There is little question that the man who the former prime minister of Japan was killed Shinzo Abe will be convicted in 2022 if the court gives its verdict – Tetsuya Yamagami himself pleaded guilty to the crime at the opening of the trial last year.
The 45-year-old is scheduled to be sentenced on Wednesday but what punishment he deserves has divided public opinion in Japan. While many see Yamagami as a cold-blooded killer, others sympathize with his troubled upbringing.
Prosecutors demanded life imprisonment for the “grave act” of shooting Abe dead. The former PM was a big figure in public life in Japan, where there is virtually no gun crime – and the country was shocked by his murder.
Pleading for mercy, Yamagami’s defense team said he was a victim of “religious abuse”. His mother’s devotion to the Unification Church bankrupted the family, and Yamagami hated Abe after realizing the former leader’s relationship with the controversial church.
Abe’s shocking death while giving a speech in broad daylight prompted Unification Church investigation and its questionable practices, including soliciting financially damaging donations from its followers.
The case also exposed the links of politicians from Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and resulted in the resignation of several cabinet ministers.
Journalist Eito Suzuki, who covered all but one of Yamagami’s court hearings, said Yamagami and his family seemed “overwhelmed with despair” throughout the trial.
Yamagami “revealed a sense of world weariness and resignation”, recounted Suzuki, who had begun watching the Unification Church before Abe’s shocking assassination.
“Everything is true. There is no doubt that I did it,” Yamagami solemnly said on the first day of his trial in October 2025. Armed with a homemade gun assembled using two metal pipes and duct tape, he fired two shots at Abe at a political campaign event in the western city of Nara on 8 July 2022.
The assassination of Japan’s best-known public figure at the time – Abe remains the longest-serving PM in Japanese history – sent shockwaves around the world.
Calling for a prison term of no more than 20 years, Yamagami’s lawyers argued that he was a victim of “religious abuse”. He was angry with the church because his mother had donated to it his late father’s life insurance and other assets, worth 100 million yen (S$828,750), the court heard.
Yamagami voiced his grievance against Abe after seeing his video message at a church-related event in 2021, but said he first planned the attack on church executives, not Abe.
Suzuki recalls Abe’s widow Akie being incredulous when Yamagami said the former leader was not his target. His expression “remains vividly etched in my mind”, says Suzuki.
“It gives a sense of shock, as she asks: Is my husband just a tool used to solve a grudge against the religious organization? That’s all?”
In an emotional statement read out in court, Akie Abe said the grief over the loss of her husband was “inconsolable”.
“I just want him to stay alive,” she said.
Founded in South Korea, the Unification Church entered Japan in the 1960s and cultivated relationships with politicians to improve its followers, researchers said.
While not a member, Abe, like other Japanese politicians, occasionally appears at church-related events. His grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, also a former PM, is said to be close to the group because of its anti-communist stance.
In March last year, a court in Tokyo revoked the status of the church as a religious corporation, ruling that it forces its followers to buy expensive goods by exploiting fears about their spiritual well-being.
The church also became a controversy for conducting mass wedding ceremonies involving thousands of couples.
Yamagami’s sister, who appeared as a defense witness during his trial, gave a tearful testimony of the “terrible conditions he and his siblings endured” because of their mother’s deep involvement in the church, Suzuki recalled.
“It was a very emotional moment. Almost everyone in the public gallery seemed to be crying,” he said.
But prosecutors argued there was “a leap of logic” in why Yamagami directed his anger at Abe’s church. During the trial, the judges also raised questions suggesting that they had difficulty understanding this aspect of his defense.
Observers, too, are divided on whether Yamagami’s personal tragedies justify a reduced punishment for his actions.
“It is difficult to break the prosecution’s case that Abe did not directly harm Yamagami or his family,” Suzuki said.
But he believes Yamagami’s case illustrates how “victims of social problems are driven to commit serious crimes”.
“We have to break this chain, we have to find out why he committed the crime,” Suzuki said.
Rin Ushiyama, a sociologist at Queen’s University Belfast, said sympathy for Yamagami was largely rooted in Japan’s “widespread distrust and antipathy towards controversial religions such as the Unification Church”.
“Yamagami was a ‘victim’ of parental neglect and economic hardship caused by the (Unification Church), but this does not explain, let alone justify, his (actions),” Ushiyama said.