Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has died after being shot in the street as he delivered a campaign speech.
The attack, in western Japan, has stunned the nation, which has some of the world’s strictest gun control laws.
Mr Abe, 67, who was the country’s longest-serving leader when he resigned in 2020, collapsed bleeding and was airlifted to a nearby hospital in Nara, although he was not breathing and his heart had stopped.
He was later pronounced dead after receiving massive blood transfusions, officials said.
Nara Medical University emergency department chief Hidetada Fukushima said Mr Abe suffered major damage to his heart, along with two neck wounds that damaged an artery.
He never regained his vital signs, Mr Fukushima said.
Police at the scene of the shooting in Nara arrested Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, a former member of Japan’s navy, on suspicion of murder.
Police said he used a gun that was obviously homemade — about 40cm long — and they confiscated similar weapons and his personal computer when they raided his nearby one-room apartment.
The force said Yamagami was responding calmly to questions and had admitted to attacking Mr Abe, telling investigators he had plotted to kill him because he believed rumours about the former leader’s connection to a certain organisation that police did not identify.
Video from broadcaster NHK showed Mr Abe standing and giving a speech outside a railway station in Nara ahead of Sunday’s parliamentary election.
As he raised his fist to make a point, two gunshots rang out and he collapsed holding his chest, his shirt smeared with blood as security guards ran towards him.
Guards then leapt on to the gunman, who was face down on the pavement.
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his Cabinet ministers hastily returned to Tokyo from campaign events around the country after the shooting, which he called “dastardly and barbaric”.
He said the election, which chooses members for Japan’s less-powerful upper house of parliament, will be held as planned.
“I use the harshest words to condemn (the act),” Mr Kishida said, struggling to control his emotions.
He said the government planned to review the security situation, but said Mr Abe had the highest protection.
Even though he was out of office, Mr Abe was still highly influential in the governing Liberal Democratic Party and headed its largest faction, Seiwakai.
Opposition leaders condemned the attack as a challenge to Japan’s democracy.
In Tokyo, people stopped on the street to grab extra editions of newspapers or watch TV coverage of the shooting.
Flowers were placed near the scene of the killing.
When he resigned as prime minister, Mr Abe said he had a recurrence of the ulcerative colitis he had had since he was a teenager.
He told reporters at the time it was difficult to leave many of his goals unfinished, especially his failure to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted years ago by North Korea, a territorial dispute with Russia, and a revision of Japan’s war-renouncing constitution.
That last goal made him a divisive figure.
His ultra-nationalism riled the Koreas and China, and his push to create what he saw as a more normal defence posture angered many Japanese.
Mr Abe failed to achieve his cherished goal of formally rewriting the US-drafted pacifist constitution because of poor public support.
Loyalists said that his legacy was a stronger US-Japan relationship that was meant to bolster Japan’s defence capability.
But Mr Abe made enemies by forcing his defence goals and other contentious issues through parliament, despite strong public opposition.
Mr Abe was groomed to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather, former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi.
His political rhetoric often focused on making Japan a “normal” and “beautiful” nation with a stronger military and bigger role in international affairs.
Tributes to Mr Abe poured in from world leaders, with many expressing shock and sorrow.
US President Joe Biden praised him for “his vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific will endure. Above all, he cared deeply about the Japanese people and dedicated his life to their service”.
Mr Biden, who is dealing with a summer of mass shootings in the US, said “gun violence always leaves a deep scar on the communities that are affected by it”.
Japan is particularly known for its strict gun laws.
With a population of 125 million, it had only 10 gun-related criminal cases last year, resulting in one death and four injuries, according to police.
Eight of those cases were gang-related.
Tokyo had no gun incidents, injuries or deaths in the same year, although 61 guns were seized.
Mr Abe was proud of his work to strengthen Japan’s security alliance with the US and shepherding the first visit by a serving US president to the atomic-bombed city of Hiroshima.
He also helped Tokyo gain the right to host the 2020 Olympics by pledging that a disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant was “under control” when it was not.
Mr Abe became Japan’s youngest prime minister in 2006, aged 52, but his overly nationalistic first stint abruptly ended a year later, also because of his health.
The end of Mr Abe’s scandal-laden first stint as prime minister was the beginning of six years of annual leadership change, remembered as an era of “revolving door” politics that lacked stability and long-term policies.
When he returned to office in 2012, Mr Abe vowed to revitalise the nation and get its economy out of its deflationary doldrums with his “Abenomics” formula, which combined fiscal stimulus, monetary easing and structural reforms.
He won six national elections and built a rock-solid grip on power, bolstering Japan’s defence role and capability and its security alliance with the US.
He also stepped up patriotic education at schools and raised Japan’s international profile.
