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Yasuyuki Takai

【#1326】Doubting Wisdom of Prosecution Demanding Imprisonment for Abe Shooter

Yasuyuki Takai ／ 2025.12.23 (Tue)


December 22, 2025

　
The prosecution has demanded life imprisonment instead of death penalty for Tetsuya Yamagami charged with murder for fatally shooting former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022. The punishment demand may be extremely unreasonable. It is easy to assume that the punishment demand would be criticized for failing to be balanced with the prosecution’s demand for death penalty for the fatal shooting of a Nagasaki mayor or to deter similar incidents. However, more problematic is the content of the prosecutors’ closing argument.

Prosecutors failing to understand Abe’s regrets

The closing argument said prosecutors had more than enough to understand that it might have been extremely regrettable for Abe to lose his lifelong political activities and the days for spending time with his family and others without understanding why he was shot or who shot him or talking to his family and friends, at a time when he began to spend more time with his family after dealing with busy schedules as prime minister and recovering from ulcerative colitis. The argument reveals a petit-bourgeois mindset on the part of the prosecutors. Such prosecutors would not be able to understand the thoughts of Abe. It leaves me with a deep sense of gloom.

To put it bluntly, the argument amounts to as an insult to Abe. Did Abe really want to live a peaceful life as a family man following his recovery from ulcerative colitis? Did he regret his failure to talk to his family and friends in the face of his death?

No. Abe had a keen foresight that a future contingency in Taiwan could lead to a Japan emergency. He must have been fully aware that, should such a national crisis arise, it was his mission and responsibility to assume the premiership for the third time and rescue Japan from the crisis.

What Abe regretted was not his loss of an opportunity to spend time with his family after his recovery from ulcerative colitis. When dying, Abe might have been worrying about whether Japan would be okay in the event of a Taiwan contingency.

The bullet changed the fate of Japan

Prosecutors said that they had more than enough to understand Abe’s regrets. This exactly is a case of “How can swallows and sparrows understand the ambition of a swan and a stork?”—a classic expression that captures the gulf between small minds and great aspirations. The prosecution’s concluding argument portrayed Abe as a former influential politician who had effectively ended his political role and was looking forward to the rest of his life as a peaceful family man. However, Abe was not such politician.

The bullet fired by Yamagami did not merely change the fate of Abe. It changed the fate of Japan. It must be said that the prosecution misunderstood the important facts in deciding on the punishment demand. The prosecution’s wisdom should be doubted. Once again, I think of the regrets of Abe now in another world.

Yasuyuki Takai is an attorney. Earlier, he had been a prosecutor.