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Abe's assassination shocks Japan, where gun control is strict and shootings are rare

On the other hand, the National Police Agency said that 33048 people killed themselves in 1999, an increase of 185 on the record level set the previous year.

As well as the economic slump, cultural factors are also believed to have contributed to Japan's large number of suicides. In the two main Japanese religions Shintoism and Buddhism there is no moral prohibition on self killing, and many literary works extol it as a way to atone for misdeeds.

The fact that life assurance policies in Japan do not exclude payouts in the event of suicide, as is often the case in Britain and western Europe, may also distort the picture somewhat.