TOKYO — The shooting sent shudders through low-crime, orderly Japan: A prominent politician was killed by a man emerging from a crowd, wielding a homemade firearm so roughly constructed it was wrapped in tape.
The 40-centimeter-long (16-inch) weapon used to kill former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Friday as he campaigned for his ruling party in western Japan, looked crude, more like a propellant made of pipes taped together and filled with explosives.
A raid of the suspect’s home, a one-room apartment in Nara, turned up several such guns, police said. Unlike standard weapons, homemade guns are practically impossible to trace, making an investigation difficult.
Firearms are rarely used in Japan, where most attacks involve stabbings or dousing a place with gasoline and setting it ablaze, or running haywire on the street in a vehicle.
Strict gun control laws likely forced the attacker to make his own weapon. Tetsuya Yamagami, who was arrested on the spot, was a former member of Japan’s navy and knew how to handle and assemble weapons.
Crime experts say instructions on how to make guns are floating around on the internet and guns can be made with a 3D printer.
Some analysts characterized the attack on Abe as “lone-wolf terrorism.” In such cases, the perpetrator plots and acts alone, with the solitary nature of the crime also making it difficult to detect in advance.
The motive for Abe’s assassination remains unclear. Police said Yamagami told investigators he acted because of Abe’s rumored connection to an organization he resented but had no problem with the former leader’s political views.
Japan has seen attacks on politicians in the past. In 1960, Abe’s grandfather, then-Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, was stabbed but survived. In 1975, when then-Prime Minister Takeo Miki was assaulted at the funeral for former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, Abe’s great-uncle, Japan set up a security team modeled after the American Secret Service.