Why professional killer might have killed previous Japanese Prime Minister

Previous Prime Minister, Japan, Shinzo Abe/Credit: REUTERS
Tetsuya Yamagami, the man blamed for killing previous Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, was allegedly spurred by his contempt of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, otherwise called the Unification Church.
Individuals from the Unification Church are some of the time alluded to by a deprecatory expression got from the name of the gathering's pioneer — the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, who believed himself to be the second happening to Christ.
Japanese police have said that Yamagami let them know he was persuaded by animosity toward the strict gathering he faulted for his mom's monetary ruin, while a Tokyo-put together delegate affirmed with respect to Sunday that Yamagami's mom was an individual from the congregation.

Tetsuya Yamagami, suspected of killing former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is taken to prosecutors in Nara, Japan (Photo source: Reuters)

Abe did not belong to the Unification Church, but he did give paid speeches at church-related events, and Unificationists formed a reliable voting bloc for Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party.

Abe appeared at an event hosted by an organisation affiliated with the church last September where he delivered a speech praising the affiliate’s work towards peace on the Korean peninsula, according to the church’s website.

Yamagami believed Abe had promoted the religious group to which his mother made a “huge donation”, Kyodo news agency has said, citing investigative sources.

Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the Japan branch of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, known as the Unification Church, told reporters at a briefing in Tokyo that Yamagami’s mother was a member of the church. He did not give her name.

Tanaka declined to comment on her donations, citing the ongoing police investigation.

The church has agreed to cooperate with police investigations.

Yamagami’s mother first joined the church around 1998 but stopped attending in a period between 2009 and 2017, Tanaka said.

About two to three years ago she re-established communication with church members and in the last half year or so has been attending church events at a frequency of about once a month, he said.

The Unification Church was founded in South Korea in 1954 by Sun Myung Moon, a self-declared messiah and strident anti-communist. It has gained global media attention for its mass weddings where it marries thousands of couples at a time.

Moon, who spoke fluent Japanese, launched an anti-communist political campaign in Japan from late 1960s and built relations with Japanese politicians, according to the church’s publications.

Moon died in 2012. The church has about 600,000 members in Japan, out of 10 million globally, Tanaka said

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