What drove Yamagami Tetsuya to kill Abe Shinzo?
Japan searches for motives behind the senseless attack
The omiyacho neighbourhood of Nara, an ancient capital in western Japan, is unremarkable. A tangle of quiet streets winds around boxy apartment blocks tightly packed together. Inside are standard-issue working-class Japanese flats: modest rectangular rooms with low ceilings, fluorescent lighting and the damp odour of a humid Japanese summer. In one such home, Yamagami Tetsuya (pictured) assembled the gun he used to kill Abe Shinzo, a former prime minister, on July 8th.
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “States of mind”
Asia July 23rd 2022
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