Japan MP Hamada Protests Moonies' Deprival Of Religious Freedom

2025-04-21 03:18:43

(MENAFN- Asia Times) On March 25, a Tokyo district court issued a ruling ordering the dissolution of a religious organization called the Family Federation of World Peace and Unification, formerly called the Unification Church.

Japan's powerful Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology – Monbusho – had sought the Family Federation ruling over what the ministry alleged were illegal solicitations of high-denomination donations by the church.

The predecessor of the Family Federation of World Peace and Unification was founded in South Korea by Moon Sun-myung. Moon and his followers, often termed Moonies, long exercised outsized influence over conservative politicians and political parties in South Korea, Japan and the United States.

While the Japanese government claimed it sought the dissolution ruling out of concern for citizens who had lost money to the Family Federation, the truth is more complicated. In July 2022, a lone gunman, Tetsuya Yamagami, is alleged to have assassinated former prime minister Shinzo over Abe's ties to the beleaguered church.

Yamagami claimed, according to police reports, that his mother had donated large sums of money to the World Federation, bankrupting the family. Abe's support for the church apparently pushed Yamagami to take out his anger with the religious group on the group's political ally.

In the subsequent media frenzy, it was discovered that many other members of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) had been using church connections for fundraising and to get out the vote on election day. Confronted with its ties to a religious group originating in South Korea, the LDP scrambled to distance itself from the World Federation church – in part by portraying it as a dangerous organization akin to a mafia organziation or violent cult.

Because the LDP had been content to use the church until it became a political liability to do so, the party's efforts to quash the World Federation to many seemed to be inspired more by political calculation than by a desire to help Japanese citizens reclaim lost monies.

There is also considerable speculation in Japan over the extent to which Yamagami's motives for targeting Abe really stemmed from Yamagami's dissatisfaction with the World Federation church.

What has gone largely unreported in the media is that there is a ring of anti-World Federation lawyers and activists in Japan who have made a name for themselves by ginning up hatred against the church and its members.

Also missing from media reports in Japan is the fact that some of these activists have kidnapped church members and held them captive until the members have been“deprogrammed” from believing in what the anti-church activists insist is a“cult .”

Did Yamagami plot Abe's death in isolation, or was Yamagami goaded into violence by hateful anti-church rhetoric?

Although the issue involving the World Federation church, the LDP and the assassination of former PM Abe has been covered at length in Japan, there has been very little substantial debate on the issue among politicians or in the news media.

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