How Shinzo Abe’s Assassination Brought the Moonies Back Into the Limelight
The trial lasted six weeks. In November, Yamagami’s mother and sister testified behind a screen to protect their identities. His mother apologized to Abe’s family (she noted that his ghost was in the courtroom) and to her son. “She spoke directly to Yamagami, using the nickname Tet-chan,” Suzuki recalled. She remained a believer. “She emphasized that everything that had happened to them – even donating so much to push them into poverty – was her fault, not the fault of the Church. »
It was an impulse I recognized even among some former Unificationists. I had recently interviewed S., a fifty-nine-year-old man who had gone into debt to make donations and was now seeking damages. (He later received eighty-eight thousand dollars.) Several years had passed since S. and his wife had renounced their faith, but he felt a residual loyalty. When Abe was killed, “my first instinct was to worry about the Church,” he told me. “But after I started learning more about Yamagami and his motivations for shooting Prime Minister Abe, I started to reconsider my decision. I started trying to understand.”
Yamagami’s sister’s testimony was, judging by the number of crying observers, the emotional high point of the trial. She described how her mother became cold and unrecognizable, showing up at her office and begging for money. “This person was no longer my mother but a believer wearing my mother’s face,” she said. “I couldn’t refuse her.” Devil, the YouTuber, told me that after the trial, it was “like checking the answers to a test. A constant stream of ‘Oh, yeah, it was just like that.’ »
Yamagami spoke in his own defense. His voice was low; he often stared into space. At one point he said, “I’m not a bad person.” » But the situation with his mother and the Church seemed inevitable to him. He was overcome by a deep depression. “I shouldn’t have lived this long,” he said. Abe had become a vessel for Yamagami’s despair.
Midway through the trial, there was little in the record about the LDP’s ties to the Church. “We haven’t talked enough about Why “It was Abe,” Suzuki told me. Without it, he feared Yamagami would be sentenced to death, an outcome Suzuki clearly did not want. He sent a letter to Yamagami’s lawyers, listing chronological evidence of Abe’s ties to the Moonies and offering himself as a witness. “Abe helped perpetuate the crimes of the Unification Church,” he wrote. “This is not a case of random murder.” I asked Suzuki if he had confused the roles of journalist and lawyer. He said no; he was simply making sure the facts were known.
A key fact in the trial dates back to 2021, when Abe, who had just finished his last term as prime minister, publicly supported the Moonists. The Universal Peace Federation, the Church-affiliated charity, was hosting a virtual gathering and Hak Ja Han solicited video greetings from world leaders. The organization paid Donald Trump, also freshly out of office, half a million dollars for a speech in which he called Han “a great person for his incredible work for peace.” Abe thanked Han for his “tireless efforts to resolve conflicts in the world” and praised the Church’s “emphasis on family values.” Yamagami had seen Abe’s message. Although brief and superficial, it grew into a fixed idea and convinced him that Abe should be killed.
In mid-December, the Nara court heard final arguments. The prosecution, to the surprise of many observers, requested a life sentence for Yamagami instead of the death penalty. Perhaps they gauged the tilt of public opinion; perhaps time had lessened the shock of Abe’s death. There was none of the bombastic retaliation one might expect in a high-profile murder trial. Prosecutors concluded their case by trying to undermine Abe’s ties to the Church: what mattered was the reality of the assassination, they said. The defense team called the Church’s influence a societal tragedy and argued for a prison sentence of less than twenty years. A lawyer read a statement on behalf of Akie Abe, who herself attended the trial only once. Her husband’s sudden death, she wrote, “was so overwhelming that my mind went blank, and for a long time I felt like I was in a dream.” Yamagami kept his eyes downcast. The judge gave him the opportunity to speak, but he hesitated.
The court was adjourned for a month. A week before the verdict and sentence were handed down, Suzuki went to the Osaka detention center to request a visit to Yamagami. He had tried before and been turned away. This time, Yamagami agreed to see him. Suzuki was escorted in an elevator to a private room. A guard brought in Yamagami, whose hair had grown to his chest. Suzuki felt ill-prepared. “I had a relationship with him, but I didn’t know what he thought of me during those three years, or if he thought of me at all,” he said. They talked about the trial and how it had been covered in the press. Suzuki recalled that at one point, Yamagami told him, “What I did put you in the spotlight.” He encouraged Suzuki to continue his investigations. “He said, ‘We’re both fighting against this bigger thing, the Church,’” Suzuki told me. Although Suzuki was careful to condemn the killing, he seemed delighted by Yamagami. “I saw the real side of him,” he said. “He’s a nice man. It made me think even more about how such a nice man could do something terrible.”
Last Wednesday, the chief judge announced Yamagami’s sentence: life in prison. He acknowledged the defendant’s “unfortunate” upbringing, but rejected the argument that it had driven him to kill. At a news conference after the hearing, one juror called Yamagami “a very intelligent person” who “lived a tragic life as a second-generation believer.” Without it, he said, “he would have been very successful.” ♦
