The Nara District Court has handed Tetsuya Yamagami, aged 45, a life sentence for assassinating former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022. The ruling on Wednesday meets prosecutors’ demands and ends a trial that split Japanese opinion on religious abuse and punishment.
Yamagami admitted guilt from the outset in October 2025, using a homemade gun to shoot Abe during a Nara campaign event on 8 July 2022. The attack horrified a gun-free nation and elevated scrutiny of Abe, its longest-serving leader.
His lawyers sought a 20-year cap, citing family ruin from his mother’s vast donations—over 100 million yen—to the Unification Church. Initially targeting church figures, Yamagami shifted after Abe’s 2021 church video appearance.
Prosecutors deemed the link to Abe illogical. Akie Abe’s grief filled the court; she said the sorrow of losing her husband will never be relieved. “I just wanted him to stay alive.”
The killing exposed church ties to the Liberal Democratic Party, sparking resignations and a March 2025 court order dissolving its tax-exempt status for coercive practices.
Sociologist Rin Ushiyama from Queen’s University Belfast links public sympathy to broad distrust of groups like the Unification Church. “Yamagami was certainly a ‘victim’ of parental neglect and economic hardship caused by the Unification Church, but this does not explain, let alone justify, his actions,” she said.
The case tests Japan’s handling of religious governance amid the church’s dissolution fight, with opinions split on whether personal woes excuse such violence.