Photo/Illutration Tetsuya Yamagami explains how he held a gun during questioning from a prosecutor at the Nara District Court on Dec. 2. (Illustration by Eri Iwasaki)

NARA—Tetsuya Yamagami on Dec. 2 provided details about his plot to kill former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but the defendant would not say if he had accomplished his ultimate goal.

Yamagami, 45, testified for the third time in the 12th hearing of his murder trial at the Nara District Court.

He has admitted to fatally shooting Abe with a handmade shotgun in July 2022, citing the political heavyweight’s ties to the Unification Church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Yamagami said his mother’s heavy donations to the church destroyed their family.

“I thought former Prime Minister Abe was the center” of the connection between politics and the Unification Church, Yamagami said in response to questions from the prosecution.

After Abe’s death, attention was refocused on politicians’ connections with the church and its fund-collecting activities. Former followers and children of church members took legal action to regain the donated money.

Following a government investigation, the Tokyo District Court ordered the church to be dissolved.

One focus of the citizen-judge trial is whether the destruction of the church was Yamagami’s end goal.

“Many things happened to the church after the incident,” a juror asked him. “Do you think you have accomplished your aim?”

Yamagami avoided giving a clear response.

“I cannot answer that because I believe there are various issues involved,” he said.

SEIZED THE OPPORTUNITY

During the hearing, prosecutors tried to show that the crime was premeditated.

Just before dawn on July 7, 2022, the day before Abe was killed, Yamagami shot at a building that accommodated a church facility in Nara.

“Why did you attack the building?” a prosecutor asked.

“In order to indicate my anger at the church,” Yamagami replied.

The prosecutor asked Yamagami if he had already decided to kill Abe at that point.
“Yes,” the defendant said.

After firing at the building, Yamagami went to a campaign venue of a Liberal Democratic Party candidate in Okayama, where Abe gave a speech. However, he refrained from attacking Abe there.

On his way back to Nara by train, Yamagami learned that Abe was scheduled to deliver another campaign speech in front of Yamato-Saidaiji Station the next day.

He said in court that he felt “it was not a coincidence.”

Just after 11 a.m. on July 8, when Abe arrived at the venue, Yamagami thought “he has really come.”

However, a security guard was positioned behind the former prime minister.

“The speech will soon be over,” Yamagami said he thought, worried he might miss his opportunity. However, the guard stepped aside and looked toward the crowd. 

Seizing the opportunity, Yamagami said, he rushed onto the street, aimed the homemade gun at Abe’s upper body, and pressed the firing switch.

“What were you thinking at the moment you fired?” the prosecutor asked.

“A book had instructed, ‘Empty your mind as much as you can when shooting.’ So, I tried to think about nothing,” Yamagami said.

Jurors were allowed to ask questions.

One asked Yamagami to provide more details about how his mental state changed from “a feeling of being troubled” to an intention to “kill.”

In a previous hearing, Yamagami said he felt “troubled,” not angry, when he saw a video message that Abe sent to an event held by Universal Peace Federation (UPF), an organization related to the Unification Church, in 2021.

“I felt bewilderment, or a loss of hope. It was unacceptable to me that the connection between former Prime Minister Abe and the church would be tolerated,” Yamagami testified. “That may have gradually intensified my hatred and hostility toward Abe.”

A juror asked him why he didn’t target other lawmakers.

“I thought former Prime Minister Abe was the center of the connection between the church and politics,” he said. “I thought that attacking other lawmakers had less meaning.”

Yamagami was then asked, “Weren’t you able to hold back?”

He replied: “Creating the gun cost a lot, which put me in a tight spot financially. I definitely wanted to avoid quitting because quitting would make me feel that I was losing to the church.”

(This article was written by Minami Endo and Ko Sendo.)

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