Security Breakdown of Japan

Before marking the first anniversary of assassination of Shinzo Abe, a very important politician was attacked with fire arms in Japan. It was made against the sitting Prime Minister this time. A young man threw an explosive device at Prime Minister Fumio Kishida who visited the city of Wakayama on Saturday to give a speech in an election campaign of the supplementary elections of House of Representatives. Although Kishida could managed to escape the blast before the device exploded, the government he was leading revealed its crucial vulnerability to terrorist attack.

It was about half an hour before noon when Kishida tried to start his speech toward the people in Wakayama, and then a young man named Ryuji Kimura, living in Hyogo prefecture, threw a silver metal pipe into the place. A policeman beside Kishida immediately noticed the device and evacuated the prime minister from the spot. According to the news reports, the device exploded with a large sound about fifty seconds after it was plunged into the ground. The suspect was tackled and captured by two fishermen in the cloud right after he threw the device and the policemen arrested him.


A big question is why the man possessing explosive devices could approach to the prime minister so close. Embracing a great regret of failing in protecting Abe last summer, the Japanese police organization should have thoroughly reviewed its system for guarding very important persons. Last fall, National Police Agency decided to check every VIP security plan made by local police organization. The assault against Kishida occurred while the new security posture was laid. At the beginning of a series of local gubernatorial elections last month, the head of NPA instructed local police organizations not to miss any single loophole in security system. Consecutive failures, exposing political leaders to severe threats, will invite firm criticisms from the political parties in Japan.


From the bitter defeat in World War II, the Japanese realized precious value of parliamentary democracy, trying to put politics as close to the people as possible. In national or local elections, the candidates exposed themselves to the voters in town meetings and sold their policies. It has been a routine of any election for political parties in Japan to dispatch their leaders to support affiliated candidates. The prime minister has always been the most effective speaker in any campaign rally, surrounded by unspecified number of people. Strong criticisms spread when local police displaced a heckler from the audience of Abe’s election speech in Sapporo in 2019. After Kishida’s incident, the police organizations are likely to build stricter security in coming elections.


Two assaults, one of which caused death, against politically influential leaders indicates deteriorated quality of Japanese democracy. When someone is frustrated with current politics, the person is supposed to go to the polling station and vote against the leading party. But the suspects who exercised violence against Abe or Kishida refused to abide by such rules of democracy. Although it is not clear whether the suspect Kimura had any reason like Tetsuya Yamagami, who shot Abe with deep regret of his circumstances, expressing anger with violence is too short-sighted, naïve and embarrassing as a democratic citizen. It depends on further police investigation whether Kimura was inspired by Yamagami’s assault, which had been praised in a part of cyber space as a heroic act against political power. Those incidents may anyway indicate serious deterioration of Japanese democracy.


In terms of “security,” the government of Japan is in a mess. When North Korea launched an intercontinental ballistic missile for a test, which dropped to Japan Sea, a warning system called J Alert falsely predicted that the missile could be landed on the southern part of Hokkaido and instructed the residents to evacuate, harming credibility of the system. The Ground Self-Defense Force missed its ten personnel including the commander of a division after the helicopter they aboard disappeared during inspection flight in Okinawa region. The force found the wreckage and some bodies at bottom of the sea, leaving the cause of the incident unspecified. There is a skepticism in Japan whether the government can safely host G7 summit in Hiroshima next month as the chair country.

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