2026-01-24
46 分钟The Economist.
It's January the 21st, 2026.
The final day of a trial that has shaken Japan.
So, I've just walked out of the courtroom.
It was a really big day, so the verdict just came out.
Yamagami Tetsuya is charged with murdering Abe Shinzo, Japan's longest-serving Prime Minister.
Millions of people have watched the video of Yamagami using a homemade gun to shoot Abe in 2022.
Political assassination is always shocking, but what has particularly rocked society in Japan is the response.
When a state funeral was proposed for Abe, thousands of people took to the streets in protest.
Because, as details of Abe's murderer have dripped out,
there's been an upsurge in sympathy not for the politician, but for his assassin.
When Yamagami fired those lethal bullets, disparate forces collided:
a church cult, a political party, a patriarch, a lost soul, and a fractured populace.
And in so doing, they upended Japanese society.
I'm Rosie Blau, and today on The Weekend Intelligence,
my colleague Moeka Iida has been reporting on the trial for months,
all the way through to this week when Yamagami was given his sentence.
I could see his face.
He was pretty expressionless.
He was wearing his black sweater and beige trousers and looking down,