Samurai and song: Shinzo Abe at Budokan

The discordant notes over Abe's funeral do not detract from the work of Japan's most consequential post-war leader

- Ravi Velloor

Perhaps the most poignant moment at Mr Shinzo Abe's deeply dignified funeral came when the giant screen overhead showed him playing a soft tune on the piano, finishing with a gaze of deep sensitivity towards the audience.

Mr Abe, who was Japan's longest-serving post-war prime minister when he retired abruptly in August 2020, released the video a few months before he was assassinated. The tune, Hana wa Saku, or Flowers Will Bloom, was made to mourn those lost in the 2011 earthquake in Tohoku.

The politician now described as Japan's most consequential post-World War II leader generally kept his musical instincts away from the spotlight.

But it was there. The celebrated Yoshiki Hayashi, leader of rock group X Japan and perhaps his nation's best-known contemporary figure in his genre, said he came to know Mr Abe through music, working to promote tourism to Japan.

Mr Abe was also best man at the wedding in 1986 of Tsutomu Kaneko and the singer Agnes Chan. It happened that Mr Abe was her fan, too.

It is not often that you get to witness two big funerals within a period of 10 days, both of which drew the great and the good from around the world.

In Mr Abe's globally noted, domestically controversial send-off, the world witnessed an austere ceremony of sobriety and sombreness. That contrasted with O Queen Elizabeth II's funeral which was a last hurrah of the British Raj and a celebration of a long career as England's titular head.

Whatever the Japanese might feel about the 1.66 billion yen (S$16.6 million) spent to hold a state funeral for their departed leader only those who do not understand the Japanese mind will call the debate churlish - it was entirely appropriate that Mr Abe's formal farewell to the world should have taken place at the Nippon Budokan.