This case has completely put the Unification Church in the hotseat. I don't condone murder but the current shakedown is for the best.

Did anyone else feel this article was written by AI?

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Yeah this guy threw away his life. Also considering this is Japan, he'd be lucky if he gets life imprisonment.

Does Japan have death penalty? If so, this guy is gonna get it

Japan has the death penalty and a conviction rate (correct me if I'm wrong here) of around 90%. If you get arrested and end up in criminal court in Japan there's a near certainty that you're going to jail.

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In order to receive death penalty in Japan you need to kill multiple people, this guy won't be eligible unless they set precedent.

I mean, I imagine he knew he'd either be killed or caught. The guy he tried to kill is dead. So, mission accomplished?

They do, however, it's a bit tricky. Plus in Japan, the condemned will not know when it'll happen, but it'll happen. For information, their capital punishment is by hanging.

Oh yeah. You just reminded me that they don’t know their date of death until maybe an hour or two beforehand. So they wake up every day not knowing if they’re gonna die that day

I see people mention that in regards to this situation like it is a bad thing, but the truth is, its true for almost every person on the planet. You don't know if you are going to die today. In my opinion, knowing the exact date of your death is worse.

And he got the cult that fucked him over in hot water... All in all I'd say that was a pretty successful assassination.

To be fair I feel like there's a slight difference between that and expecting death by hanging

Really long time to conduct a mental evaluation. Although Japan has like a 99% conviction rate in their justice system so they do NOT fuck around

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From wiki : “The [Japan] conviction rate is 99.3%. By only stating this high conviction rate it is often misunderstood as too high—however, this high conviction rate drops significantly when accounting for the fact that Japanese prosecutors drop roughly half the cases they are given. If measured in the same way, the United States' federal conviction rate would be 99.8%.”

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We’re #1! We’re #1!

This has more to do with prosecutors declining to take cases they aren't certain of convicting than it does with anything else.

EDIT: You can downvote all you like, it doesn't change the fact that prosecutors' offices in Japan are widely understaffed, and that prosecutors drop most cases instead of even trying to indict. I'm sure you've heard all sorts of dumb stories by disgruntled expats, but the statistics show the truth.

And I'm fairly certain they use the short drop method. Which means it's a slow strangulation rather than a neck snap.

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Thats inhuman

I was mistaken, they do use the long drop

Yeah, I honestly was pretty surprised by how fast everyone wanted to disassociate from that group after that happened.

does it? the Korean church is still running strong in its native country and there is no backing off in Japan as far as I can tell.

they have tons of political connections with all the G7 leaders. it is not going away

The same is true of US federal prosecution

Not really. They have a huge rate of confession because they can hold you a very long time without allowing a lawyer. They will just keep you awake, constantly questioning you until you confess. They also don’t have jury trials, so a judge decides, and it turns out judges in Japan really frequently choose to convict.

I wouldn't even call it a church tbh, it's just a cult.

There might exist something else for murder with intent for politicians. I just don’t see him getting off with only life in prison for this serious of an offense.

It says 99.8%, not 100%. We have some work to do

There have not been many high profile assassinations of politicians in Japan, and they might make an exception, but only because it's Abe, they wouldn't for any other politician. For example he was the first to receive a state funeral.

That said, I don't actually see them handing down the death penalty because there have been much more violent killings that avoided it. They're pretty strict about having to have killed multiple people.

By the same wiki article China would be before the US with a conviction rate of 99.9%

>Did anyone else feel this article was written by AI?

Not really

Death by hanging (as long as it is over quick) is probably a less painful way to die than what many of us are going to go through.

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/468111?journalCode=jls

The same is true of most countries.

(The US is distinctive in its enormous reliance on plea bargaining, however.)

Most korean churches are.

Abe was a piece of shit denialist of Japanese War crimes in WW2.

Good riddance.

Most churches are.

I suggest you check out the reputation of Mark Ramseyer, co-author of that piece. Doesn't mean he's wrong, but it raises questions about his integrity and abilities.

I learned a bit about his background, he likely felt he had no life anyway. Prior to this he’d tried to kill himself so his siblings could get his life insurance policy. Prior to that, his brother killed himself bc he couldn’t pay for lymphoma treatment. The church took EVERYTHING his family had.

Name a church that isn’t a cult itself or derived from a cult under some other guise of legitimacy in history?

Maybe sect might be a more precise term. They think they are the one and only truth/salvation and have a negative tension with society.

Isn't the term"cult" typically a way for one religionist to describe a religion that is not their own?

It gets used that way but cults are not inherently religions there are plenty of non religious cults like nxivm or est until the 80s or the Manson family. Cults tend to have some relgiosity but the more important thing is to have some sort of figure that gathers people in a way that tends to be both extremely exploitative to then and often destructive to the people involved. Cults often coop a mainstream religion to be the justification for their behaviors even if most followers of the religion would not necessarily condone the actions of the cult.

I mean, it's a full on cult of personality.

Murder is inexcusable but his story is just incredibly sad.

“After my mother joined the church (in the 1990s), my entire teenage years were gone, with some 100 million yen ($735,000) wasted,” he wrote in the typed letter, which he sent to a blogger in western Japan the day before he allegedly assassinated Abe during a campaign speech on July 8 in Nara, western Japan. “It’s not an exaggeration to say my experience during that time has kept distorting my entire life.”

Yamagami was 4 when his father, an executive of a company founded by the suspect’s grandfather, killed himself. After his mother joined the Unification Church, she began making big donations that bankrupted the family and shattered Yamagami’s hope of going to college. His brother later committed suicide. After a three-year stint in the navy, Yamagami was most recently a factory worker.

Abe, in a September 2021 video message, praised the church’s work for peace on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. His video appearance possibly motivated Yamagami, said Nishida, the psychology professor.

Yamagami reportedly told police he had planned to kill the church founder’s wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, who has led the church since Moon’s 2012 death, but switched targets because it was unlikely she’d visit Japan during the pandemic.

“Though I feel bitter, Abe is not my true enemy. He is only one of the Unification Church’s most influential sympathizers,” Yamagami wrote in his letter. “I’ve already lost the mental space to think about political meanings or the consequences Abe’s death will bring.”

Even Japan's legal system has to be aware that executing this guy will take him from hero to martyr for a ton of people.

I was shocked 2hen this happened, the culture just makes the likelihood of something like that from happening ever so slimmer.

Slimmer, not impossible. Anyways, doesn't Japan have a history of hilariously brazen publoc assassinations? There was that one dude ran down with a sword on television...

Tetsuya's family got fucked over by Unification Church, and Abe's public support for them just rubbed that on his face and gave Tetsuya a physical target to release his frustrations upon.

It takes a lot of hatred to get around so many laws to fabricate an electrically triggered blackpowder firearm and fucking off a former Prime Minister in public.

More merciful now to sentence Tetsuya of a capital crime and execute him, as his life ended years ago, and its just been a husk of anger walking through the remains of that life.

This is as dry a case as you can get; the only variable is establishing if Tetsuya did everything alone, or if there was a support group or even a grooming agency that prodded him into this action.

> Manson family

There was a Christian element to the Manson Family

They are very aware, the same thing happened in Japans most prominent politician murder which happened live on TV, Yamaguchi Otoya is worshipped by the far right for killing a Communist party leader with a wakizashi on stage.

Oh true I was thinking more of the race war component of it all but he was talking a Christian style apocalypse wasn't he.

Fuck the church.

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But it’s his moms money. Was she hurt by the church? Sounds like he’s just bitter his mom neglected him and donated the money instead of giving it to him?

Picture loosing your father at the age of 4, and for the rest of your life your mother provides the extreme bare minimum for you and your siblings while sending every penny to a stranger saying "good things will happen to you if you keep sending me money. I know I said that last time but this time for real"

Ya know what would have helped prevent his brother's suicide? Money for a therapist. Or maybe the depression was onset from constant lack of money in the first place. You know who never helps anything? Literally anyone involved with mega churches.

His entire life and family were ruined by the Unification Church and you think he shot a former prime minister (who openly supported such predatory behavior on desperate individuals) because of...greed?

He was bitter but its not because he didnt get any money... He was probably bitter because his dad committed suicide, a cult “brainwashed” his mother leaving his family bankrupt, than his brother commits suicide… That kinda shit will make a person bitter…

No.

A cult is a group of people centered around a central leader who controls literally every aspect of the followers’ lives in minute detail. If someone belongs to a religion and feels free to, for example, go find a different pastor/teacher/priest to follow, this alone would make it not a cult. If said person can leave the religion without dire personal consequences, it is not a cult. If said person is free to spend money on things unrelated to the religion, it is not a cult.

If it helps, you could say religion is to government as cults are to fascism.

I get that you are an atheist and think religion is stupid. But please understand there are important distinctions to make. And if you think religion is bad, you need to know cults are worse.

I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that.

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Considering that his life had already ended by the church beforehand, I don't think he would think of his state of living the same way most people would think of their state of living.

>or killing a Communist party leader

Socialist Party.

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You just made up that definition of cult.

Did not.

Only difference between a cult and a religion is that a cult is a social movement in the now, and a religion is a social movement in the generational sense. They're equally bonkers, its just that religions are entirely self destructive enough to wipe themselves out out before it gets handed down to children.

reading comprehension: 0. The article you linked refutes your definition almost immediately. Read it harder

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