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Abe Shinzo: A retrospective - by Noah Smith - Noahpinion

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All the ways he defied my expectations.

As everyone by now knows, former Japanese prime minister Abe Shinzo was assassinated yesterday while giving a campaign speech in the city of Nara. The assassin, Yamagami Tetsuya, said that he killed Abe because of his supposed ties to an as-yet-unnamed religious group, whose leader Yamagami also reportedly wanted to kill. (Update: The group is the Unification Church, also known as the Moonies.) Assassination is not unheard-of in Japan — the mayor of Nagasaki was assassinated in 2007, and a Diet member was slain in 2002, both probably by members of the mafia. But ideologically motivated…

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