Family and friends of Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, have attended his funeral at a Buddhist temple in Tokyo while members of the public paid their respects outside, four days after he was shot dead while making a campaign speech.
Mourners in black suits and dresses gathered at Zojoji temple for the private funeral service, while police officers monitored onlookers, some holding bunches of flowers, who had braved the early afternoon heat.
Hundreds of people had filed into the temple the previous evening to pay their respects to Abe, who was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister – a conservative who inspired unwavering loyalty among his supporters and loathing among his critics.
The ceremony was closed to the media and limited to family and close friends, with his widow, Akie, as chief mourner.
After the service, a hearse carrying Abe’s body was due to make its way through central Tokyo, including the political nerve centre of Nagatacho, the Diet building he first entered in 1993 and the office where he spent a turbulent year as prime minister from 2006 and then almost eight years after his political comeback in 2012.
Keiko Noumi, a teacher, was among the mourners who had come to offer prayers and flowers in front of a large photograph of Abe set up inside the temple grounds, showing him in a white shirt, laughing, with his hands on his hips.
“There was a sense of security when he was in charge of the country,” she said. “I really supported him, so this is very unfortunate.”
Yuko Takehisa, an assistant nurse who lives near Tokyo, described Abe’s death as “despicable”.
“More could have been done to prevent it,” she said, complaining that “no one reported” the suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, to police, despite reports he had test fired a handmade gun before the attack.
Satoshi Ninoyu, the chairman of the National Public Safety Commission, said there would be a full review of the security arrangements on the day of Abe’s assassination. “We take this incident extremely seriously,” he was quoted by the Nikkei newspaper as saying.
Other mourners queued in front of the headquarters of the ruling Liberal Democratic party (LDP), which Abe led for almost a decade, to leave offerings at a makeshift shrine while party employees handed out cups of cold tea.
The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, offered his condolences during a brief stop in Tokyo on Monday, and the US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, and the vice-president of Taiwan, William Lai, were among the overseas dignitaries who attended Abe’s wake on Monday.
The Kyodo news agency said almost 2,000 messages of condolence had arrived from around the world.
In comments posted on the Élysée’s Twitter account, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, said: “I remember all our meetings and work together, especially during my visit [to Japan] in 2019 … I’ve lost a friend. He served his country with great courage, and audacity.”
Public memorials, possibly involving foreign political leaders, are expected to be held at a later date, but no details have been announced.
