Former Japan Prime Minister SHOT Is Unresponsive

It is now confirmed by various Japanese media that the "religious organization" in question is indeed the Unification Church. The Unification Church spokesperson has acknowledged that the shooter's mother is their member.

More about the suspect has been reported in the media.

He was born into a relatively well-off family. His grandfather owned a small business, and his father worked for the company. However, the father passed away when he was little. His mother moved in with the grandfather as well as two kids. (The suspect and his younger sister.)

Then the grandfather passed away, and the family moved out of a big house and into a smaller apartment. In the meantime, his mother got deeply involved into the Unification Church, and donated tons of money. This causes serious financial hardship for the family. and he was forced to give up his dream of attending college. (He was an excellent student up to that point.) His mother eventually filed for bankruptcy in 2002.

A few years after high school, he decided to join the Self Defense Forces on a three-year contract, hoping to gain valuable experience that could land him a better civilian job after discharge. He was honorably discharged after three years, but could not find a good job.

He continued to study on his own, and got professional licenses in real estate and financial planning. But he was unable to find a job that used his newly acquired skills, because he had no relevant job experience in the field, and was too old to be treated as a new grad. (This is a very common problem for young people in Japan who don't get a good job right after graduation. You don't get hired because you don't have experience in the field, and you don't get experience because you don't get hired. It's a catch -22.)

So he hopped from one unstable job to another, and came to the conclusion that his life had been ruined because of his mother's involvement in the Unification Church. Initially, he tried to assassinate the top leaders of Unification Church in Japan, but then figured that it would be easier to kill Abe, because he was all over the places giving stump speech to other candidates.

To top off being a massive POS, Abe was also a Moonie? And that’s what took him down, not his multitude of other character flaws?
Good riddance. He may have been planning another political run.

As I said in a previous comment, I do think he planned to become PM yet again.

He was only 67 years old, he was still the leader of the LDP, and he still wanted to rewrite Article 9 of the Constitution to allow the Japanese military to be more aggressive so that, as he put it, Japan could become a "normal country." That was always his main political objective.

Not sure about this. Now all his scandals from shady land deal to campaign finance irregularities will be swept under the rug. (His widow still should be a "person of interest." But I don't think the prosecutors have any appetite for investigating her.) The only thing scrutinized about him posthumously will be his link to the Unification Church.

In the meantime, more about the shooter has been reported. In addition to the younger sister, he also had an older brother, who had cancer and lost sight on one of his eyes. He eventually committed suicide. The death of his father was also suicide, apparently because he felt so desperate about how his wife was treating their children.

His mother donated well over $1 million to the Unification Church. His uncle (mother's brother) once negotiated with the church to get some of the money back, but then the mother donated that money right back to the church.

Lawyers representing many victims of the UC once sent a letter to Abe, asking him to cut his ties with the UC, but Abe refused to accept the letter, let alone responding to any of the content.

Abe Froman was not shot; he died of heart disease from eating too much sausage.

As you all have said, it was actually the Unification Church to which the shooter's mother belonged and Nippon Kaigi was anyway not the kind of organization that would prey on widowed housewives. The best breakdown I've read is a 75-tweet thread by "mrjeffu" (aka Jeffrey J. Hall). His 74th tweet links to this article in the Daily Shincho, which describes the neglect he experienced and the deaths of his father and sickly brother. A truly sad situation and it's hard to write the shooter off as simply yet another crazy person.

dailyshincho.jp

「統一教会」から5千万円返還させていた……「山上容疑者」が抱えていた教団との金銭トラブル | デイリー新潮

安倍晋三元首相を銃撃し逮捕された山上徹也容疑者（41）は、母の統一教会への傾倒を犯行の動機として語っている。…

Open link

Although Abe wasn't officially a Moonie himself, it sounds to me like he refused to cut ties with group because he and his LDP like getting Moonie votes and, possibly, Moonie money.

After all, the LDP's perpetual coalition partner is Komeito, the party of Soka Gakkai, an enormous Buddhist group in Japan. I was surprised to learn many Japanese Moonies there are.

I have to think Abe's assassin is pleased with how much media scrutiny his act has brought down on the Moonies in Japan. Religious cults and other frauds much prefer to operate in obscurity.

But despite his tearful press conference following Abe's assassination, I'm not holding my breath waiting for PM Kishida to say anything critical about the Moonies, let alone take action against them.

This just keeps getting better. It turns out that the Kishida Cabinet is crawling with Moonies. The press is calling it the "Cult Cabinet."

I'm amazed that it took the assassination of Japan's best known political leader for Japanese journalists to finally unearth this rot.