On July 8, 2022, Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, was shot and killed while campaigning for Liberal Democratic Party candidates in Nara, a city west of Osaka. The 67-year-old former leader collapsed after being struck by bullets from a homemade shotgun. He was pronounced dead at a hospital within hours. The assassination shocked a nation where gun violence is extraordinarily rare: Japan has some of the world's strictest firearms laws, and political violence had been virtually absent for decades. The killing marked a seismic moment in Japanese public life, ending the life of a towering political figure who had reshaped the country's foreign policy and economic strategy.

Abe's assassin was Tetsuya Yamagami, a 41-year-old unemployed man who harbored deep resentment toward the Unification Church, a religious organization with roots in South Korea. Yamagami believed his mother had donated enormous sums to the church, bankrupting his family, and he came to view Abe as complicit in the group's influence over Japanese society. Though Abe had never been a formal member of the church, he had spoken favorably of it and accepted its support. Yamagami constructed his weapon from metal pipes, a wooden stock, and electrical components, then traveled to Nara to target the former prime minister in a crowded public setting.

Abe's death reverberated across Japan and the world. He had served as prime minister twice: from 2006 to 2007 and again from 2012 to 2020, totaling nearly nine years in office. During his second, longer tenure, he pursued "Abenomics," a three-pronged economic strategy mixing aggressive monetary stimulus, fiscal spending, and structural reform. Internationally, he had been a steadfast advocate for Japan's alliance with the United States and a counterweight to China's growing regional power. His assassination prompted urgent national conversations about the Unification Church's practices and influence, leading to stricter regulations on religious organizations and heightened scrutiny of their financial dealings. The killing also exposed vulnerabilities in security protocols for political events and sparked broader debates about Japan's pacifist constitution and defense capabilities.