Shinzo Abe

Shot on 8 July 2022 in Nara by Tetsuya Yamagami with a homemade firearm; Japan longest-serving prime minister was killed at a campaign event two days before elections.

Overview

Abe, the dominant politician of the Heisei and Reiwa eras whose Abenomics and security redefined Japan role, was speaking for a local candidate when Yamagami, whose mother had been bankrupted by her devotion to the Unification Church and who blamed Abe ties to it, fired a doubling barreled improvised gun at close range; he died of blood loss within hours. The killing of a former leader in a country with almost no gun crime and no history of modern political assassination shocked Japan into rewriting gun and security laws. The Church relationship scandal that followed toppled minister after minister, drove the Abe faction audits and the LDP breakup of its faction system in 2024, and forced the state funeral debate. Yamagami trial was delayed for psychiatric evaluation and then proceeded. The mourning ceremony brought the foreign leaders of the democratic world to Tokyo.