing the funeral planned around the capital and nation. Hours before the ceremony began, dozens of people carrying bouquets queued at public flower-laying stands at nearby Kudanzaka Park.

Thousands of uniformed police mobilized around the Budokan hall, where the funeral is being held, and at major train stations. Roads around the venue are closed throughout the day, and coin lockers at main stations were sealed for security.

The funeral which was attended by US vice president Kamala Harris, Japan’s crown prince Akishino and other foreign and Japanese dignitaries, began with Mr. Abe’s widow, Akie Abe, in a black formal kimono, walking slowly behind Mr. Kishida into the funeral venue, carrying the urn containing his ashes in a wooden box wrapped in purple cloth with gold stripes.

Soldiers in white uniforms took Mr. Abe’s ashes and placed them on a pedestal filled with white and yellow chrysanthemums and decorations.

Attendants stood while a military band played the Kimigayo national anthem, then observed a moment of silence before a video praising Mr. Abe’s tenure.

Footage included his 2006 parliamentary speech vowing to build a “beautiful Japan” and his speech at the US Congress in 2015. It also included his visits to disaster-hit northern Japan after the March 2011 tsunami, and his 2016 Super Mario impersonation in Rio de Janeiro to promote the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Mr. Kishida, in his 12-minute eulogy, praised Mr. Abe as a politician with a clear vision for post-war economic growth and development of Japan and the world and promoted the concept of a “free and open Indo-Pacific” as a counter to China’s rise.

Mr. Kishida, as he looked up a large photo of a smiling Mr. Abe, said that as a fellow politician elected in the same year in 1993, Mr. Abe’s loss came too soon.

“You were a person who should have lived much longer,” Mr. Kishida said. “I had a firm belief that you were to contribute as a compass to show the future direction of Japan and the rest of the world for 10 or 20 more years.”

Opponents of the state-sponsored funeral, which has its roots in pre-war imperial ceremonies, say taxpayers’ money should be spent on more meaningful causes, such as addressing widening economic disparities caused by Mr. Abe’s policies.

Prime minister Fumio Kishida has been criticized for forcing through the costly event to honour his mentor, who was assassinated in July.

There has also been a widening controversy about Mr. Abe’s and the governing party’s decades-long close ties with the ultra-conservative Unification Church, accused of raking in huge donations by brainwashing adherents.

Mr. Abe’s alleged assassin reportedly told police he killed the politician because of his links to the church; he said his mother ruined his life by giving away the family’s money to the church.

Mr. Kishida says the longest-serving leader in Japan’s modern political history deserves a state funeral. The government also maintains that the ceremony is not meant to force anyone to honour Mr. Abe. Most of the nation’s 47 prefectural governments, however, plan to fly national flags at half-staff and observe a moment of silence.

Opponents say Mr. Kishida’s one-sided decision, which was made without parliamentary approval, was undemocratic, and a reminder of how pre-war imperialist governments used state funerals to fan nationalism. The pre-war funeral law was abolished after the Second World War. The only post-war state funeral for a political leader, for Shigeru Yoshida in 1967, also faced similar criticism.

“Spending our valuable tax money on a state funeral with no legal basis is an act that tramples on the constitution,” organizer Takakage Fujita said at a protest on Monday.

About 1.7 billion yen is needed for the venue, security, transportation, and accommodation for the guests, the government said.

A group of lawyers has filed several lawsuits in courts around the country to try to stop the funeral. An elderly man last week set himself on fire near the prime minister’s office in an apparent protest of the funeral.

About 4,300 people, including Japanese lawmakers and foreign and local dignitaries, are attending the funeral.

Mr. Abe was cremated in July after a private funeral at a Tokyo temple days after he was assassinated while giving a campaign speech on a street in Nara, a city in western Japan.