Former co-workers and neighbors said the normally low-keyed Tetsuya Yamagami became irritable and confrontational in the months before former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was gunned down in Nara.

Yamagami, 41, has been arrested on suspicion of murdering Abe on July 8 with a handmade gun, investigative sources said.

When TV news reports showed pictures, the name and the age of the suspected gunman on the day of the fatal attack, an employee of a shop in Nara that sells French prepared food blurted out to co-workers: “Look! That’s the guy, isn’t it?”

About 10 days earlier, a man who looked just like the suspected gunman parked his vehicle in the shop’s long-term parking lot without permission.

The shop’s owner told the driver, “Don’t park here.”

The next day, the same man barged into the shop and shouted at the owner, “Your car is causing trouble, too!”

He was apparently referring to the habit of shop staff to park temporarily in front of the store to carry in ingredients.

TROUBLE AT WORK

Yamagami, who was registered with a temporary staff agency, started working at a factory in Kyoto Prefecture in October 2020.

The factory chief said Yamagami was initially quiet and kept to himself.

But after about half a year, Yamagami, who operated forklifts at the factory, started to ignore work-procedure rules, the chief said.

When a co-worker admonished Yamagami over his work habits, he yelled back, “Then you should do it!”

Yamagami began missing work without permission. In May, he quit the job at the factory.

MIDNIGHT SAWING SOUND

Yamagami’s apartment is located in a residential area about 500 meters from JR Nara Station.

According to the company that manages the building, Yamagami has lived by himself in a room on the top floor for more than 10 years.

The rent is about 35,000 yen ($250), and Yamagami has never been behind on the payments, the company said.

Other tenants never complained about Yamagami until this year.

A man in his 60s who lives next door to the suspect said he heard “strange and annoying” sounds coming from Yamagami’s room starting in June. The neighbor said he did not know Yamagami.

“It was as if (he) was sawing a tree at night,” the man said.

Police seized at least five firearms, all apparently handmade, from Yamagami’s home after his arrest.

PROMISING STUDENT

Yamagami was born in 1980. He had an older brother and a younger sister.

His father was an executive of a construction company in Nara. But he died when the children were quite young.

Yamagami was a good student. Nicknamed “kotetsu” at junior high school, he joined a basketball club as an extracurricular activity.

A former classmate said Yamagami “maintained an excellent academic record.”

Teachers often called on Yamagami to answer questions in class, and he “let other students see his notes,” the former classmate said.

According to people who knew him back then, when he was accepted to an elite high school in Nara Prefecture, his junior high classmates said: “Of course. It’s Yamagami. Just what you’d expect.”

A woman, 41, who attended a high school class with Yamagami said he was shy, but incredibly enthusiastic as a member of the school’s cheering pep squad.

Yamagami told her that he wanted to become a firefighter. But in the school yearbook where graduating students wrote about their “future self,” Yamagami only wrote, “Don’t know.”

FOCUS ON RELIGIOUS GROUP

After her husband’s death, Yamagami’s mother in 1985 assumed a director’s position at the construction company. She later became the president.

The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, also known as the Unification Church, said at a news conference on July 11 that Yamagami’s mother joined the group around 1998.

But a person who knows the family well said the mother “had been involved with the religious group’s activities since long before that.”

The mother’s life revolved around the Unification Church activities, not raising her children, the person said.

The mother inherited two plots of land in Nara in 1998, but she sold one of the properties five months later and the other one eight months later.

Around that time, the family moved to an apartment.

Yamagami graduated from the elite high school and entered a technical school. His uncle took care of the tuition.

The uncle said he wanted to support his nephew because he was the most enthusiastic about his studies among the three siblings.

The family’s finances continued to crumble.

NO STEADY EMPLOYMENT

In 2002, when Yamagami was 21 years old, his mother filed for individual bankruptcy.

Over the following three years, Yamagami served as a Maritime Self-Defense Force member on a limited term and trained in Hiroshima Prefecture.

The uncle said Yamagami “was not cut out for the SDF.”

He said Yamagami “would have chosen a different career path if he were not in poverty.”

After his term with the MSDF ended in 2005, Yamagami held a string of part-time jobs, including one at a land-surveying company.

During this period, he obtained the qualifications for a real-estate transaction specialist and a financial planner.

Yamagami usually left his job after about a year. The longest he stayed at one job was five years.

In 2009, his mother’s ailing construction company was dissolved.

Yamagami reportedly told police his mother’s contributions to the Unification Church led to the financial ruin of the family, and he shot Abe over his apparent connections to the group.

The uncle said his nephew became estranged from his mother over those donations.

“His mother dove into the activities of the Unification Church, and the family became dysfunctional. That changed his life. I think he bore malice,” the uncle said.

But a man who said he knows about how Yamagami grew up said that even after he left home, Yamagami was worried about his mother and often visited her.

“He left because of the religion, but I think the link between them as parent and child was inextricable,” the man said.