There were protests on Tuesday in Japan’s capital Tokyo at the state funeral of assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The Japanese government had ignored critics and insisted that the late Abe deserved the rare ceremony and military display.

Under heavy security and surrounded by angry protesters, some 4,300 mourners from Japan and abroad took part in the ceremony at the Nippon Budokan hall in Tokyo.

Among them were U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former German president Christian Wulff.

Soldiers in white received the urn at the hall and placed it on a pedestal while the military band played the national anthem.

Mourners sat in front of a huge portrait of the former prime minister.

In his speech, current Prime Minister Fumio Kishida praised Mr Abe as a politician with a clear vision for the development of Japan and the world.

Mr Kishida lamented that his predecessor should have lived much longer.

Mr Abe was Japan’s longest serving head of government in the post-war period, known at home for his nationalist agenda and his involvement in nepotism scandals.

Majority in polls rejected the state ceremony for Mr Abe and said that the current head of government who also belongs to Mr Abe’s conservative party, had no right to give him such a state honour.

Some opposition parties boycotted the state funeral and referenced Japan’s pre-war imperialist era, when state mourning served to fuel nationalism.

Mr Abe’s opponents also recalled the former prime minister’s attempts to whitewash Japan’s wartime atrocities and change the pacifist post-war constitution.

Since the end of the war, there has been only one state funeral for Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida in 1967, a ceremony that was also criticised at the time.

The government however stressed that the state funeral was not intended to force anybody to mourn.

(dpa/NAN)