This is the Guardian.

Today, how the assassination of Shinzo Abe lifted the lid on one of Japan's open secrets?

The Guardian

Justin McCurry covers Japan for the Guardian.

And back in July in Tokyo, he went to cover the funeral of the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

So, around lunchtime, which I think is when I heard the service was due to begin, I hopped on my bicycle and cycled over.

I was quite surprised by what I found.

There was a special table or area that had been set up for people to lay flowers and say silent prayers.

There was a huge blown up portrait of a smiling Shinzo Abe located nearby where people could pay their respects.

A few days before, Abe, Japan's longest serving Prime Minister, had been shot and killed while giving a speech.

Now, at that point, the atmosphere was one of grief and disbelief. Obviously, Japan has a very, very low rate of gun crime.

So, for Abe to have been gunned down in broad daylight just two days before upper-health elections, just came as a huge shock to the system.

I think that the sense was that once Japan had got over that shock and had perhaps found out more about the assailant and his motives and all the rest of it, that this story would just go down as a very tragic event in post-war Japanese politics.

But of course, that wasn't the case.

For the past few months, Japanese politics has been in meltdown, not just from the killing of a former Prime Minister, but from what that killing revealed.

The extraordinary links between some of Japan's most powerful people and a controversial church that's been accused of exploiting its most vulnerable followers, building them out of millions of dollars.

It's an open secret that had never really been talked about until the assassination of Abe made it impossible to ignore.

From the Guardian, a Michael Saffey, today in focus, how the killing of Shinzo Abe uncovered secrets that have shaken Japan.

Justin, how do you remember the day in July this year when Shinzo Abe was killed?

Why was sitting at my desk at home and then newsflashes came up on Twitter on the Japanese wire services?

Breaking news tonight out of Japan, the former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe rushed to a hospital after a possible shooting, that according to NHK.

At first, as is often the case with these kind of incidents, we weren't quite sure what was happening.

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