The trial went on for six weeks. In November, Yamagami’s mom and sister testified from behind a display, to guard their identities. His mom apologized to Abe’s household—she famous that his ghost was in the courtroom—and to her son. “She spoke directly to Yamagami, using the pet name Tet-chan,” Suzuki recalled. She remained a believer. “She emphasized that everything that had happened to them—even donating so much to put them in poverty—was her fault, not the fault of the Church.”
It was an impulse that I acknowledged even amongst some former Unificationists. I had not too long ago interviewed S., a fifty-nine-year-old man who went into debt to make donations and was now in search of damages. (He was later awarded eighty-eight thousand {dollars}.) Some years had handed since S. and his spouse had renounced their religion, however he felt residual loyalty. When Abe was killed, “my initial instinct was to be worried for the Church,” he advised me. “But, after we started learning more about Yamagami and his motivation for shooting Prime Minister Abe, I started to reconsider. I started to try to understand.”
Yamagami’s sister’s testimony was, as measured by the variety of weeping observers, the emotional apex of the trial. She described how her mom had grow to be chilly and unrecognizable, displaying up at her workplace and begging for cash. “This person was no longer my mother but a believer wearing my mother’s face,” she stated. “I couldn’t turn her away.” Devil, the YouTuber, advised me that following the trial was “like checking the answers to a test. A constant stream of ‘Oh, yeah, it was just like that.’ ”
Yamagami took the stand in his personal protection. His voice was low; he usually stared into house. At one level, he stated, “I’m not a bad person.” But the scenario along with his mom and the Church had felt inescapable. He was overcome by a deep despair. “I should not have lived this long,” he stated. Abe had grow to be a receptacle for Yamagami’s despair.
Halfway by the trial, there was little on the file about the connections between the L.D.P. and the Church. “Not enough has been said about why it was Abe,” Suzuki advised me. Without that, he anxious Yamagami could be sentenced to dying, an end result Suzuki clearly didn’t need. He despatched a letter to Yamagami’s attorneys, itemizing chronological proof of Abe’s ties to the Moonies and providing himself as a witness. “Abe helped perpetuate the crimes of the Unification Church,” he wrote. “This is not a case of random murder.” I requested Suzuki whether or not he had blurred the roles of reporter and advocate. He stated no; he was simply ensuring that the information had been on the market.
One key truth in the trial dated to 2021, when Abe, who had not too long ago completed his ultimate time period as Prime Minister, publicly endorsed the Moonies. The Universal Peace Federation, the charity affiliated with the Church, was internet hosting a digital rally, and Hak Ja Han sought video greetings from world leaders. The group paid Donald Trump, additionally freshly out of workplace, half one million {dollars} for a speech during which he referred to as Han “a tremendous person for her incredible work on behalf of peace.” Abe thanked Han for her “tireless efforts in resolving disputes around the world” and praised the Church’s “focus on family values.” Yamagami had seen Abe’s greeting. Though transient and perfunctory, it swelled into an idée fixe and satisfied him that Abe needed to be killed.
In mid-December, the court docket in Nara heard closing arguments. The prosecution, to many observers’ shock, requested a life sentence for Yamagami as an alternative of the dying penalty. Perhaps they gauged the tilt of public opinion; maybe time had softened the shock of Abe’s dying. There was none of the retributive bombast that one may anticipate in a high-profile homicide trial. The prosecutors wrapped up their case by attempting to undercut Abe’s hyperlinks to the Church—what mattered was the truth of the assassination, they stated. The protection staff framed the Church’s affect as a societal tragedy, and argued for a jail sentence of lower than twenty years. A lawyer learn a press release on behalf of Akie Abe, who herself attended the trial solely as soon as. Her husband’s sudden dying, she wrote, “was so overwhelming that my mind went blank and, for a long time, it felt like I was in a dream.” Yamagami stored his eyes downcast. The decide gave him an opportunity to talk, however he demurred.
The court docket adjourned for a month. Every week earlier than it was set to ship a verdict and a sentence, Suzuki went to the Osaka Detention House to request a go to with Yamagami. He had tried earlier than and been turned away. This time, Yamagami agreed to see him. Suzuki was escorted up an elevator to a personal room. A guard introduced in Yamagami, whose hair had grown previous his chest. Suzuki felt ill-prepared. “I have had a relationship to him, but I didn’t know what he’d been thinking about me over these three years, or if he was thinking of me at all,” he stated. They talked about the trial and the way it had been lined in the press. Suzuki recalled that, at one level, Yamagami advised him, “What I did pushed you into the limelight.” He inspired Suzuki to maintain going along with his investigations. “He was saying, ‘We’re both fighting against this greater thing, the Church,’ ” Suzuki advised me. Though Suzuki was cautious to sentence the killing, he appeared enraptured by Yamagami. “I was seeing the true side of him,” he stated. “He’s a kind man. It made me think even more about how such a kind man could do something terrible.”
Last Wednesday, the chief justice introduced Yamagami’s sentence: life in jail. He acknowledged the defendant’s “unfortunate” upbringing, however rejected the argument that it had pushed him to kill. At a press convention after the listening to, one juror referred to as Yamagami “a very smart person” who “lived a tragic life as a second-generation believer.” Had it not been for that, he stated, “he would have been a great success.”
