Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, shot the former head of government with a homemade weapon at an election rally on July 8, 2022 in Nara, near Kyoto.

The man convicted of fatally shooting former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 has appealed his life sentence, according to Japanese media reports Wednesday. Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, shot the former prime minister, who had left office two years earlier, with a homemade gun at a campaign rally on July 8, 2022, in Nara, near Kyoto. He was sentenced to life imprisonment on January 21 by the Nara District Court, which condemned the act as "despicable and extremely malicious."

Major Japanese media outlets, including Kyodo News, Mainichi Shimbun, Jiji Press, and regional broadcaster MBS, reported that Yamagami's lawyers filed the appeal on Wednesday.

The tragedy sent shockwaves through a country where gun crime is extremely rare.

Resentment towards the "Moon sect"

The fact that the alleged murderer held a grudge against Shinzo Abe for his supposed ties to the Unification Church, also known as the "Moonies," has also prompted scrutiny of the religious organization's practices and its links to Japanese politics. Tetsuya Yamagami harbored a deep resentment toward the "Moonies," which he held responsible for his family's ruin after his mother allegedly gave him nearly 100 million yen (about one million dollars at the time) in gifts.

Founded in 1954 in South Korea by Sun Myung Moon, the organization quickly forged close ties with the political world, with Sun Myung Moon associating with foreign heads of state, such as the American Richard Nixon. Shinzo Abe had spoken at events organized by groups linked to the church. The investigation revealed close links between the Unification Church and several elected officials of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP, nationalist right) then in power in Japan, leading to the resignation of four ministers at the time.

In April 2025, a court ordered the dissolution of the Japanese branch of the organization, citing "unprecedented damage" caused to Japanese society.