For Shinzo Abe, a life in politics was destined for him - growing up he watched his maternal grandfather lead Japan as Prime Minister and his father work as a foreign minister.
He made it his political mission to vanquish Japan’s wartime ghosts but fell short of his ultimate goal of restoring his country as a normalised military power.
The influential prime minister worked to revive the economy with his trademark "Abenomics" and rebuild Japan s role on the global stage. His assassination stunned a nation where gun violence is rare.