The brazen assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe with a handgun shocked a nation unaccustomed to high-profile political violence. But there was another surprise in the weeks after the murder, as details emerged of an alleged killer who was well off until his mother’s huge donations to the controversial Unification Church left him poor, neglected and full of rage. Some Japanese have expressed understanding, even sympathy, for the 41-year-old suspect, especially those of a similar age who may feel pangs of recognition linked to their own suffering during three decades of economic malaise and social upheaval. There have been suggestions on social media that care packages should be sent to suspected Tetsuya Yamagami’s detention center to cheer him up. And more than 7,000 people signed a petition seeking clemency for prosecutors for Yamagami, who told police he killed Abe, one of Japan’s most powerful and divisive politicians, because of his ties to an unnamed religious group widely believed to be the Unification Church. Experts say the case has also shed light on the plight of thousands of other child churchgoers who have faced abuse and neglect. “If he hadn’t allegedly committed the crime, Mr. Yamagami would deserve a lot of sympathy. There are many others who also suffer” because of their parents’ faith, said Kimiaki Nishida, a professor of psychology at Rissho University and an expert on cult studies. There have also been serious political implications for Japan’s ruling party, which has maintained friendly ties with the church despite controversy and a series of legal disputes. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s popularity has plummeted since the assassination and he has reshuffled his cabinet to purge members who had ties to the religious group. On Thursday, the national police chief tendered his resignation to take responsibility for Abe’s murder. Yamagami, who is being held for mental evaluation until the end of November, has previously expressed on social media his hatred of the Unification Church, which was founded in South Korea in 1954 and has, since the 1980s, faced accusations of fraudulent recruitment practices and brainwashing. supporters to make huge donations. Why was Shinzo Abe associated with a notorious church? In the long, strange history of Japan and the ‘Moonies’ In a letter seen by The Associated Press and in tweets believed to be his own, Yamagami said his family and life were destroyed by the church because of his mother’s massive donations. Police confirmed that a draft of Yamagami’s letter was found on a computer seized from his one-room apartment. “After my mother joined the church (in the 1990s), all my teenage years were lost, with about 100 million yen ($735,000) lost,” he wrote in the typed letter, which he sent to a blogger in western Japan on previous day. allegedly assassinated Abe during a campaign speech on July 8 in Nara, western Japan. “It is no exaggeration to say that my experience during that time distorted my whole life.” Yamagami was 4 years old when his father, an executive at a company founded by the suspect’s grandfather, killed himself. After his mother joined the Unification Church, she began making large donations that bankrupted the family and dashed Yamagami’s hope of going to college. Later his brother committed suicide. After a three-year stint in the navy, Yamagami was most recently a factory worker. Yamagami’s uncle, in media interviews, said Yamagami’s mother donated 60 million yen ($440,000) within months of his joining the church. When her father died in the late 1990s, he sold 40 million yen ($293,000) worth of company property, bankrupting the family in 2002. The uncle said he had to stop giving the Yamagami children money for food and school because the mother gave them to the church, not her children. When Yamagami tried to kill himself in 2005, his mother did not return from a trip to South Korea, where the church was founded, his uncle said. Yamagami’s mother reportedly told prosecutors she was sorry for upsetting the church over her son’s alleged crime. His uncle said she seemed devastated but remained a follower of the church. Authorities and the local bar association declined to comment. Repeated attempts to reach Yamagami, his mother, uncle and their lawyers were unsuccessful. Beginning in October 2019, Yamagami, who is widely reported to tweet under the name “Silent Hill 333,” wrote about the church, his painful past, and political issues. In December 2019, he tweeted that his grandfather blamed Yamagami’s mother for the family’s problems and even tried to kill her. “The most hopeless thing is that my grandfather was right. But I wanted to believe my mother.” Part of the reason Yamagami’s case has struck a chord is because he is part of what Japanese media call a “lost generation” stuck with low-paying jobs. He graduated from high school in 1999 during the “ice age of employment” that followed the collapse of the country’s 1980s bubble economy. Despite being the world’s third-largest economy, Japan has faced three decades of economic turmoil and social inequality, and many of those who grew up in those years are single and stuck with unstable jobs and feelings of isolation and anxiety. Some high-profile crimes in recent years, such as the mass murders in Tokyo’s Akihabara cyber district in 2008 and a deadly arson attack at Kyoto Animation in 2016, have reportedly involved “lost generation” attackers with troubled family and work histories. Yamagami’s case has also shed light on the children of Unification Church followers. Many are neglected, experts say, and there has been little help because government and school officials tend to resist interventions on religious freedom grounds. “If our society had paid more attention to the problems in recent decades, (Yamagami’s) attack could have been prevented,” said Mafumi Usui, a professor of social psychology at Niigata Seiryo University and an expert on the cult. More than 55,000 people have joined a petition calling for legal protection for “second generation” followers who say they were forced to join the church. Abe, in a September 2021 video message, praised the church’s peace work on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. His appearance in the video likely motivated Yamagami, said Nishida, the psychology professor. Yamagami reportedly told police he had planned to kill the wife of church founder Hak Ja Han Moon, who has led the church since Moon’s death in 2012, but changed targets because she was unlikely to visit Japan during of the pandemic. “Although I feel bitter, Abe is not my real enemy. He is only one of the most important sympathizers of the Unification Church,” Yamagami wrote in his letter. “I’ve already lost the mental space to think about the political implications or consequences of Abe’s death.” The case has drawn attention to the ties between the church, which came to Japan in 1964, and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party that has ruled Japan almost continuously since World War II. A government lawmaker, Shigeharu Aoyama, last month said a party faction leader told him how church votes could help candidates who lack organizational support. Tomihiro Tanaka, head of the church’s branch in Japan, denied “political interference” with any particular party, but said the church has developed closer ties with ruling party lawmakers than others because of their shared anti-communist stance. Members of the National Lawyers Network Against Spiritual Sales, which for decades has provided legal assistance to people in financial disputes with the church, say they have received 34,000 complaints involving lost money totaling more than 120 billion yen ($900 million). Tanaka accused lawyers and the media of “persecuting” the church’s followers. A former follower in her 40s told a recent press conference that she and two sisters were forced to join the church when they were in high school after their mother became a follower. After two failed church-arranged marriages, he said he awoke from “mind control” and returned to Japan in 2013. As a second-generation victim “who had my life ruined by the church, I can understand (Yamagami’s) pain, even though what he did was wrong,” she said. Our Morning Update and Afternoon Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day’s most important headlines. Sign up today.
