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NEWS: Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Passes Away at 67

Abe was a fine Prime Minister Twice and served our country with great dignity skill and energy and helped revitalize our country and economy. He has deep commitment to the best in both government and life and was a fine man in all ways. We will mourn him and honour him and always remember his service to us all. thank you for kind words posted here.

The man who killed him was targeting another person who was not there, and is a very sad and evil man who Is beyond belief. Life has many challenges. And each of us has a time to be here. We are very glad Abe was here with us for as long as he was.

And who is the other person that the killer meant to target? This is the first we're hearing of it and counters official news reports.

There's a misunderstanding spreading around due to the wording of a few articles that made it sound like the shooter went after Abe accidentally while targeting another religious leader. This is false. He knew who Abe was and, unable to go after the person he wanted to go after, he went after Abe instead, believing Abe was somehow involved with the organization. The religious group was leaked by Japanese media and is now being reported in reliable news outlets (Unification Church, a shinkyou), so we know despite Abe's many scandals, this particular conspiracy theory isn't well-evidence. The shooter says he was desperate because his mother fell into the cult and went bankrupt and destroyed their family.

I hope the organization gets exposed for their quackery and its members arrested.

This is pretty shocking, but let's not try to whitewash the guy. His stump speeches recently were him lamenting that he didn't achieve his goals during his time as PM, which included wanting to amend Japan's stance of pacifism in the constitution and repealing the 1993 apology by the Japanese government of its war crimes. He was a war crimes denialist, a historical revisionist, cozied up to ultranationalists, deteriorated Japan's relationship with South Korea, and smeared the press and minorities.

He was a bad person. He did not deserve to be murdered, but his legacy deserves to be scrutinized.

There seems to be some confusion about ANN's policy on discussion of people's legacy in these threads. In particular because these policies changed somewhat a few months ago.

- Christopher Macdonald