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Tetsuya Yamagami, the man charged with the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, admitted guilt on Tuesday, nearly three years after the daylight shooting captured global attention.
The murder prompted a serious evaluation in a nation not accustomed to gun violence and sparked investigations into suspected connections between influential conservative politicians and a covert organisation, the Unification Church.
“Everything is true,” Yamagami said at a court in the western city of Nara, admitting to the murder of the country’s longest-serving leader in July 2022.
The 45-year-old was escorted into the courtroom by four security personnel. When the judge requested him to provide his name, Yamagami, donning a black T-shirt with his long hair tied back, responded in a barely audible tone.
However, his lawyer said they would challenge specific counts, including breaches of gun control laws due to his alleged use of a homemade firearm.
Yamagami’s trial faced delays, including one instance in 2023 when the discovery of a suspicious item later determined to be harmless led to a last-minute cancellation and the evacuation of the Nara courthouse.
A key topic in the trial was whether mitigating circumstances existed about “religious abuse” during Yamagami’s upbringing, associated with his mother’s fervent allegiance to the Unification Church, as reported by local media.
It is said that Yamagami harboured resentment towards Abe for his perceived association with the Church, founded in South Korea in 1954, whose adherents are commonly referred to as “Moonies,” named after its founder, Sun Myung Moon.
The Church has faced allegations of encouraging neglect among children of its members and financially exploiting them, which it denies.
Yamagami reportedly held a longstanding grievance against the Church for driving his family into bankruptcy after his mother contributed approximately 100 million yen (around $1 million at the time) to demonstrate her faith.
Investigations that followed Abe’s assassination uncovered a series of troubling connections between the Church and numerous conservative politicians within the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which resulted in the resignation of four ministers.
Earlier this year, the Tokyo District Court mandated the dissolution of the Church’s Japanese division, stating it inflicted “unprecedented harm” on society.
Gun-related incidents are so uncommon in Japan that security officials present at the scene initially failed to discern the sound of the first shot, rushing to Abe’s aid too late, according to a police report following the attack.
This incident led lawmakers to enact a new law in 2024, further tightening firearms regulations to thwart the production of homemade weapons.
According to the updated legislation, sharing instructional videos on how to fabricate firearms or distributing information about gun sales on social media may result in fines or a prison sentence of less than one year.
