Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is assassinated at a campaign rally

PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
..."The rarity of such attacks has seen Japan develop a culture of relative closeness between public and politician.

Abe, who remained an influential figure in the governing Liberal Democratic Party, was speaking at a campaign rally near a train station in the city of Nara in support of a candidate for the upper house of Parliament in elections scheduled for Sunday.

There tends to be little distance between voters and candidates at campaign events, said Tobias Harris, author of “The Iconoclast: Shinzo Abe and the New Japan,” calling it “one of the great things about Japanese politics.”

“Campaigns are not on TV — they really are in person, out every day interacting with voters at train stations,” he said. “Abe was doing the thing that Japanese politicians do.”