Shots Fired! A Tale of Two Assassins
Prose, editorial, essay | Gun violence, assassins, and the Propaganda of the deed in Japan and America, health insurance, Luigi Mangione, Tetsuya Yamagami, unification church
When you think of Japan, you think of cherry blossoms, ladies in beautiful kimonos, and maybe ninjas and samurai. Japan is so cool and weird! Japan has a reputation for being a very peaceful place with not so much violent crime, let alone gun violence. So imagine my surprise, when as I was settling into a long day desk-warming at my assistant teaching job, and after dutifully studying my Japanese kanji and completing my Japanese homework, that I pulled up a news article about something incredible:
“Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been shot,” read one of the news headlines.
What is Shinzo Abe doing in America? I thought wistfully.
Gun Violence in America
Gun violence was one of the factors that had pushed me to apply for teaching jobs abroad, after all. My first teaching job in graduate school was marked by news stories of a new genre of school shooting: college edition. Many in my teaching associate cohort were understandably upset about the new reality of possible violence in the workplace. I had accepted that mass shootings in America were now commonplace and mundane after I had been caught in a lockdown at Cal State Fullerton in 2012, just days before the Sandy Hook massacre.
Sandy Hook and Active Shooter Drills
After the inaction over Sandy Hook and what felt like a watershed moment for the soul of America, I felt that perhaps my morality was diametrically opposed to my countrymen’s: that sacrificing the souls of 20 children and 6 adults for the freedom to bear weapons of war without restriction was worth the cost. And I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had some PTSD from the lockdown experience and the active shooter drills that became mandatory for school employees.
In 2015, after it became clear that the lives of Americans were cheap and unimportant to our fearless leaders, I remember telling my freshman composition students (much to their discomfort) to study the layout of the classroom and always have a plan. If a gunman were to come in through the door, I would probably be the first victim. I also told them to not worry about me, because (at the ripe old age of 25) I had lived my life without regret and I had traveled and seen so many beautiful things that I was not afraid of death. But I wanted them to live to see that too, and to do whatever was necessary to survive if there was someone coming to kill them.
Culture Shock in Japan
When I arrived in Japan in 2019 and went to my assigned high school for the first time, I found myself following my own advice: exploring the school, looking for exits, hiding spots, and creating a mental map in case I needed to make a quick exit. I still jumped at loud noises and doors opened too quickly. And then something wild happened.
In this sleepy, rural town filled with old people giving me vegetables and curious people making cautious conversation, I started to relax. I started to trust people, even strangers. I stopped looking for exits and hiding spots. I stopped jumping at loud noises.
So imagine my utter shock when I learned that the former Prime Minister of Japan had been shot in Japan. With a homemade blunderbuss.
A Tragic Hero or An Assassin?
What was even more shocking was the public’s response to the assassin’s motive. Tetsuya Yamagami was embraced as a hero after the public started to learn about his reason for shooting Shinzo Abe.
The Unification Church of Japan
Yamagami claimed that his family had been victims of the Unification Church (known popularly as the Moonies) in Japan. The Unification Church in Japan is known to emotionally manipulate people into donating large portions of money to the church or buying expensive trinkets. For example, a UC member might come up to you one day out of the blue and tell you that your deceased loved one cannot go to heaven. In fact, they are cursed to be in hell until you send a fat check to their church or buy their special trinket.
Yamagami’s Family
Remember, many Japanese people are extremely trusting of people and can fall easily into scams of the emotionally manipulative nature. And this was the case for Yamagami’s mother who became a devout follower of the church following her husband’s suicide and donated 100 million yen (~$633,412.51) to the church; This included her husband’s life insurance policy and several properties, and left her family bankrupt in the process. The lack of money made life miserable for Tetsuya and his siblings. His brother had a lymphoma in his eye that eventually blinded him, because he didn’t have money to pay for medical bills. Testsuya himself had to join the Self Defense Force and having discovered that his brother was struggling, took out life insurance on himself and attempted suicide so that his brother could live a more comfortable life. His brother committed suicide in 2005.
The Public’s Response
As the public learned of Yamagami’s history and abuse from the church, many others that had been victims directly and second generation victims of the church came forward. Instead of the public focusing their rage on Yamagami for the assassination of Shinzo Abe, the public felt largely sympathetic to him. Instead, they turned their eyes to the Unification Church and its entanglement in the structures of power in their government.
Shinzo Abe, before his assassination, had praised the leader of the Unification Church and also had taken a fat check from them. There was great outrage in Japan over Shinzo Abe’s state funeral, even. Kishida was forced to purge cabinet members with any connection to the church, but not before dodging a pipe bomb himself.
An American Tale
I see this story echoed in the recent UnitedHealth CEO assassination. While the details of the case are largely still under investigation, there are many similarities to the Abe assassination.
The Mundane Evil of the American Health Insurance Industry
There are many victims of the American health insurance industry. It treats Americans like old and or injured horses to be sent to the glue factory. Except, the industry charges those horses exorbitant amounts of money for the privilege.
I’m sure many people can comment about their experiences more than I can. My health problems were largely handled in Japan with their robust national healthcare system.
I just know that when my American roommate in Italy fell face first into the curb and chipped her tooth, it caused quite the spectacle. Not because of what happened – many Italian people came out to come help her up and they tried to call the ambulance for her. The spectacle came from her flat out refusing the ambulance. In America, an ambulance ride can cost between $500-$2000 without insurance. In Italy, ambulance rides are free of charge.
For people that don’t come from money, this means that healthcare becomes inaccessible, or something only for rich people. Your hurt and pain or chipped tooth is something to be dealt with via home remedies or prayer or maybe a free clinic. That feeling of “my pain is too expensive to fix” gets internalized. This also leads to “my life is too expensive to live,” or “I don’t want to be a financial burden on my family.” So people die, there are empty chairs at holiday feasts, and holes in the hearts of surviving loved ones.
Even with insurance, after dutifully paying into your healthcare, which is tied to your employment (employment that may be at-will, and tenuous at that), it is possible for an insurance company employee to tell your doctor that no, the life saving medicine or procedure that your doctor has recommended is not medically necessary. And now, you can’t even traumatize an insurance company employee with your life story. Your decision for medically necessary medicine or procedures is determined by an Artificial Intelligence – the Almighty Algorithm. And if you are lucky enough to be approved for medical care, but can’t cover the cost, there’s always gofundme. Let’s hope you are cute or popular enough to get people to send you money to cover your medical expenses.
Having experienced socialized medicine in two countries, I can say the American health insurance system is a barbaric shell game. There is no reason to maintain a system of such mundane evil besides the sickening amounts of money that it puts into the pockets of health insurance CEOs.
Gilded Age 2: The Propaganda of the Deed
The suspected assassin of the UnitedHealth CEO, Luigi Mangione, enjoys popular support from Americans, much like Tetsuya Yamagami from most of the Japanese people. It is not the targets that were of specific value, but of symbolic value. Mangione, possibly dealing with his own experiences with a chronic condition and the American health insurance industry, and Yamagami choosing an influential politician with deep ties to the corrupt Unification Church, may have chosen symbolic targets for what is known as the “propaganda of the deed.” This idea was popularized during the last Gilded Age of robber barons and anarchists that certain symbolic, violent direct actions could inspire a spirit of revolt among the people and lead to a revolution or extreme systemic change.
In the case of Yamagami, it seemed like he knew his life was forfeit when he shot the former Prime Minister in the streets of Nara. His mental health evaluation for standing trial has taken an unusually long 6 months to complete, as some people speculate that prosecutors are waiting for public sympathy to die down. However, it can be argued that his assassination was successful in its aims of showing the world the abuses that the Unification Church had wrought upon families and its deep ties with the ruling party of Japan.
In the case of Mangione, it remains to be seen if there will be copycat assassinations or wide systemic change. Given the similar public sympathy towards Mangione, I am interested to see if anything will happen as a result. For example, I haven’t seen much investigation into health insurance ties into our government in the mainstream media(which I’m sure it has on a dog leash). It seems that UnitedHealth spends a big chunk of money on lobbying the government, as well as having many of its employees go back and forth between government jobs and jobs in its own companies.
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