Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was busy on Sept. 26 greeting senior officials from overseas countries who flew to Japan to attend a funeral that a majority of surveyed Japanese say should be canceled.

The state funeral for slain former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will be held on Sept. 27 at Nippon Budokan Hall in the capital’s Chiyoda Ward. The cost for the event, covered entirely by taxpayers’ money, is estimated at 1.66 billion yen ($11.26 million).

Kishida is scheduled to hold more than 30 talks with foreign dignitaries between Sept. 26 and Sept. 28 at the State Guest House in Tokyo’s Minato Ward.

On the afternoon of Sept. 26, he was expected to meet senior officials from nine nations and one organization, including Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.

Kishida has said one merit of staging the state funeral is that it will provide Japanese leaders with an opportunity to engage in diplomatic talks with a large number of foreign officials.

Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi, for example, held talks with his El Salvadorean counterpart, Alexandra Hill Tinoco, on the morning of Sept. 26.

But such meetings will likely be fairly brief, raising doubts that any breakthroughs or other tangible results can be achieved.

About 4,300 people will attend the state funeral, including around 700 foreign dignitaries representing 218 countries, regions and international organizations, according to the government.

But none of the sitting leaders of Group of Seven countries will show up.

On Sept. 24, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the only G-7 leader expected to attend the funeral, said he would cancel the trip, citing the need to respond to damages caused by Hurricane Fiona.

Outside the G-7, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Australia’s new prime minister, Anthony Albanese, are scheduled to attend.

China is expected to send Wan Gang, vice chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body.

From Russia, Mikhail Shvydkoy, special representative of the Russian president for international cultural cooperation, will attend the funeral.

Abe was gunned down in Nara during campaigning on July 8 for the Upper House election. Six days later, Kishida announced his decision to hold the state funeral for Abe.

It will be only the second state funeral for a former prime minister in Japan since the end of World War II. The first was held for former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, the architect of postwar Japan, in 1967.

Experts have pointed out from the beginning that the government lacks a solid legal basis for holding any state funeral. And critics have questioned whether Abe’s policies, which often divided the nation, are deserving of such an accolade.

Adding to the criticism are reports about Abe’s close relations with the Unification Church, a religious group known for pressuring its followers to make excessive donations.

The suspected killer of Abe was from a family that went bankrupt through the hefty donations paid by his mother, a church follower, and he resented Abe’s ties with the church.

Kishida has repeatedly cited Abe’s record-long tenure as prime minister as well as his work in diplomacy to justify holding the state funeral.

All opinion polls by major news organizations, however, showed that opponents of Abe’s state funeral outnumbered supporters.

Kishida appeared at a special Diet session on Sept. 8 to explain his view about the funeral, but his words failed to reverse the increasing opposition.

An Asahi Shimbun telephone survey on Sept. 10-11, for example, found that 56 percent of voters were against the state funeral, up 6 points from the previous survey on Aug. 27-28.

20,000 OFFICERS DEPLOYED

The National Police Agency said on Sept. 26 that up to around 20,000 police officers will be mobilized to ensure security of the state funeral and foreign dignitaries.

Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department will deploy 17,500 officers, and the rest will be sent from other regions.

The 20,000-strong force will be larger than the 18,000-member team put in place for the Quad summit of Japan, the United States, Australia and India in Tokyo in May, and will be around 3,000 shy of the security arrangement for Emperor Naruhito’s ascension ceremony in 2019.