Too soon?

In 2022, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who at the time had retired and was a Member of Parliament, was shot on the street while campaigning for a fellow party member in Nara City and died soon after. It was a shocking incident in a country with very strict gun control, which the killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, circumvented by building a gun from pipes and a wooden board.

The case took an even more surreal turn in the aftermath of the incident, when it was learned that Yamagami had intended to kill Abe partly because of his connection with the Unification Church, which he claimed bankrupted his mother years earlier. As a result, connections between the religion and Japanese government were heavily scrutinized, and in 2026, the Unification Church was stripped of its official religious status in Japan. It’s something that’s only happened to two other groups before, one of which was Aum Shinrikyo, whose members carried out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

The entire case became a murky chapter in Japanese history, but it appears a movie based on the events that transpired is in the works by an unnamed studio and director, both of whom are said to be well-known in Japan. One name that has been mentioned by an unnamed source is actor and singer Masaki Suda, but his agency has not commented on the matter.

▼ Suda made his debut in Kamen Rider W (he’s the guy seen below without a hat), and was the youngest actor to ever play a Kamen Rider, at 16 years old, though I suppose he was technically only half of a Kamen Rider.

According to insiders who spoke with Tokyo Sports, the movie will be from the perspective of reporters covering the incident, possibly to minimize the chances of appearing biased in this potentially politically charged subject matter. However, the insider also said that producers are expecting the controversy surrounding the film to make it one of the highest-grossing of all time in Japan.

Comments online seem almost unanimously against this movie being made, with the biggest point of debate being whether this is bad because it promotes terrorism or bad because there isn’t enough substance to warrant making a decent movie about it.

“Is there really a need to turn this into a movie?”
“Who’s going to play Abe?”
“This is abnormal and bizarre… There are still people living through this, and the trial isn’t even concluded yet.”
“Does this guy even have enough backstory for a movie?”
“It makes me sick that they’re turning Prime Minister Abe’s assassination into entertainment.”
“Unbelievable. Surely they’re not going to glorify a terrorist like Yamagami.”
“I don’t think we should be giving this person any more attention.”
“This is probably going to backfire on them. Who wants to see a movie about this anyway?”
“Is a movie about an incident caused by the whim of some idiot who hated his life and blamed everyone else really going to be interesting?”
“I hope this is just a hoax. This movie shouldn’t be made.”

It could be said that this is a knee-jerk reaction to the news, and over time, morbid curiosity will bring people to the theaters if this movie is ever released. Then again, within days of the killing, a rough cut of another film, Revolution+1, was screened by former Japanese Red Army member and director Masao Adachi on the date of Abe’s state funeral.

The film follows the story of a man named Tatsuya Kawakami, but mirrors the reported life of Tetsuya Yamagami very closely. It was a low-budget independent movie with a limited screening, and ultimately still hasn’t generated a great deal of attention from the public at large.

So it’s a long shot that an Abe assassination dramatization, only a few years after the incident occurred, would be boffo box-office. There’s been a great deal of secrecy surrounding the project, so only time will tell if they even go through with it from here on out.

Source: Tokyo Sports, My Game News Flash, Twitter/@tospo_prores
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