Japanese and foreign dignitaries gathered Tuesday to pay their respects at the funeral service of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was gunned down Friday, following a wake with an estimated 2,500 attendees the night before.
Crowds, assembled since morning, lined the streets ahead of the service at Tokyo’s Zojoji Temple. They then looked on as a black hearse carrying Abe’s body, with his wife, Akie, in the passenger seat, headed toward Japan’s political center of Nagatacho — home of the Liberal Democratic Party's headquarters, the parliamentary building and the Prime Minister’s Office — where Abe spent much of his long and eventful career.
Against the backdrop of the iconic Tokyo Tower, many of the assembled mourners carried flowers, some of them tearful. Those who lined up before the funeral laid their flowers at the temple. Others headed to the LDP headquarters, where a temporary memorial site had also been set up.