Japan mourns as its longest-serving PM Shinzo Abe is laid to rest

euronews.com:

With prayers, flowers and flags draped in black ribbons, Japan on Tuesday said farewell to Shinzo Abe, a polarising figure who dominated politics as the country's longest-serving premier, before being gunned down at a campaign rally last week.

Amid a heavy police presence, men in black suits and black ties joined women in black dresses and pearl necklaces entering central Tokyo's Zojoji temple for the private funeral service. Onlookers lined nearby pavements under grey skies in the oppressive summer heat, and one woman held flowers.

Hundreds had filed into the temple on Monday evening to pay their respects to Abe, who was assassinated aged 67. His killing on Friday by an unemployed man wielding a homemade firearm stunned a nation where both gun crime and political violence are extremely rare.

The ceremony, scheduled to start at 1 pm (5 am CET), was closed to the media and limited to family and close friends. Abe's widow, Akie, was chief mourner.

Following the ceremony, the hearse bearing Abe's body will proceed through downtown Tokyo.

The procession will take in the capital's political heart of Nagatacho, including landmarks such as the parliament building Abe first entered as a young lawmaker in 1993, after the death of his politician father, and the office from which he led the nation in two stints as prime minister, the longer from 2012 to 2020.

From early morning, long lines of people dressed in black, mixed with others in informal clothing with backpacks, formed outside the temple.

Keiko Noumi, a 58-year-old teacher, was one of many who came to offer prayers and flowers to a large photograph of Abe set up inside the temple grounds showing him in a simple white shirt, laughing with his hands on his hips

"There was a sense