Japanese voters have cast their votes in a parliamentary election that may give the ruling Liberal Democratic Party a surge of support after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a dominant politician and power broker.
Elections for seats in parliament's less powerful upper house are typically seen as a referendum on the sitting government, and opinion polls before the assassination already pointed to a strong showing for the ruling bloc led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, a protege of Shinzo Abe.
"We just lost Mr Abe. I would like the LDP to win many votes so that they can run the country in a stable manner," said Sakae Fujishiro, a 67-year-old pensioner who cast his vote for the ruling party in Tokyo's eastern Edogawa ward. "The ruling LDP-Komeito coalition was already on course for a solid victory," James Brady of the Teneo consultancy said in a note. "A wave of sympathy votes now could boost the margin of victory."
Meanwhile, the Nara prefectural police office said on Sunday it had seized a motorcycle and a vehicle belonging to the man arrested for the shooting, Tetsuya Yamagami. It might also allow him to revise Japan's pacifist constitution - something even the hawkish Abe was never able to achieve. Reaching 69 seats in the upper house would give the LDP a majority, a threshold that had been seen as a stretch before Mr Abe's killing.Shinzo Abe 1954-2022: The legacy of Japan's longest-serving prime minister
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