Why Shinzo Abe was killed

The longest-serving Japanese Prime Minister was assassinated despite not being in the top job for years.

The longest-serving Japanese Prime Minister was assassinated despite not being in the top job for years.

The unemployed former forklift driver who assassinated Shinzo Abe said he held a “grudge” against the former Japanese prime minister over his mother’s bankruptcy by a religious group.

Tetsuya Yamagami told police his mother had become bankrupt after donating to an unnamed religious organisation he believed was associated with Japan’s ­longest-serving prime minister.

“My family joined that religion and our life became harder after [she] donated money to the organisation,” he told police, according to The Asahi Shimbun.

“I had wanted to target the top official of the organisation, but it was difficult. So I took aim at Abe since I believed that he was tied (to the organisation).

“I wanted to kill him.”

Yamagami, 41, was sent to prosecutors on Sunday on suspicion of murder. He immediately confessed to shooting Mr Abe after he was arrested on Friday.

Tetsuya Yamagami. Picture: Ken Satomi / Yomiuri

Colleagues at the factory in Kyoto where he previously worked as a forklift operator described the former member of Japan’s Maritime Self-Defence Force as a loner.

“He always ate alone in his car at lunchtime while everyone else went to the cafeteria. I wondered if he wasn’t good at building ­relationships with others,” a former colleague told The Yomiuri Shimbun.

“[He] didn’t say much and had a slightly gloomy sense to him,” another colleague told Kyodo News. They said he stopped attending work in April this year and resigned in May.

Gun violence is rare in Japan

Japan has close to zero tolerance of gun ownership and one of the lowest rates of gun violence in the world.

It takes 13-steps to own a gun in Japan. You must sit a full day course to learn how to shoot and store firearms, get the all clear from a doctor and join a shooting or hunting club. In 1958 a new law was introduced: "No one shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords".

There are reports the shooter who attacked Abe used a homemade gun.

Is there any precedent for this?

While homicide like this is rare, political violence in Japan isn't.

Abe's grandfather was the victim of a failed assassination attempt in 1960. It was a heated time in Japan's postwar years as relations between the US and Japan were being ironed out.

When Abe first came to office in 2006, Ito Iccho - the mayor of Nagasaki - was shot and killed by the Yamaguchi-gumi, Japan's largest organised crime syndicate. The person who killed Iccho did so because he was disappointed with the amount of compensation he received after his car was damaged.

In Abe's second term as PM between 2012 and 2020, one of his most contentious ideas was the reinterpretation of Japan's right to collective self-defence, especially in response to a rising threat from China.

"This was seen as part of a steady shift towards a more militarised Japan and resulted in two very public cases of people setting fire to themselves in June and November 2014 in protest. In the latter case, the person died," Professor of Japan's International Relations at the University of Sheffield Hugo Dobson said.

On Friday, police arrested Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, at the scene after Abe was shot twice while giving a speech in support of his political colleague.

Yamagami is an unemployed former sailor in Japan's maritime armed forces. According to police, he has confessed to the assassination.

But why Abe?

Shinzo Abe, 67, wasn't just another PM, he was the longest-serving Prime Minister in the nation's history. A political figure who many claim changed the fortunes of Japan (and the Japanese). An icon in economic and financial circles but he had, during two terms in office, managed to aggravate and marginalise few.

He also redefined Japan's status on the international stage and flexed hard in geopolitical affairs.

"Mr Abe’s was a life of consequence. He made a difference. He changed things for the better not just in Japan, but in our region and around the world. Australia has lost a true friend. The friendship that Mr Abe offered Australia was warm in sentiment and profound in consequence." Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said. 

Mr Abe’s was a life of consequence. He made a difference. He changed things for the better not just in Japan, but in our region and around the world. Australia has lost a true friend. The friendship that Mr Abe offered Australia was warm in sentiment and profound in consequence. pic.twitter.com/k2gG7l9Nut

— Anthony Albanese (@AlboMP) July 9, 2022

After he stepped down from the top job in 2020 due to Crohn's disease - a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that flares up unexpectedly - he was lauded for his ability to work with a range of political leaders including Donald Trump (and Obama before him), Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin.

Shinzo Abe, with other world leaders, attempting to speak with former US president Donald Trump on the sidelines of the 2018 G7 summit in Canada.

He was pivotal in bringing the Olympics to Tokyo, mainly due his determination to get Japan out of first gear. This is why he will mostly be remembered for “Abenomics,” a controversial economic stimulus strategy that many economists and international studies experts say helped revive the Japanese economy.

"He injected hope into the Japanese economy," Koichi Hamada, one of Abe’s former economic advisers, told Time magazine. "Poor villages disappeared, university teachers were not worried about the employment opportunities of their students, and so forth, because of Abenomics."

Abe’s “Three Arrows”

When Abe took office again in 2012, Japan was a basket case. 

It was suffering from weak exports, it was arguing with China over trade and there was the continual fallout from the 2011 nuclear disaster and tsunami clean-up.

A combination of these factors led Japan into a recession, forcing Abe to come up with a way to jolt the economy out of a sustained period of high inflation, high unemployment and stagnant economic growth.

He set out to become the master of "deflation".

The plan was referred to as Abe's "Three Arrows" and involved:

1. Increase government spending
2. Print more money
3. Structural economic reform

He needed to jumpstart the economy and with that came positives and negatives.

Negative short-term interest rates helped, as did structural reform that brought more women into the workforce, increased protections for temporary workers, and eased rules around hiring migrant workers who helped build all the new public infrastructure.

Abenomics helped drive growth at the time and put the country in a better position than it was before Abe's comeback in 2012.

The initial response to the reforms were positive.

"The Nikkei 225 index rallied to highs it hadn’t seen in more than two decades, reaching above 20,000 in April 2015 from a low of around 9000 in 2012," the Financial Times reported.

But then Covid hit and support for his vision fell away after Japan nearly slipped into recession as the spicy cough not only infected global markets, it ravaged them. 

Before Covid and before Abe, Japan had 18 leaders between 1987 to 2012.

He broke that hoodoo and held his position the longest.

Some say Covid and his illness stymied his plans for long-term reform, and critics said some of Abe’s policies failed to build an economy with lasting strength.

Something that caused widening wage inequality as the ranks of workers in less-secure, low-paid jobs grew. Issues that are still plaguing the country today.