Tetsuya Yamagami

• 1. Family Tragedy And Church Involvement

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  Tetsuya Yamagami was born on the 10th of September 1980 in Mie Prefecture to affluent parents who ran a local construction business. His family moved to Higashiosaka, but their financial stability crumbled after his mother joined the Unification Church in August 1991. She donated more than 100 million yen to the organization and declared bankruptcy in 2002 when Yamagami was 21 years old. The church had advised her that making monetary donations would contribute to the salvation of her family following the death of her husband and the serious illness of her eldest son. Her husband died by suicide in 1984 when Yamagami was four years old due to alcoholic addiction and depression. Her older brother, who suffered from lymphoma and lost eyesight in one eye, could not afford medical treatment and died of suicide in 2015. This loss greatly impacted Yamagami according to his uncle Tōichirō. Text messages sent by Yamagami to his mother in 2012 while she traveled in South Korea revealed strong resentment toward her. He wrote statements such as It is absurd that you pretend to be a normal parent and Maybe I should kill you and take the insurance money. After the assassination, his mother stayed for about a month at the home of Yamagami's paternal uncle before moving alone to Osaka with assistance from the church.

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• 2. Military Service And Personal Struggles

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  Yamagami joined the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force in August 2002 and was posted to Kure Naval Base assigned to the destroyer. In February 2005, he attempted suicide in hope of his siblings receiving his life insurance payout after learning that his mother neglected his brother to attend Unification Church events in South Korea. An investigation report written by the JMSDF stated that his life had been ruined by the Unification Church and that his brother and sister were in need. He moved to the General Affairs Department at the JMSDF 1st Service School in Etajima but was discharged in August 2005 as a quartermaster with the rank of leading seaman. After leaving the navy, Yamagami worked for at least 10 different companies over 17 years until the assassination. He quit swiftly for personal reasons usually after about half a year of employment. The longest job he remained at lasted about one and a half years. In October 2020, he started working as a forklift operator in Kyoto Prefecture for a manufacturer operating in the Kansai region. There he was described as quiet. He quit in May 2022 after claiming that he was feeling unwell. After that, Yamagami briefly worked under another temporary staffing firm in Osaka Prefecture until he resigned in early June 2022.

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• 3. The Assassination Event

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  On the 8th of July 2022, Tetsuya Yamagami appeared at the northern exit of Yamato-Saidaiji Station in Nara at 11:30 am where Shinzo Abe was delivering a campaign speech for Kei Satō. Abe was positioned inside a traffic island of the crossroad facing away from the train station. Yamagami slowly approached Abe unnoticed by his bodyguards. He then discharged a homemade shotgun seemingly not hitting anyone. Upon hearing the noise, Abe turned his head to look behind him. Yamagami took a few steps forward and fired a second round. Abe immediately displayed signs of severe pain and collapsed to the ground. His bodyguards rushed towards Yamagami and restrained him on the ground. Yamagami was arrested at the scene of the assassination on suspicion of attempted murder by the Nara Prefectural Police. The charge was upgraded to murder after Abe was pronounced dead. He was transferred to the Nara Nishi Police Station upon his arrest. He was described as being calm and having made no attempts to flee.

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• 4. Weapon Fabrication And Planning

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  Yamagami allegedly built the weapon used in the shooting using materials he bought starting in spring 2021. He learned how to make guns and bombs from watching YouTube videos. Websites about bomb-making and weapons manufacturing were discovered in his browsing history. The gun used in the shooting was fired by a battery igniting the gunpowder with an electric current. To dry his homemade gunpowder, Yamagami rented an apartment between March and September 2021. He later rented a garage in Nara from November 2021 to February 2022 for the same purpose costing him 15,000 yen per month. Police discovered seven homemade firearms similar to that weapon two of them unfinished as well as possible explosive devices during a search of his home following his arrest. Yamagami stated that he tested his improvised firearms by firing them at multiple wooden boards with an aluminium-covered tray for storing dry gunpowder that he produced from fertilizer which were later recovered from his vehicle. Plastic-based shotgun shells were also seized by police. Yamagami also claimed that he tested his firearms in the mountains in Nara Prefecture. At the time of the assassination, he was 600,000 yen in debt with only 200,000 yen in his savings account.

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• 5. Criminal Trial And Sentencing

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  Yamagami's criminal trial began in Nara on the 28th of October 2025. Before any formal charges were brought against him, he was held at the Osaka Detention House and had been psychiatrically evaluated to determine if he was mentally competent to be indicted. The evaluation was initially set to end on the 29th of November but was extended by a request from prosecutors to the 6th of February 2023. After an appeal by lawyers for Yamagami, the extension was reduced and set to end on the 10th of January. On the 24th of December 2022, the Nara District Prosecutor's Office determined that Yamagami was competent enough to stand trial on the murder charge based on factors including the capability of making the firearm allegedly used in the assassination. Three days later, Yamagami was formally charged with Abe's murder. On the 21st of January 2026, Yamagami was sentenced to life imprisonment. He admitted to killing Abe during the first hearing and his lawyer asked for any punishment to be automatically reduced because Yamagami's handmade gun did not fall under the criteria of the Firearms and Swords Control Act. While psychiatric assessment of a criminal suspect in Japan usually takes about three months, Yamagami's nearly half-year-long assessment is considered unusual.

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• 6. Public Sympathy And Social Impact

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  Since Yamagami's apprehension, he has been sympathized with and hailed as an icon domestically and abroad. T-shirts printed with Yamagami's photograph during Abe's assassination were being sold on Chinese online marketplaces and were worn by some Chinese people in public events. When Yamagami's Twitter account noted in his letter for Yonemoto was leaked to the public on the 17th of July 2022, his Twitter followers surged from zero to over 45,000 within one day. His Twitter account received an increase in likes and retweets until the account was suspended on the 19th of July. On the 10th of September 2022, during Yamagami's 42nd birthday, he received messages of celebration and admiration on social media with the hashtag Tetsuya Yamagami birthday. Japanese people cosplaying Yamagami's appearance during Abe's assassination were spotted at events like the rally against Abe's state funeral. Even before Yamagami was being officially tried, online petition website Change.org had received over 8,700 signatures as of the 8th of October 2022 which pleaded for reducing Yamagami's sentence. The sponsors of the petition denied the accusation from opponents that they approved of murder but sympathized with Yamagami because his suffering as a shūkyō nisei was not an isolated case.

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