This article surveys the highlights of Japanese political assassination from 1909 to 2022 through the commemoration of the victims and photographs of the major sites in Tokyo.

The killing of Abe Shinzo sparked a backlash in Japan against the Unification Church, after the assassin blamed it for his family's destitution and linked the former prime minister to the Korean cult. This has led to a government investigation of the Unification Church, popularly known as the Moonies, that may result in its disbandment in Japan. The scandal has focused attention on the vital role played by Japan in financing the sect founded by Moon Sun Myung, and the strange history that spawned a global empire swaddled in taboo.

Although Prime Minister Abe Shinzo repeatedly touted Japan's values-oriented foreign policy in Asia there was little substance to this agenda. Like other nations, Tokyo downplays human rights and democratic values in favor of maintaining trade ties and securing geo-strategic advantage. It is thus a values-free diplomacy of pragmatism and expediency, dealing with regional governments as they are, not as one might wish them to be. Japan is certainly not unique in this regard, but Abe invites scrutiny of the government's record due to his rhetorical grandstanding. Colonial and wartime legacies have made it problematic for Japan to lecture and pressure regional governments on their political systems and practices. Moreover, the escalating rivalry with China for regional influence reinforces Tokyo's hesitation to promote democratic reforms for fear that it will lose clout by driving governments into Beijing's unconditional embrace.

Author Wada notes that following the collapse of the Japanese empire in 1945, relations between Japan and all parts of the old empire but one have been normalized, mostly long ago. Only with its neighbour, North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea or DPRK) has there been no normalization. In this essay, which is drawn from his extensive writing in Japanese on the subject and follows two earlier related essays in APJJF (2005 and 2022), Wada asks why negotiations, that began in 1991, have been stonewalled for so long. Examining the forces that have shaped Japanese policy, he argues that the issue of abduction by North Korea of Japanese citizens in the 1970s was manipulated by fiercely anti-North Korean elements leading to the adoption as national policy of what he calls the “Three Abe Principles” in the time of the Abe Shinzo (2006-7, 2012-2020) government. Periodic offers of negotiation towards normalization without preconditions since then have not been intended seriously and constitute a thin blanket covering hostility. Those principles are an obstacle to normalization and must be changed, Wada insists.

This study investigates how former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) tried to reproduce and reinforce their conservative and nationalist ideologies from 2012 to 2020. Conducting critical discourse analysis on official statements, speeches, and remarks at press conferences highlights the strategies that Abe and his sympathizers used to promote and legitimize the idea of “Take back Japan (Nippon wo torimodosu).” This study also elucidates the implications of the party's efforts to reproduce and disseminate its campaign slogan in official narratives.

Signaling by politicians, bureaucrats, and educational administrators plays a key role in curbing academic freedom in Japan by highlighting taboo subjects and funding priorities. Structural constraints on autonomy, however, represent the most insidious threat to academic freedom. Neoliberal reforms enacted in Japan over the past two decades have compromised academic freedom and undermined university autonomy. Overall, under the pretext of reform, higher education has become more rigidly hierarchical while there is a chronic lack of diversity that fosters narrow groupthink. On Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's watch, online harassment of academics surged while prominent revisionists targeted scholars over interpretations of wartime history.

On 8 July, Abe Shinzō was assassinated during a political rally in Nara. He was Japan's prime minister twice, first in 2006–2007 and then again from 2012 to 2020, when he resigned amid falling approval ratings and ill-health. While Abe's legacy is deeply disputed within Japan, abroad he has been widely praised as an unusually resolute, even transformative statesman who helped the country shake off the deadwood of the postwar era. In this compendium, David McNeill collects a series of short assessments of Abe's legacy in key areas by some of the journal's lead writers.

Since the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has seen a flood of media and legal responses to connections between religion and politics. However, there has been little analysis to date of how we know what we know about developments in religion, law, and politics in Japan that were precipitated by this shocking event. These articles by Saitō Masami and Ioannis Gaitanidis contribute novel inquiries into local-level journalism and lawyers’ activism through interactions by these two researchers with the people who produce media narratives and legal interpretations. This brief introduction situates their insights within readings of opponents and defenders of the Unification Church who have shaped public discourse on intersections between religion and politics since July 2022.