Welcome to take it Happened here a podcast that is not happening this week because we are on vacation, so instead of normal episodes, you are getting this. And this is our immediate reaction to the assassination of Shinzo Abbe, which has turned out to be maybe the most successful modern political assassination, at least, at the very least the most successful modern political assassination that wasn't carried out with
the CIA. Now, one thing to keep in mind is we recorded this episode before it was formerly known that the reason that Abe was killed by the electric blunderbuss was because of his connections to the Unification Church. Next week, actually we are going to be getting more into that side of things. But yeah, have fun with our initial reaction and much rejoicing at one of the most dogshit people who was alive, who is no longer alive. Welcome
to it can happen Here. A podcaster that, for the first time ever, is being recorded on an Earth that I no longer have to share with that fascist rat bastard Chinzhwabe and with with me, with me to celebrate this occasion is Garrison Davis. Hi, Hello, and James, have we actually, have we like introduced you, introduced you yet.
I didn't think so, No, I just pop up talking about three D printed guns and people who hate butterflies.
Yeah, yeah, this is This is truly a dark day for democracy. I'm saddened by the horrible loss of a great leader, a hero to feminism and women, and I guess a hero to those who defend war crimes.
So I guess before we've heard before, before we get into one of the funniest things that has happened in maybe twenty years, James, do you want to like talk about who you are because you are now one of us and I'm really excited about it.
Yeah, I'm one of Yeah, I'm now a podcast. Yeah.
So who I am?
I am a journalist, I guess, and a historian. I wrote a book about the first week of the Spanish Civil War, and my PhD is in the history of international anti fascism, building international anti fascist alliances through physical culture, which is very nerdy. But yeah, I love that stuff with US and British if that had not been made abundantly clear by my accent. And I live in southern California.
Which means this is now. This episode is a Majority Commonwealth episode.
Yeah, that's right, really exciting. We made it.
Yeah, we'll be doing the national anthem in a minute here and we'll all just stand up.
So ex Prime Minister kind of he's not around anymore, is he? No?
He is dead as fuck? So all right we should I get I guess we should explain who shinzo Abe is. Okay, if if you want a really really long account of what the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party is, because they are some of the worst people who've ever existed democratic Yeah,
how can this be? So the very short version of this is that the Liberal Democratic Party is a party that was founded by Nobusuke Kishi, who is one of history's worst war criminals, like personally responsible for enslaving hundreds of thousands of people in China. He's the guy who basically he's the guy who was in charge of the economy of the fascist war machine, like like in Japan World War two. He was the guy who ran like the sort of fascist puppet state called Manchuqua that was
run by Japan after they conquered it. Real war criminal also just like personally raped a like extremely large number of people. I think that like I was almost never discussed when people talk about him.
Yeahs almost like like a shockingly high flight number. Yeah, it's of sex crimes. It's wild.
Yeah, and he's also mean. He's involved with the Japanese military sex slave program, which you will here referred to as comfort women. And I refuse to call the comfort women because that is a fucking horrifying euphemism for again, a program of military sex slavery. Uh. He also was one of the people who signed off on Unit seven thirty one, which was Japan's chemical weapons testing unit where they fucking like purposely invested in infected and tested chemical weapons on prisoners.
Uh.
Yeah, he's one of the worst people ever. And then he got a bunch of CIA backing into backing from the yakuza because the CIA is working with the yakuza on early fifty and she's able basically to force all of the other conservative like people to join his party, and the sort of the merger of the of the Liberal Party, Liberal Party and the Democratic Party is now the Liberal Democratic Party. This is Kishi's party. He founded it, he drags everyone else into it. He does an immense
amount of corruption. He tries to bring fascist m back. He narrowly fails. Shinzo Abe is his grandson. Uh the LDP Liberal Democratic Party, Yeah has Yeah, it sucks. It's like like the way that I've been thinking about, like how do you explain this to people who don't who don't have like a background in like Japanese like war
crime stuff. Is like imagine if like one of Hitler's generals had like survived World War Two and then the CIA made him made him the fucking prime Minister of Germany, and then.
And he got more fascist because people were saying mean things about his grandpa. He's like, oh, I don't like that they're calling him bad names. I'm going to get more fascist now.
So like Abbe, Abbe himself, he he's carried he's been carrying out a lot of the same things that that Kishi was trying to do. Kishi was trying to sort of restore the sort of full fascist power of the police. Abe has been doing a whole bunch of shifts of centralizing power in the executive and expatting the police's power
to just arrest whoever the fuck they want. So one of one of the other things about Japan is that like legally in their constitution, they can't go to war, and like both Kishi and Abbe like this is like they're big fucking things that they want. They want to fully re armed Japan. They want Japan to be able to go to war because they want to do the fucking empire again. And you know, so this is like, yeah,
Abe has been doing that. He also the thing he's probably most famous for in terms of like the reasons people think he's bad because he is he's like just actually a monster. Is he's just like a like unfathomable
degree of war crimes denial, like he pulled. So Japan in the nineties had admitted that they fucking kidnap enslaved like an enormous number of people from of people from Korea, people from China, and I think they also did they did in the Philippines and Indonesia too, although there's less sort of coverage of that, and like turn them into military sex slaves, did things to them that are like a fucking unspeakable And so the Japanese government the nineties
had admitted they did this and apologized for it, and Abe was like, no, fuck that, that's that's wrong. He's also a part of this group called Nipon Kagai, which
is like a fascist group. And okay, so this is this is this is according to a US congressional report, what they believe, quote Japan should be applauded for liberating much of East Asia from western colonial powers, that the nineteen forty six nineteen forty eight Tokyo War crimes tribunals were illegitimate, and that the killings by Japanese troops through the nineteen thirty seven Nanjing massacre were exaggerated or fabricated.
Oh boy. They also openly yeah, yeah, yeah, they also so they're nudging denialists there there, they're sex slave denihilists. They openly call for the restoration of the monarchy and the institution of Shinto as a state religion. Abbe like abi like has continuously said that uh, the sex slaves like did it, We're like did where they're voluntarily does another thing?
But but but but Hillary Clinton just tweeted that was a champion of democracy and a firm believer that no economy, society, or country can achieve its full potential if you leave women behind.
Why you know, to be fair, to be fair, to be fair. Both Abbe and No she did, in fact believe in using women to fuel the economy, just not in that way.
Yeah.
He Also there's there's another thing that so probably the most like famous, most controversial thing was. So there's the shrine called the Yasukuni Shrine, which is is the shrine that's dedicated to soldiers who like died serving the Japanese emperor and in in this so there's this thing called the Book of Souls that has like lists of names, right of just like the people who died, and one thousand and sixty eight of the people who were of the people in that book are people who were convicted
of war crimes. And there are also fourteen Class A war criminals who either died or were executed who are considered martyrs. There and Abbe fucking like visited there and like braid and shit, and this pissed off everyone. This is like, there are lots of people who have gotten mad at me already for celebrating Abbe's death. And my official line on this is, if Abbe didn't want me to celebrate his fucking death, maybe he shouldn't have celebrated
the lives of people who killed my fucking family. So fuck them. Yeah, so he's not a great dude. He is real pack and automatic dude. So the other thing we should mention too before we go into sort of like the details of the shooting is that there is an election. Actually, by by the time this episode drops, I think the election will have happened where there is a real chance that the Liberal Democratic Party is going
to sort of like just fucking sweep it. Because the Liberal Democratic Party immediately starts to blame me the left
for this. There's a whole bunch of, i mean, just absolutely horrifying stuff where they're blaming Korean people who live in uh, live in Japan, which, if you know anything about Japanese history, when that stuff starts happening, like in ninte twenty three after the Canto earthquake, a bunch of people just started blaming Koreans for the whole thing, and they fucking literally exterminated almost the entire Korean population in
several major Japanese cities. And so this stuff is very scary. Uh, it's possible that this is going to set off like an incredible right wing lursy Japanese politics, and there's a chance that this could be the actual thing that like full on triggers Japan like re arming and you know, going back into sort of just being a pure fascist empire. So this is not Yeah, that part is really bad.
The motivation for the assassination is still, at least at time of recording, is still slightly unclear, very unclear. According according to some politicians and news media, we do know the suspect is Hdeo Kajima, so that you can you can infer a little bit based on So yeah, there's there's like French politicians and a Greek news channel who are using pictures of video developer Hideo Kajima and passing them off as the shooting suspect, which is really funny.
Pictures of Kajima like inside like a Russian like communist hat fucking thing, pictures of him wearing a joker shirt and standing in front of a Jakobara picture, and they're using this as proof that it's by a left wing terrorist and it's actually video game developer Kajima's.
So away, like, I guess what we know about the actual shooter. We don't know that much. Is a forty two year old guy who was a a former veteran of the of the the Japanese Self Defense Force. He was. He was a Navy guy, which I guess partially explains why he can shoot a gun. But yeah, the details are really murky. What we've got at time of recording is the Japanese police saying that it wasn't because of a political thing, and that it was because of a group that he was that Abe was a member of.
Who the fuck knows what that means. That can mean any number of things. I'm not going to speculate live on here because I I don't know.
Yeah, but also, it was extremely funny and we should we should talk about the weapon that was This is why.
This is one of the reasons why it's extremely funny and we should.
I'm probably gonna hand this over to James because James is a bit a bit more of an expert in this type of uh di i Y weaponry.
So what great, What the fuck is going off with this homemade gun? Yeah? This ship? Yeah, this ship is fucking this ship. This is crazy.
Yeah, it's extremely funny. It's extremely funny that all these people with fifty thousands followers on Twitter who quote unquote do ocean like immediately label this is a three D printed gun, which it's not.
It does not printed. This gun is being held together with duct tape like that is that that is the kind of weapon that we're dealing with you. This is this is a homemade gun, like held together with fucking duct tape. It is extremely It is like he got blown up by an electric blunderbuss.
It is. Yeah, it's like there could very well be three D printed parts in like around it.
But it is.
But it's not it's not looking it's it's it's not like it's not like an f juicy United or anything. It's it's a weird like electronic pipe duct taped together shot gun.
Yeah, it's I think perhaps if people don't understand, we should like break down how fire around work broadly and then how this one works specifically. Right, So, like, and there's no reason why you should be familiar with this, but like you need something to explode, something to make it explode, and something to go out the end, and
a way to make sure it only goes in one direction. Right, So what this character has done is seemingly it's yeah, it's like a blunderbuss or a musket in that it seems to be like muzzle loaded from the front and I'm looking at it now and it really is just covered in duct tape. I tweeted a picture of it. It's agay. Yeah, this shit is is very old fashioned. He seems to have made his own powder too, like it was very very smoky, which you can do. I'm not going to tell you how to do it, but
it's the thing that is possible. And so essentially from what I'm seeing here, it looks like it's like a piezo electric ignition which then ignites this homemade powder that he had, and then he's put something in a shotgun, means it doesn't have fling right, so it doesn't spin on the projectile. So he's basically got two pipes, a Pizzo electric igniter, some homemade powder, and then he could have put nails in there. He could have put a cast lead ball, anything, bolts.
And this wasn't the only homemade weapon he had. The police raided his house, he had a whole bunch of supplies that looks it looks out of like it looks like it's out of like fallout or something. It is like there was one like Blunderbust that had nine different barrels all duct taped together. It's like exposed wiring, exposed circuit boards, like it's it's like it's extremely janky.
Yeah, it's like I'm not entirely sure that the nine barrel one, the central barrel isn't touched by the by the structural duct tape, and I'm not sure that it wouldn't have moved in one direction or the other.
When he fired it.
Really, yeah, I think that's a there's like a yoga I can't see what he's put something on that. He's made a butt stock with that one, so like he can shoulder it, I guess. And I don't know if that's like a piece of tire or what. But yeah, yeah, this is not a precision weapon wooden boards.
There's like some type of like reflect it looks almost like a smartphone's attached to some of the wiring or there's something reflective screen that looks like it's like like an electronic control box, which could could just be like an old smartphone or something.
Yeah, I wondered if he could, because that's what you use for for an improvised explosive device, right, it's a it's a cell phone to actuate it, So it could be maybe he had a plan to just put it near where are they was going to be and then call.
It and then have it.
That would be well, I mean, no, this is a this is a much better It has the stock, so I'm guessing I'm guessing being to hold it because otherwise there's no reason to put the buttstock there.
Yeah, but who knows, Like this guy's operating on a different level.
We have no way to what he was thinking, at least at least at least not at the moment.
What he was thinking was I want to kill shinzo Abbe with my pipes and planks.
He did it. He's exactly whatever you think of him. This man did successfully kill shinzo Abbey with a gun held together by duct tape. It's yeah, pretty impressive, Like I think the everything about this is kind of impressive, is a he so so he there were there were two barrels on it that each fired, and he he managed to hit him from like a pretty good distance away. Like we don't have there's there's no video of that directly, well at least not that's out yet that like directly
shows the shooter. But we have a lot of video because Abbe is giving a speech, right, so we have a bunch of video of like filming Abbe and it's and because of where it is coming from off screen, like that was a pretty good distance. And as best I can tell, he only hit Abe. I don't I don't think. I haven't seen any reports of anyone else getting hit, So I yeah, impressive.
That is Actually that is actually kind of slightly surprising.
Yeah, there was. There was no one else hit. It's like he just the guy he was. That is that is genuinely pretty rare and assassinated.
But like like basically like a homemade blunderbust cannon was like surprisingly surprisingly controlled, it accurate.
Yeah, I've just found a picture of it with the Cyberpunk twenty twenty seventy seven logo underneath it, which is pretty great.
Rules, yeah, it does.
Rule. Yeah, he did manage to cause it kind of just put like a large, massive lead ball in it, I guess, and yeah whatever, because I don't think it.
I don't think it was one thing. So one of the one thing I can say about the the that you guess to me know about the EMMO was that like there there were like a bunch of like they're they're one of the bunch of the reports about the injuries that he suffered. We're talking about like he got hit in the back, but there were also holes in his neck, So my guess.
Yeah, there was there was a lot of there's a lot of blood from a lot of different places.
Yeah, I guess it wasn't one thing then, But I don't know. Everything that's kind of interesting about this is like the extent to which well, okay, so like he was like ab was like very clearly dead. Like people people had like reported him at the scene as having no vitals and they were like, yeah, his heart stopped and they had like opt out him to like what Tokyo, Yeah, Tokyo.
But the Japanese government did a very good job of making sure the press had like no information, and so there was just like there was like many many many hours where they were like pretending that he wasn't dead and like wouldn't confirm that he was dead. And he's like this, this man is clearly dead as shit, Like he has gotten blown up by a blunderbuss like in the back. His neck's gone. He's like, I mean, he's
not not gone, like his neck. His neck's been shot, his heart has stopped, and they just sort of like keep it there for for a pretty impressively long wi time. And that's the other thing. We know very little about what happened and why the press has been keeping the government's been keeping a very tight lid on information about the shooting so far. Are Yeah, I guess we want to pivot into the gun control side of this, sure, I guess.
Okay, So the I mean like there was a mayor shot a few years ago, yeah.
Seven a Yaki is a guy shot the mayor of Nagasaki, so like, and like there's a there's been a lot of people, like journalists, people who are like supposedly japan experts who are like, oh, this is really rare in Japanese culture. Is like, no, it's not. People get assassinated, like like the Japan has a very low rate of gun violence, but oh that gun violence. The number of
politicians got to get assassinated is like unbelievably high. And you know, I mean like that there have been there have been a lot of I mean like Abe's like grandfather Wasishi like got stabbed right after we left office, like and he only didn't die because the guy who stabbed him claimed that he wasn't trying to kill him, he was just stabbing him, which is one of the weirdest things I've had heard. I don't know, I I suspect some of yakaza bullshit was going on there, but yeah,
like I Japan has assassinations. It there's there's this weird thing where people think Japan is this place that's like like no violence happens, like it's a completely orderly society. It's like all this all this like weird stuff fas Japan. Yeah, it's like like this, this is a country like this, This is a country where people like like even in like the seventies and like if you through the eighties, people would charge like RB convoys with sticks and like
fight them. Like this is a country that like like people they have a sort of ape shit switch that.
Just like yeah, they have their fair share of like cults that do acts of violence like this, fair share of political streamists that do violence like this, and like everywhere else in like like everywhere else in the world, stuff just happens sometimes. Yeah.
Yeah, I think it is interesting that like Japan has extremely strict gun control, right, like licenses tests, background checks, prohibitions of most people learning and carrying. But like, it's kind of interesting that this is more of a like a First Amendment question, I guess in American terms, right, Like, if you're on the internet enough, I'm sure it looks like this person has just googled how to make gun
and like this is what came up. And so I think it's kind of fascinating that that that this person has been like aside from their possible connection to any criminal networks, but like, I know the Yakiza were selling guns to people in me and mar pretty recently, so they have access to this pace.
Yeah, And like and the mayor who got whacked by yakrazy guy, Like if the Orkisa is going to do like I don't know if the is going to do a killing like they they like they they have access to weapon.
They would use a real gun the Arctic together, Okay, So like probably, but also so like I wouldn't completely rule it out because I wouldn't rule out them just finding some guy and doing this thing the FBI does and it's like, hey, you're gonna go do an attack now, Like it wouldn't It wouldn't surprise me if that, if if they did that, I was like a plusile an ideally thing, but like we don't know.
I still don't think we can rule out that HEADA. Kajima is the mastermind behind this.
And it's all I know right is it's it's just a ployee to plug his next game.
Just have to add a few like nonsense names to all the people involved, like blunderbustmen, and then it's just it's it's easy, easy.
But yeah, it's fascinating that this person was seemingly like maybe had other plans or had tried several other like craft firearms, and settled on this one. But yeah, they have access to a lot of pipes, that's for sure. Did you guys see the yakas a guy who was arms dealing to me and mar No no oh for fucking wild So he was like extensively stung by the Feds.
So this guy, he was Yakaza, he.
Was part of it like an ongoing sting operation for like several years where he was selling like basically like trading guns for drugs, trading guns to buy drugs. He was selling to a couple of groups in Me and MA. He was two groups in like the Tamil region and a couple of other people and he uh, he was at least one of the people he thought was a
buyer was actually a FED. And they've captured all of these amazing conversations where they call the guns like cake and ice cream and like one of the one of the things in the in the criminal could play. It's a picture of him just with like a law like an anti tank weapon and he's just like if you get like the V sign and he's wearing these like
yellow aviators and a leather jacket. Like the way they arrested him was at a steakhouse I think either in New York or New Jersey, but like they they lured him into a steakhouse meeting and then he got busted by the FED. But yeah, these guys were trafficking like serious stuff like surface to M missiles and things. They have access to some pretty heavy equipment.
Yeah, that's a that's a pretty old like the OAS has been sort of like I don't know how you describe it, like a kind of like pera arm of the Japanese state in a lot of ways for a very very long time, Like there are there have been like Yakasa people with basically special forces training. They they at one point like kidnapped and killed the Empress of Korea as part of like a thing to like justify starting a war. So they are they're very well hooked up.
I don't know, It's still unclear to me because like that's the obviously everything again, like they're the the LDP has a lot of Yakuza connections because kind of okay, partially kind of everything is connections, but a partially also because the Deacosa were like a sort of founding like political block of the LDP in the first place. So who knows, Like LDP people have gotten like attacked by people before. It could be that, it could be something else. We sort of just don't know yet.
Yeah, there's nothing identifying this guy, Like I'm just looking at a picture of him and there's nothing particularly sort of identifying his clothing or anything like that.
Yeah, I guess, I guess that's the death of Shinzo Hobby extremely funny.
Critical support to Hideo Kajima and all of the other freedom fighters.
Well, I guess I guess we could talk a little bit about the international response to this.
Yeah, because people have no idea.
What's ethnic. Yeah, I mean, like so like all the Americans are sorry of like are doing the all American liberals that sort of doing like, oh my god, he was a good guy. It's like, no, it wasn't. This guy was a monster. Okay. I I will say this, Both the Chinese and the Korean embassies are being surprisingly diplomatic about it, as in, no one they haven't no one has actively insulted him yet social media wise.
Politically, that's a good move for like inter country relationship.
Yeah, but like I okay, like Japanese relationships with Korea. South Korea are well and North Korea are really bad, and a lot of the reason why they're really bad is specifically because of Changzawabe and because of all of his bullshit. But they're not gonna like a rubb it. Well, I mean, it's not clear to me that they wouldn't have done this if this had happened in like the
two thousand tens, like instink, these guys really hate each other. Yeah, there's been some sort of like people don't know, people trying to do a Taiwan angle on this because Abbey is like a Taiwan supporter, But I don't. I don't think there's actually that much. People want this to have much more geopolitical like significance than it probably actually will. Yeah, yeah, well it's in the meantime. Yeah, fascist is dead. That's always funny.
It happened, Uh yeah, it did in fact happen here. Well, it happened over there.
But you know what I mean, it could happen here.
Sta statistically, we are we are about to do based on Yeah, you wouldn't need.
To resort to deductate model in America.
No, with the amount of firearms here, it is kind of a little it is sometimes a little surprising how little stuff like this actually happens. There's obviously a lot of work that goes into like preventing it, but but still sometimes it's kind of it's kind of shocking.
Yeah, yeah, like I think, I think. I think if you look at the last twenty years, I think more Japanese politicians have been assassinated American politicians. Like I'm trying, I'm trying to think of an American politician.
Because weird, because they is a lot more American politicians and a lot of guns.
They they they killed, they killed when they went after Gabby Giffords. They killed someone, I think, but yeah, I don't. I'm trying to think of anyone else other than.
That, not in recent memory. The guy who shot Reagan is now touring.
Yeah, but he didn't even kill him. That's not even assassination. That's just an assassination attempt, like a very botched to one.
Yeah, yeah, crossover between John Hinckley and Hideo Kajima's possible.
That will be the game.
I'm just gonna keep referring to the suspect as Hideo Kajima.
It's worth noting that, like he did have armed guards, so we're armed. God's present that you can see their guns in health serious is they take down the person who shot him, but they they were not on their A game that day.
Yeah, that you can see in the video. There's like one of the guys is I think, trying to like get a bulletproof briefcase in between Abe and the guy. It just doesn't work. It just it just doesn't. It just fails completely.
Its one job they Yeah, like the operation meat Shield, they weren't just on they weren't just not on their A game.
They completely failed at their own Yeah, it's not like the guy even tried to run away. He just like stood there and got arrested. Yeah. Yeah, he did not really put much of it, did not put up much of a fight.
Yeah yeah he No, he didn't. I think, Yeah, he he went down pretty fast. I guess he went with like this smaller game maybe to conceal it, because it looks like he was pretty close.
Yeah, that is that is very likely. Well, a very dark day for democracy, dark day for feminism, as Hillary Clinton said, Uh anyway.
Yeah, Luckily they have ram and Manuel as a bastard to pan to come to them and as.
Difficult the the l d P are the only people on earth who does who actually deserve Rama Manual. So look, if you, if you, if if you didn't want to have to deal with Rama Manual, you should have taken all that money. This is this is this is now their curse.
Well, I'm sure we'll talk more about these types of home made weapons and all that kind of stuff in the future, because it is it is interesting, and you know places where places where like actual firearms are hard are harder to get. We're seeing more and more ship like this popping up. Yeah, yeah, and that that will definitely be worth be worth getting into along with three D printed weapons. All right, anything else to add or does that?
Does it? Does that?
Do it?
Yeah? I think that's a wrap. All right.
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