NARA – As Wednesday marked four years since the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in the city of Nara, about 1,000 visitors paid their respects to him at a floral tribute stand at the site of the shooting.
The stand was set up in front of Kintetsu Railway’s Yamato-Saidaiji Station, where Abe was fatally shot during a stump speech for the 2022 election for the House of Councilors, the upper chamber of parliament.
“I still vividly remember seeing Abe falling to the ground after the sound of the second shot,” Yoshio Ogita, 78, a Nara prefectural assembly member belonging to Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party, said during his visit to pay a floral tribute. Ogita was the secretary-general of the LDP’s prefectural chapter at the time and was standing several meters from Abe at the time of the shooting.