Abe Shinzo’s assassin achieved his political goals

“Revolution+1”, a new Japanese film, opens with actual footage of the killing of Abe Shinzo, Japan’s former prime minister, last July. The grainy frames show Abe giving a stump speech in Nara while his assassin, Yamagami Tetsuya, approaches from behind wielding a homemade gun. The feature film proceeds to portray a sympathetic protagonist named Kawakami, whose biography bears a striking resemblance to Abe’s actual killer: his father committed suicide, as Mr Yamagami’s did, and his mother fell under the spell of the Unification Church (uc), a cultlike group.