People in Tokyo watch TV news reporting Japan's former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot on Friday. Photo: Internet Source

Police tackled and arrested the suspected gunman at the scene of an attack that shocked many in Japan, which is one of the world's safest nations and has some of the strictest gun control laws anywhere.

"It is barbaric and malicious and it cannot be tolerated," current Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida told the media.

Abe, 67, served as prime minister in 2006 and 2007, and again from 2012 to 2020, when he suddenly resigned citing health issues. Despite leaving office, he remained influential within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and continued to be a force on Japan's political landscape.

He was in the city of Nara, in the southwest, campaigning for a parliamentary election when he was shot from behind by a man wielding what appears in photos to be a homemade gun.

Footage of the attack shows Abe standing, holding a microphone and speaking, when two booming shots ring out.

Nara Medical University emergency department chief Hidetada Fukushima said Abe suffered major damage to his heart in addition to two neck wounds that damaged an artery, causing extensive bleeding.

Japan's public broadcaster, NHK, reported that the suspect served in Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years in the 2000s.