Japan will pay around 1.7 billion yen (12.1 million euros) for the state funeral of its former prime minister Shinzo Abe who was assassinated in July, a hefty addition that risks fueling local controversy over the well-being based on this tribute.
The Japanese government had already announced a cost of nearly 250 million yen for the ceremony itself and warned that the final bill would be higher because of the costs of security and reception of many foreign dignitaries. Representatives from more than 190 countries and territories are expected to attend the event, including about 50 heads of state and other distinguished foreign guests, Japanese government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno said on Tuesday. Security costs were thus estimated at 800 million yen and those for receiving foreign dignitaries at 600 million yen, he said.
Hostile to public funding
Very quickly after the assassination of Shinzo Abe on July 8 during an election rally in Nara (western Japan), Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced that he wanted to organize a state funeral for him, the date of which was set for September 27 in Tokyo. However, a tribute of this rank for a former prime minister has been extremely rare in Japan since the post-war period, the precedent dating back to 1967. 2012-2020) and by his intense international activity, the results of his domestic policy are very controversial in Japan and his mandates have been tainted by numerous political and financial scandals.
According to a poll published Monday by the conservative daily Yomiuri, 56% of those polled were against the state funeral. Some citizens are rather hostile to the public funding of this ceremony, while others are opposed to it because they believe it amounts to forcing the entire population to glorify Shinzo Abe, a divisive figure on the Japanese nationalist right. His alleged assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, explained after his arrest that he had targeted the former prime minister for his supposed links with the Unification Church, also known as “moon sect“.
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The suspect’s mother is said to have made large donations to this religious organization in the past, leading her family to ruin. The popularity of Fumio Kishida’s government melted away this summer after cascading revelations about the links between many of his party’s lawmakers and the Unification Church and the controversy over the state funeral for Shinzo Abe.