A "successful" assassination?

Before Luigi Mangione, there was Tetsuya Yamagami

In a pause from local horrors, here’s a story I’ve been working on for a very long time—about a shocking assassination and the radical changes it brought about. You might remember the bare facts: in 2022, Shinzo Abe, Japan’s most famous politician, was killed by Tetsuya Yamagami, a forty-something man with a handmade gun. It turned out that Yamagami had targeted Abe not for his conservative policies but for his ties to the Unification Church a.k.a. the Moonies, a powerful Korean cult.

Public mourning of Abe was surprisingly muted. The fallout from his death, though, has been massive and unrelenting. His political party was scrambled, the Church is facing dissolution, thousands of victims have come out with stories of financial and emotional abuse. Yamagami’s trial was full of wrenching testimony. The controversy has spread to South Korea and beyond.

In Japan, I followed Eito Suzuki, a journalist who has spent his career covering the Moonies and other cults. His personal story is entangled with Yamagami’s; they were both in pursuit of Abe, using divergent means.

Reporting this piece made me think a lot about political violence, government corruption, journalistic ethics, and the pull of religions (old and new) in senseless times. I hope you’ll find the story relevant, wherever you are. Give it a read in paper this week or online at: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/02/02/how-shinzo-abes-assassination-brought-the-moonies-back-into-the-limelight

Let me know if you need access. Big thanks to interpreter Monika Uchiyama, editor Micah Hauser, fact-checkers Natalie Meade and Mizuki Uchiyama, and illustrator Hokyoung Kim.

With affection, from the snow…