What did Former Prime Minister Abe Told Deputy Prime Minister Aso Before the Shooting Happens?

“Prime Minister Kishida looked me in the eye and said unequivocally, ‘We must move forward with constitutional reform.’ We must firmly support the Kishida administration.”

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso over the phone not long ago.

‘Mr. Abe has been in good health recently,’ Aso said. He had been in poor health for a while, but once the election period began, he was getting better. When he climbed on top of his campaign car to make a speech on the street, he was energetic and his steps were light. We also said to him, ‘Mr. Abe is an election campaigner as expected,’ and he naturally becomes energetic when it comes to elections.”

At 11:30 a.m. on August 8, former Prime Minister Abe was struck by a bullet just after he began a street speech at a rotary near Yamato Saidaiji Station on the Kintetsu Railway line in Nara Prefecture in support of his campaign for the upper house of the Diet. He was surrounded by several hundred audience. The arrested man was among them. The suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, is a resident of Nara City. He was wearing a gray polo shirt, brown chinos, and black shoes.

“Former Prime Minister Abe went into cardiopulmonary arrest in the ambulance. The gun he was carrying was handmade and of large caliber, and the first bullet may have missed. At this point, we have not been able to confirm the ideological background of the suspect,” said a prefectural police official.

Mrs. Akie also went to the site immediately after receiving an urgent report from her office.