Abe shooter says ‘despair and sense of crisis’ triggered 2022 attack
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A man standing trial for the fatal shooting of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 said he was motivated by “despair and a sense of crisis” over a video message Abe sent the year before to a controversial religious group.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, underwent a second day of questioning at the Nara District Court on Tuesday, detailing a series of events that turned him against the South Korea-based Unification Church, and eventually against the politician he judged was a friend to the group.
In a lay-judge trial that started in late October, Yamagami has recounted his troubled upbringing and the hardships caused by his mother’s longtime devotion to the church, which involved bankrupting the family through excessive donations.
On Tuesday, Yamagami said he had loosely recognized Abe’s connection to the church since 2006, when the politician, then the chief cabinet secretary, sent a congratulatory telegram to the group, now formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
“A senior member of the group’s Nara chapter said at the time that Abe knew the church’s doctrine, and that he was on their side,” Yamagami said.
Since around the 2010s, Yamagami had closely followed news sites and blogs by church followers mentioning some politicians’ relationships with the group, including their attendance at church events.
But it was the 2021 video message by Abe to Universal Peace Federation, a church-affiliated group, that made him feel “despair and a sense of crisis,” as well as the urgency to stop such interactions — even by force, he said.
“My first thought was, at least he had the decency not to show up (in a church video) while he was a sitting prime minister,” he testified.
“Now that he is no longer a prime minister, there’s nothing to stop him from appearing in church videos, and such practices would continue, I thought. Since he served so long as prime minister, I thought this would give the group a stamp of approval in society. … From the point of view of someone victimized by the group, this was extremely upsetting and unacceptable.”
Yamagami, who had long felt vexed by his mother’s devotion to the church, attempted to kill himself in 2005, thinking that, by doing so, he could leave some insurance payouts to his severely ill older brother and to his younger sister.
After his suicide attempt failed, the church agreed to return about half of the ¥100 million the mother had donated over the years, part of which Yamagami received in monthly installments. But in 2015, Yamagami’s brother, who had lost an eye due to a childhood cancer, died by suicide.
His distrust of the Unification Church grew further when church officials started conducting a ritual during a wake for his brother, snubbing his request to stop it and leave.
Yamagami remembers “crossing an emotional threshold” in 2018 when contemplating another suicide. While in conversation with his mother, he learned that she had processed his brother’s suicide positively, thinking that “he lived happily in heaven.”
“When I was feeling guilty for the death of my brother and even plotting my suicide again, my mother was in a completely different state of mind,” he said. “I had a flashback — my previous attempt to leave money (with my own death) and the church’s behavior during my brother’s wake. I found myself yelling at her over the phone like never before, saying ‘You should die!’”
This incident propelled him to harbor a desire to kill senior officials of the Unification Church, including its leader Han Hak-ja, he said. From late 2020, he started making pipe guns and gunpowder with materials he bought online and in hardware stores, referring to overseas videos and video games themed on DIY weapons.
Yamagami changed his target to Abe only days before the attack after having failed to assault church officials due to heavy security, he said.
Content retrieved from: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11/26/japan/crime-legal/yamagami-trial-abe/.
