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.
The silence about anti-church human rights abuses in the midst of the media and political frenzy over the Abe assassination has become an issue in its own right. With such core principles as religious freedom and freedom of association on the line as the Japanese government exercises unilateral power to dismantle a religious organization, we have been struck by how little concern media and political leaders have shown over the controversy.
We spoke with House of Councilors member Satoshi Hamada, a member of a minority political party, NHK Kara Kokumin o Mamoru To (Protect the People from NHK Party). To our knowledge, Hamada is the only national politician to speak out against the LDP’s attempts to shut down a religious group for a crime that appears to amount to causing embarrassment for the LDP.
We first learned about your free speech activism in a recent book put out by a World Federation publication, a newspaper called Sekai Nippo. In the book, you question the one-sided media coverage of the World Federation. What sparked your interest?
The vice-director of Shokyo Rengo [International Federation for Victory over Communism; IFVOC – a political movement organized under the aegis of the World Federation] approached me for a consultation. Members of parliament are able to present the executive branch of government, the Naikaku, with formal written questions on government policy and actions. I submitted questions concerning matters related to the World Federation and received an official response in about a week.
One of the questions I asked was about the order that the government sought: to dissolve the World Federation as a religious organization. I wanted to know why the government – which had long held that the World Federation ought to be dissolved on the grounds that it had engaged in criminal activity – later, under the Fumio Kishida administration, changed the scope of its interpretation of World Federation activities and included civil offenses as well.
It was while I was working with the IFVOC representative on the preparation of the formal questions and then receiving the government’s response that I first became interested in issues involving the World Federation.
Thereafter, I had the opportunity to speak with someone from the World Federation. It is true that, in the past, there were problems with large-sum donations to the Unification Church. In 2009, however, the organization issued a statement vowing strict adherence to all governing rules and regulations.
What is most important, to my mind, is that some members of the World Federation church have been forced out of the church. The way this has often been accomplished has been to abduct a church member and hold him or her against his or her will until the person vows to leave the church. The number of people who have been so abducted and held captive is quite high – in the several thousands.
This is, of course, an extremely important fact, but I had known nothing about the abductions and detentions. I came to understand that something of great consequence was unfolding, and that the people of Japan ought to be informed about these things. I therefore brought this up in the Japanese national assembly.
There’s another grave problem, namely people called “dakkaiya,” or those who specialize in forcing people to give up their religious beliefs. The most well-known of these so-called dakkaiya is a man named Takashi Miyamura.
Miyamura has been in communication with an attorneys’ group working for the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP) of Japan. I also asked about this in my formal question to the government, as it was brought to my attention by the World Federation side during their visit with me.
The gist of this aspect of the issue is that a nationally recognized political party is aligned with those who use force and imprisonment against people who believe in a certain religion. I found this problematic.
Are there any other members of parliament who have said that they share your concerns?
No.
Are there other members who speak out in public about the importance of religious freedom?
As of now, none.
What about the Japanese people? Do they have an interest in religious freedom?
It seems that such people are in the minority. Some public intellectuals and political commentators are speaking up about it, but their numbers are still few as well. The news media have a very big effect on what the public thinks, and the mainstream media in Japan are still attacking free-speech advocates in a very aggressive way.
The abduction of innocent people and the interference in religious beliefs with the backing of a part of the government are indeed serious problems. And yet, the Japanese news media have spent very little, if any, time covering these matters. Do you see the media and the government as working together?
Each television station will have its own political stance, of course. In Japan, many television stations are sympathetic to the Constitutional Democratic Party.
Also, because the World Federation is allied with a political group dedicated to overcoming communism, the IFVOC, the World Federation is greatly disliked by the Japanese Communist Party.
The Japan Communist Party and the Constitutional Democratic Party get along very well, and both are in very good standing with the Japanese media. Therefore, many stations will not run reports on people who have been forced to abandon their religious beliefs or on the dakkaiya who are effecting these forced abandonments. However, many media outlets have covered extensively the connections between the LDP and the World Federation.
Recently, I have said publicly that I attend World Federation events and speak there, and that I do so as a current member of parliament. I have questioned out loud why the media do not go into a frenzy over this, or why the media seem not to cover it at all. I have invited the media to contact me at any time, saying that I will be happy to answer questions and do interviews. But nobody contacts me.
The media have been portraying the World Federation as a cult. Do you think it’s troubling that the media seem uninterested in covering World Federation issues from more than one predetermined angle?
The media have engaged in one-sided coverage of the World Federation, showing almost nothing but bad things about the organization.
Article Four of the Japanese Broadcasting Act (Hoso Ho) calls for fairness in covering political topics. However, the media’s coverage of the World Federation has been very far from fair, such as in not covering the thousands of abductions of World Federation members, and in not reporting that the number of negative cases involving the World Federation has decreased dramatically following the 2009 initiative to enforce stricter compliance on donations from members.
And then there is the incomprehensible order that the World Federation be disbanded. There are many problems with the media and the government.
The LDP often partners with Komeito, a political party that works closely with the Buddhist-themed religious group Soka Gakkai. The media also do not cover this apparent contradiction.
Komeito has long been part of the ruling coalition with the LDP and will most likely go on in this position of power into the future. Komeito surely must have known from long ago that the LDP might order another religious organization to disband, and so therefore must be aware of its own tenuous position.
Hence, Komeito’s silence as the World Federation, another religious group with ties to politics, was killed off by Komeito’s political partner, the LDP. Komeito will therefore, undoubtedly, be even more eager than before to stay in the LDP’s good graces and hold on to its position of power.
That said, there have been reports in the past of large-sum donations to Soka Gakkai, just as had happened in the World Federation. So it’s conceivable that Soka Gakkai could meet the same fate as the World Federation. At this point, though, the media do not seem interested in covering this issue at all. Komeito still has many members in the Diet and so still has political power.
