Man Arrested for Assassinating Shinzo Abe Confesses, Multiple Homemade Weapons Found in Search of His Home, Japanese Police Say

The man arrested for shooting and killing former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has confessed, according to police, and a cache of homemade weapons was found during a search of his home.

Abe collapsed and lost consciousness after being shot twice on Friday while giving a speech in the city of Nara. He was campaigning on behalf of his Liberal Democratic Party in advance of Japan’s parliamentary elections this Sunday. Police arrested a 41-year-old unemployed man named Tetsuya Yamagami at the scene. Abe was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to revive him, and he was pronounced dead at 5:03 pm local time. He was 67 years old.

CNN’s senior international correspondent Will Ripley reported on the shocking nature of the assassination, given Japan’s extremely low rate of gun crimes.

Private ownership of handguns is completely outlawed; only shotguns or air rifles are allowed. Obtaining a permit requires a time-consuming, arduous process that includes safety classes, written exams, proficiency tests, drug testing, mental health evaluations, an extensive background check, yearly inspections, and retesting every three years.

“Guns don’t exist for regular people in Japan,” said Ripley, pointing out that Japan has half the population of the United States but only had one gun-related fatality in 2021. “There’s not a gun culture.”

“It really does hit you to the core,” Ripley continued, “as someone who lived and worked in Japan and thinking of all my friends in Japan, that feeling of safety that you have when you walk through the streets of Japan, you know, at any hour of the day or night, in any large city or small town, you never feel that you’re going to be at risk.”

Japan hasn’t had a political assassination since 1960, he said, and politicians are often “up close and personal with members of the public.”

Yamagami confessed to police, Ripley reported, and their investigation had included a search of his home, where they found “a number of homemade pistol-like items.” Photos and video from the scene of the shooting showed Yamagami holding what appeared to be a homemade gun.

Police are also saying that the shooter “apparently holds hatred toward some group that he thought that Abe was a part of, not clear what that group was or what — if any of this is even based in reality, but this is what we know right now about this suspect,” said Ripley. “They have 90 police investigators trying to get to the bottom of this.”