Asia | Whydunnit

What drove Yamagami Tetsuya to kill Abe Shinzo?

Japan searches for motives behind the senseless attack

Tetsuya Yamagami, suspected of killing former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, is escorted by a police officer as he is taken to prosecutors, at Nara-nishi police station in Nara, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo July 10, 2022. Mandatory credit Kyodo via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. JAPAN OUT. NO COMMERCIAL OR EDITORIAL SALES IN JAPAN.
|NARA

The omiyacho neighbourhood of Nara, an ancient capital in western Japan, is unremarkable. A tangle of quiet streets winds around boxy apartment blocks tightly packed together. Inside are standard-issue working-class Japanese flats: modest rectangular rooms with low ceilings, fluorescent lighting and the damp odour of a humid Japanese summer. In one such home, Yamagami Tetsuya (pictured) assembled the gun he used to kill Abe Shinzo, a former prime minister, on July 8th.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “States of mind”

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