stylistic:tone
Assassination

On 8 July 2022, around 11:30 JST, Abe was shot while delivering a campaign speech at Yamato-Saidaiji Station, Nara. He was supporting fellow LDP party member Kei Satō for the House of Councillors election. The assassin approached Abe from behind and fired two shots using an improvised firearm. The first shot missed and prompted Abe to turn around, at which point a second shot was fired, hitting Abe in the right front of the neck and the left upper arm. He was fatally struck in an artery near the heart.

Abe was rushed to the Nara Medical University Hospital in Kashihara by helicopter. Prior to his arrival at the hospital, Abe had already shown no vital signs. Despite a transfusion of 100 units of blood (≈ 30 litres), the blood loss was too great and attempts to resuscitate Abe failed; he was pronounced dead at 17:03 JST. He was 67 years old.

A 41-year-old man named Tetsuya Yamagami, a former JMSDF member, was immediately arrested and later confessed to local police. Yamagami said he held a grudge against the Unification Church and shot Abe because "the religious group and Abe were connected". Yamagami said his mother had been brainwashed by the religious group, giving the church all of his family's money and leaving them so destitute that he and his siblings often did not have enough to eat. They became so despondent, he added, that his brother had committed suicide and he himself had attempted it.

Yamagami had been trying to kill Hak Ja Han of the Unification Church since around 2002, but gave up because he could not get close to her, changing his target to Abe. Yamagami said he did not have a grudge against Abe's political beliefs, but had targeted him because he believed the former prime minister spread the religion in Japan. Abe and his family were known to have long-standing ties to the Unification Church, dating back to his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi; Abe himself had held speeches in support of the religious movement. According to research by Nikkan Gendai, half of the twenty members of the Fourth Abe Cabinet had connections to the Unification Church. The connection between the two groups was found peculiar by some as the Korean-based Unification Church raised billions of dollars worth of funds from its Japanese followers ("since the 1970s" most of the church's money has come from Japan) playing on feelings of "war guilt" towards Korea, while Abe was famous for his proudly unapologetic embrace of Japan's imperial past and denial of any oppression of Koreans.

In response to the shooting and his subsequent death, numerous present and former world leaders expressed their sympathies and support for Abe. His body was returned to Tokyo the day after his assassination and his state funeral took place on 27 September 2022.