Tetsuya Yamagami, the suspect in the shooting death of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, told police investigators that he had tracked Abe's campaign route and went to the venue for Abe's speech in Okayama the day before the shooting, but abandoned an attempted entry due to the "difficult admission procedures," according to NHK on Sunday.

Yamagami also admitted that he had test-fired a homemade handgun after the Nara Prefectural police searched his car and found several wooden boards with multiple holes, according to the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper.