On July 8, 2022, Toru Yamagami, a 41-year-old citizen of Nara and a former member of the Maritime Self-Defense Force, went out carrying a pair of homemade pistols. A few hours later, gunshots rang out near Yamato Saidaiji Station, and former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fell in a pool of blood and died soon after.
What made Toru Yamagami moved to kill? Political disagreement is probably the easiest line of reasoning to think of. However, Japanese media quoted police sources as saying that Yamagami Toru also said that the motive for the killing was "not hatred for Abe's political philosophy." Another report pointed out that at least until around 2013, Yamagami Tetsuya voted for Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.
In further tracing of the motive for the killing, a religious group called the Unification Church gradually surfaced. Although there is no official confirmation yet, and the Japanese media are still cautious in their wording, referring only to Yamagami Toru also being related to "a certain religious group", Japanese online public opinion has widely targeted this church. Shingetsu News Agency, a Japanese media outlet, pointed out that although many details still need to be fleshed out by journalists and historians, the basic rudiments of the case have emerged.
Both Tetsuya Yamagami and his mother were reportedly former members of the Unification Church. The Unification Church, by unscrupulously trying to accumulate money, deceived Shanshang's mother's life savings. This led to the disunity between Shanshang's mother and son and the breakdown of the family. Shanshang had to interrupt his studies because of this, and his life took a major turning point. Despite his subsequent efforts to improve his life, he lost his job during the new crown epidemic and became a complete "loser". He may have developed a sense of revenge because of this, and finally pointed the finger at Shinzo Abe, who was "close" to the religious group.
The Unification Church and the Origins of the Right Wing in Japan
The Unification Church is the abbreviation of "United Family Federation for World Peace" (Korean: 세계평화통일가정연합), which was founded in 1954 in South Korea by South Korean Man Sunmyung. Around 1968, he moved to Japan for activities, and after 1972, he moved to the United States for development.
In the late 1990s, this group has been popular in Japan and South Korea, with a solid base of believers and political support.
In the 1960s, when Shinzo Abe's grandfather, former Prime Minister of Japan Nobusuke Kishi, secretly allied with Myung Moon, he didn't know he was sowing a dangerous seed that would take away his beloved more than half a century later. The life of the grandson of Shinzo Abe.
After Japan surrendered in World War II, Kishi Nobusuke, who served in the cabinet of Tojo Hideki, was regarded as a suspected Class A war criminal, but he was not charged in the end. It is widely believed that Kishi agreed to cooperate with the US government in exchange for his acquittal. Due to his strong pro-American and anti-Communist tendencies, he was considered by the US authorities to be the best candidate for "creating a Japan that obeys the United States".
Kishi made no secret of his nationalist stance and remilitarization tendencies. But he was sacked by anti-security treaty protests just three years after taking office. His successors in the party did not pursue their proposals for constitutional amendments, because they clearly recognized that vigilance against the resurgence of militarism was the basic disk of public opinion at the time, and failure to hit the brakes could lead to the LDP's defeat in the vote.
Kishi blamed his loss on the communist movement that was in full swing at the time. In October 1970, Kishi visited the United States, met with Nixon and Kissinger, and expressed his concerns about the communist movement. When Kishi was introduced to Unification Church founder Myung Moon in the mid-1960s, their shared strong anti-communist stance hit it off.
In a research paper published in 2001, American political scientist Richard Samuels described this intricate link: The Unification Church owns property in Tokyo, where it established its Japanese headquarters. By the early 1970s, some LDP politicians were using members of the Unification Church—so-called "Moonies"—as campaign workers who were sent to serve pro bono. Shinzo Abe's father, Shintaro Abe, relied heavily on "Moonies" during the campaign, and also persuaded fellow lawmakers to attend Unification Church lectures. In return, the Unification Church has enjoyed special protection in Japan for many years from being prosecuted by Japanese authorities for its fraudulent and aggressive money-making practices. A staggering statistic is that by the 1980s, Japan provided about four-fifths of the income of the Unification Church worldwide.
Controversy that has lasted for half a century: collective marriage, excessive wealth accumulation
The Unification Church has faced many controversies since its inception. Among them, the most notable are collective marriage and unscrupulous accumulation of money.
The founder of Unification Church, Myung Moon Moon, has been accused of being a "brainwashed leader who advocates sexual atonement". Moon Myung believes that man is the child of God, and God originally hoped that man could inherit God’s creativity and authority over the world, and that God and man are one family, but he claimed that Eve had sex with the devil in the Garden of Eden, which was depraved. He believed that Jesus was the second Adam, and he was supposed to restore the perfect family of God and man, but he was unmarried and left no descendants. He only redeemed people in the soul and failed to bring redemption in the flesh. In order to complete the unfinished work of Jesus, he It is up to him and his wife to be "true parents," connecting married believers and their families to God through sexual intercourse. In his early years, he even asked female believers to exchange sex with him for "purification and salvation".
Mass mating is the flagship event of the Unification Church. Myung Moon personally matches the believers and holds a mass wedding, which brings together thousands of believers around the world every year. But the vast majority of them didn't know each other before their marriage and were from different countries, and the pairing method was a random selection by Moon based on photos hanging on wooden boards.
Moon Myung has a set of rhetoric about marriage. He described marriage as a "critical step toward redemption." Couples marry not out of love, but out of commitment to the church, to have children without original sin, and to expand the "world of God." The married life of the couple, such as where to settle down and when to have children, all need to follow the arrangements of the church.
Critics pointed out that collective marriage is actually just a means of brainwashing and money-making by Moon Myung. Through global mating, believers are first cut off from their families of origin, and then they are required to hand over most of their private property to the church after marriage. Newborn babies will become new blood for church expansion. Moon Myung seems to have weaved an airtight net, entwining the lives of believers in it.
In order to make money, the Unification Church can be described as unscrupulous. Moon Myung-sun brainwashed the believers. In order to obtain salvation, he needed to pay all the income of the first three years of teaching, and also needed unpaid labor and forced sales assignments. These properties plundered from believers were used by Myung Moon to create a huge business empire, extending from the shipbuilding industry in South Korea to the catering industry in the United States, and even dabbling in journalism. The notorious "Washington Times" (editor's note: not the "Washington Post") is his media tool to promote his teachings and increase his wealth. In addition, he also owns the Spanish "World News" newspaper, the South Korean "World Daily" and so on.
Angry ex-Christians and gunshots in Nara
As the most well-known representative of Japanese right-wing politicians in the contemporary era, Abe himself has also inherited and promoted the connection between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Unification Church.
When Abe was first elected prime minister in 2006, he was criticized for sending a congratulatory message to the Unification Church's mass wedding. He later explained that he was only sending it privately, not as prime minister. But for many years after that, similar public endorsements continued to appear.
In the most recent storm, on September 12, 2021, Shinzo Abe recorded a congratulatory video for an event of the Unification Church. Four days later, the National Anti-Spiritual Sale Lawyers Network published a letter of public protest saying, "If Mr. Abe is to continue to be active as a statesman, it is inadvisable to cooperate with and support the activities of the Unification Church and its leading organizations."
It seems that it was these disturbances that prompted Toru Yamagami to target Shinzo Abe.
Japanese media quoted a police statement saying Yamagami told police he accused a "religious group" of luring his mother into bankruptcy and bankrupting it. He initially set out to kill a church leader but thought it was "too difficult" and gave up. He later turned his attention to Abe, arguing that he had contributed to the growth of the church in some way.
According to Japanese media investigations, between 1999 and 2002, Mother Yamagata, a member of the Unification Church, was deceived by the church of her life savings. In 1999, the mountain's mother was forced to sell her grandfather's house. In 2002, she declared personal bankruptcy. It was also at that time that Yamagami was forced to interrupt his studies at the university and serve in the Maritime Self-Defense Force to earn a living. Shanshang believes that the wicked church was the cause of their mother-son rivalry and family breakdown, as well as a painful turning point in his life.
Perhaps it was these pains that, after many years, turned into two gunshots in Nara.
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