The assassination of Shinzo Abe suspended regular programs by state-owned NHK and private channels such as Fuji and Asahi, which they began to cover uninterruptedly, like the news channel NTV.
NHK showed several scenes of the assassin, before and after the shooting, but not of the moment when the former prime minister was shot.
At night, a printed version of the Yomiuri Shimbun (above), the country’s largest newspaper, with a conservative bias like Abe, was already on the streets.
Throughout the day, the newspaper’s digital headline had been the report of the attack, with the statement “A man approaching from behind, seven to eight meters, no one stopped… The former prime minister looked back.”
Both the newspaper and its more liberal competitors Asahi and Mainichi Shimbun noted that the police had heard from the assassin that he did not have a “grievance against Abe’s political beliefs”, but against a religious group with which the former prime minister was close. .
The Asahi Shimbun was the only one of the main vehicles, as far as it was possible to follow, that highlighted the history of the attacks in the country, underlining the “repeated terrorist attacks on politicians before the war”, during the Japanese militarist escalation.
FRIEND FROM BRAZIL
Jair Bolsonaro’s message, describing Abe as a friend from Brazil, was reported by the Asahi Shimbun along with that of Narendra Modi from India. The correspondent in São Paulo recalled that the Brazilian “was stabbed” also in the campaign.
