[3] Working as a contract photojournalist for Tokyo's AFP News,[2] Nagai was accustomed to traveling to dangerous places in the Middle East.

[4] From 1997 until his death, Nagai took assignments in Afghanistan, Cambodia, the Palestinian territories, and Iraq, taking photographs that captured the essence of war.

[6] The protests originally began when the government raised the price of fuel, but grew into mass demonstrations in the tens of thousands, with Buddhist monks leading pro-democracy marches in the streets of Yangon.

However, video footage obtained by Japanese television appears to show a Burmese soldier shoving Nagai to the ground and shooting him at point-blank range.

Judging from the patch, the soldier responsible is believed to be from one of the Light Infantry Divisions (possibly LID 66) in charge of crowd control in Yangon at the time of protests.

[13][14] Adrees Latif's photograph, depicting Nagai sprawled on the pavement before his death, won the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2008.

[8] Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda bemoaned Nagai's death as "extremely unfortunate" and Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka Machimura offered his prayers and condolences.

[9] On September 28, Masahiko Kōmura lodged a protest over the killing of Nagai when he met with Myanmar's Foreign Minister Nyan Win at the United Nations Headquarters.

[16] Although Nyan Win officially apologized, an October 13 article locally published in the government-owned Mirror newspaper offered a different view of the events.

It emphasized that the event occurred at the time of martial law being imposed and the soldiers could not differentiate between a Burmese citizen and a Japanese because of the resemblance in Asian looks.