Suspect in Japan PM pipe bomb attack wanted to be a politician, angry he was blocked from running, report says

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A 24-year-old man who allegedly threw an explosive at Prime Minister Fumio Kishida wanted to be a politician and believed that he was unfairly blocked from running for Japan’s parliament by an age requirement, according to media reports and social media posts that appeared to be his.

The suspect, Ryuji Kimura, was wrestled to the ground and arrested Saturday at a campaign event in the fishing port of Saikazaki, in the western Japanese city of Wakayama. The explosive, believed to be a pipe bomb, landed near Kishida, who escaped unhurt.

Kimura has refused to talk to police, but local media reports that he bore grievances about Japan’s election system might shed light on his motives.

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In June last year Kimura, who police said is unemployed, filed a lawsuit with the Kobe District Court claiming that he should have been allowed to register for the July 2022 Upper House election, according to Japanese media including NHK public television and Kyodo News. A candidate must be aged 30 years or older and present a $22,260 deposit to run for the upper house, the less powerful of Japan’s two-chamber parliament. He was 23 at the time.

He demanded the government pay $740 in compensation for his psychological anguish, according to the reports.

Ryuji Kimura gets arrested on April 15, 2023, in a pipe bomb attack against Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Kishida’s actions may have been politically motivated. (Kyodo News via AP, File)

Violent crimes are rare in Japan. With its strict gun control laws, the country has only a handful of gun-related crimes annually, most of them gang related. But in recent years Japanese police have worried about “lone offender” attacks with homemade guns and explosives. Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated with a homemade gun at a campaign event on July 8, just two days before the upper house election.

In a document he submitted to the court, Kimura argued that the election system that blocked his candidacy was unconstitutional, the reports said.

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Kimura argued that the election law violates constitutional guarantees of equality and other rights, according to media reports. The court dismissed his claim in a November 2022 ruling, and Kimura appealed the decision to the Osaka High Court, whose decision is expected in May, reports say.

Tweets posted to an account cited by local media as Kimura’s and seen by the Associated Press complained about Japan’s political system. The account does not carry his name, but identifies itself as representing the plaintiff in a lawsuit that matches the one filed by Kimura. The Associated Press was not able to contact the owner of the account. The account had only 23 posts since it began late June.

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An Aug. 11, 2022 tweet said the deck is stacked against ordinary people who quit their job and pay the deposit to run in national elections. “There is an established system where ordinary people can never become politicians.”

Other tweets on the account criticized Kishida’s decision to hold a state funeral for Abe.

The man accused of shooting Abe, Tetsuya Yamagami, told authorities soon after his arrest that he killed Abe because of the former prime minister’s apparent links to a religious group that Yamagami hated. In statements and in social media posts attributed to him, Yamagami said his mother’s donations to the Unification Church bankrupted his family and ruined his life.