Cover Image Commentary—Shooting a Shot: The Decisive Moment of Abe Shinzo's and Asanuma Inejirō's Assassinations on Camera

When Abe Shinzo 安倍晋三 (1955 – 2022), Japan’s former prime minister, was shot from a short distance on July 8, 2022, the audience was stunned, shocked, and halted. Abe briefly turned back to where he heard the shots coming from before dropping to the floor. Mere seconds later, the murderer was caught with a homemade gun, his motivation not quite clear. The whole sequence took only a few seconds and was caught on multiple mobile phone cameras used in a mundane way to snap pictures of the local event by the audience who, looking toward Abe from various angles, unintentionally documented the shooting. The clips instantly became evidence of the crime committed, and were soon after posted on social media, broadcast on television, and shared with billions of viewers around the globe. Abe’s assassination was not the first one in Japan’s history to be caught on camera. The first was the killing of Asanuma Inejir 浅沼稲次郎 (1898 –