Politics & Government

CDPJ’s Gemba to attend; LDP’s Murakami to skip Abe’s state funeral

Yomiuri Shimbun file photos
From left : Seiichiro Murakami, Naoto Kan, Koichiro Gemba

The Yomiuri Shimbun

15:22 JST, September 21, 2022

Former Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan said he plans to attend former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s state funeral in an interview with The Yomiuri Shimbun Tuesday.

Gamba said he and Abe won their first House of Representatives seats in the same year in 1993, and that his attendance “fits the general Japanese perspective on life and death.”

On the same day, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan of the CDPJ confirmed he would not be attending the funeral. “The decision for a state funeral was not fully debated in the Diet and is not considered appropriate in my opinion based on past examples,” he tweeted.

Meanwhile, Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Seiichiro Murakami, a former minister for administrative reform, said he would not be attending because he was against the holding of the state funeral.