The initial news, arriving piecemeal, was confusing, almost too shocking to believe: Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe — Japan's longest-running leader — had fallen. Blood was seen on his chest. Gunfire had been heard.
Had the influential lawmaker actually been shot while stumping for a fellow LDP member? How did the shooter acquire a gun in a country that has such strict controls on firearms?
As doctors attended to Abe at a Nara hospital, administering a blood transfusion, details about the assailant trickled in, but the public was still struggling to make sense of the emerging photos and videos, the reports and the rumors.
Just after 5 o'clock, reports emerged that Shinzo Abe had died, at age 67, from wounds to his back, neck and heart.
Here are a few moments from a sad and surreal day that few in Japan are likely to forget.
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Passersby in Shinjuku, Tokyo, view news of the shooting of Shinzo Abe on Friday. | BLOOMBERG
A large video screen shows news broadcast featuring an image of Abe in Beijing on Friday. | AFP-JIJI
A special edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reporting Abe's death is distributed in Tokyo. | REUTERS
Pedestrians in Tokyo watch a news broadcast about the assassination of Abe on Friday. | BLOOMBERG
Artists display a memorial painting of Abe, outside an art school in Mumbai on Friday. | REUTERS
A man prays on Friday evening near Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara where Abe was shot earlier in the day. | AFP-JIJI
A woman prays at the site were Abe was shot while campaigning for the upcoming upper house election. | REUTERS
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