SNA (Tokyo) — In the weeks since Nara resident Tetsuya Yamagami used a homemade gun to shoot and kill former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in front of his city’s Kintetsu Yamatosaidaiji Station, the nation and the world have been grappling with the question of why the assassination occurred.

As has now been widely reported, Yamagami believed that his family had been destroyed by the Unification Church because his mother had donated away the family’s assets. It is believed that a speech Abe delivered last September to a Unification Church event, in which he praised the church’s focus on family values, may have led Yamagami to focus his attention on the former prime minister, ultimately culminating in the tragic event last month.

I myself grew up in Nara and lived there until I was eighteen. I even used Yamatosaidaiji Station on my way to and from school each day. I never imagined that this peaceful, bucolic station so full of childhood memories would become the site of Shinzo Abe’s violent death.

But it’s not my memories of my hometown that I most want to discuss in this installment of my column–nor even the topic of religion and politics–but rather to reflect on the experience of Tetsuya Yamagami, a man who belonged to what in Japan is sometimes called the lost generation.

The expression refers to those born between 1970 and 1984 (who are now in their 40s and early 50s), who found it increasingly more difficult to find stable employment after the Bubble Economy in the early 1990s and early 2000s. Many in this generation felt themselves doomed to a life of near-poverty and precarious employment. I too belong to this generation.

Yamagami’s hardships do not excuse murder, but I do feel that there are some lessons to be learned.

For example, I cannot shake the feeling that this assassination was tied to the income disparity and social alienation that have grown within Japanese society over the past three decades. Life has been brutish for men of our generation. I specifically say men here to draw attention to how men–according to the gender roles which still prevail in Japan–are expected to achieve far more in terms of social status and work performance than women. Men who fail to perform as a “man” tend to be criticized without mercy. If these men point to external factors such as society or the environment for their lack of achievement, there is a tendency to accuse them of shifting responsibility, making excuses, rather than accepting defeat graciously like, well, a man.

During his 2001-2006 term as prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi pushed through his “structural reforms with no sanctuary.” He gutted labor laws and brought untold misery to the workplace under the guise of performance-based and results-based rewards. Prime Minister Abe degraded the condition of ordinary workers even further under the slogan of “workplace reform” (hatarakikata kaikaku). He spoke pretty words about a society in which everyone can participate (i.e. can be used as cheap labor) while casual, insecure, and contingent work vastly expanded.

During the first seven years (2012-2019) of Abe’s second term, real wages fell by about 5%, according to the government’s own data. By May of this year, the proportion of irregular workers (hiseiki rodosha) had risen to 36.4%. Shinzo Abe was responsible for a great deal of this increased job insecurity and the worsening conditions.

Of course, the damage hit workers regardless of gender, and overall women have had the worst of it. Nevertheless, the social expectations placed upon men add a special degree of psychological harshness. Men aren’t afforded the social space to show weakness, admit vulnerability, or to seek help, leading to further alienation and atomization.

Tetsuya Yamagami was born in 1980. He lived with his parents, a younger sister, and a brother who had lost his sight due to cancer. His father killed himself when Yamagami was four, and soon after his mother committed herself to the Unification Church. According to relatives, his mother effectively stopped paying any attention to her children and devoted all her time, money, real estate, and other assets–everything she owned–to the church. She is reported to have eventually donated a total of ¥100 million (US$740,000), driving the family into dire poverty.

Relatives testify that Yamagami rarely had a day where he could eat his full. He managed to get into Koriyama High School, considered the second best in Nara, but couldn’t go to college due to the fact that his mother had given away all his education money. Since the high school boasts a near 100% university advancement rate, Yamagami was basically the only person in his class who couldn’t receive higher education, in spite of the fact that he was considered one of the smartest and most promising students.

In 2002, Yamagami entered the Maritime Self-Defense Forces (Japan’s navy) on a three-year appointment. Here it is believed he learned how to use, prepare, and manufacture guns. He went on to do part-time work at a surveying company, acquiring certification as an assistant surveyor, real estate transaction specialist, and financial planner.

In 2015, his blind older brother committed suicide. Friends of the family remember how hard Yamagami took his brother’s death, weeping bitterly at the funeral.

By this time Yamagami was drifting from job to job, and even drove a forklift as a temp agency worker. All his jobs were contingent and insecure. He lived alone in a tiny studio apartment, where he eventually made his preparations for murder.

Tetsuya Yamagami’s experience was cruel in a way that is difficult to express in words. He apparently felt that he had no place to go to relieve his desperation and loneliness. His alienation appears to have led him to his unspeakable act. His suffering does not justify what he did, but it does underline the need to develop a society which cares more for its workers than has been the case in the era of the lost generation.

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