On January 21, the Nara District Court sentenced Yamagami Tetsuya to life in prison for fatally shooting former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo in July 2022.

According to the ruling, Yamagami shot Abe with a homemade pipe gun while he was delivering an election campaign speech in the city of Nara in western Japan, resulting in the former Japanese leader’s death.

The 45-year-old defendant had admitted to murder and other charges at his first hearing in October 2025.

In the lay-judge trial, a major point of contention was the impact of his mother’s large donations to a religious group known in short as the Unification Church.

Yamagami’s mother and younger sister were among those who testified during the 15 hearings through December 18.

According to the testimony, the mother’s donations to the church amounted to about 100 million yen, causing the family to fall apart, and the defendant’s older brother took his own life as a result.

Yamagami built resentment against the church, formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

After his mother said her elder son is in heaven thanks to her donations, Yamagami started thinking about attacking the church’s executives.

As the executives’ visit to Japan appeared elusive due to the coronavirus outbreak, he decided to target Abe, who he thought had links to the church.

Asked why he targeted Abe, Yamagami told the court that he saw the politician as the central figure in the relationship between politics and the Unification Church.

He noted, however, that Abe was not the primary objective as his real target was the church.

The defense counsel asserted that his family situation lies at the core of the case and asked that his prison term be capped at 20 years.

But prosecutors sought life imprisonment, arguing that the family situation had only a very limited impact on his decision to commit the crime and that resorting to violence is unacceptable in a country governed by the rule of law.