Japan’s government said Thursday it would ask a court to strip the Unification Church of its legal status after the killing of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe raised questions about the group’s fundraising and recruiting tactics.
Education Minister Masahito Moriyama said his ministry proposed the repeal after interviewing more than 170 people who were allegedly harmed by fundraising tactics and other problems. The church failed to answer dozens of questions during seven investigations, he said.
If its legal status is revoked, the church will lose its tax exemption privileges as a religious organization but will still be able to operate.
Decades of good relations between the South Korea-based church and Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party were exposed in the investigation into Abe’s killing in 2022 and have sparked public outrage. The man accused of shooting Abe at a campaign event told police he was motivated by the former prime minister’s ties to a church that had bankrupted his family because of his mother’s excessive donations.
Unification Church headquarters, in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward, September 27, 2022. (Kazuhiro NOGI/AFP)
The Unification Church, founded by founder Sun Myung Moon, gained legal status as a religious organization in Japan in 1968 amid an anti-communist movement supported by Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.
The church has faced hundreds of civil lawsuits and acknowledged excessive donations but said the problem had been addressed for more than a decade. They also promised further reforms.
For decades, the church psychologically pressured its followers into inability to make decisions, making them buy expensive items and donate beyond their financial means, which also affected their family lives, Moriyama said.
Systematic fundraising tactics breed fear and confusion and grossly deviate from laws on religious groups, where the purpose of a church’s legal status is to provide peace of mind to the community, he said.
“Such activity constitutes wrongful conduct under Civil Law and the losses it causes are enormous,” Moriyama said.
Japanese Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Masahito Moriyama at the Religious Affairs Council meeting in Tokyo, October 12, 2023. ( JIJI Press / AFP)
The Cultural Affairs Agency found 32 cases of civil lawsuits admitting losses of 2.2 billion yen ($14.7 million) suffered by 169 people, while the amount of settlements reached in or out of court amounted to 20.4 billion yen ($137 million) and involving 1,550 people, Moriyama said.
Moriyama said the ministry would submit its request to the Tokyo District Court on Friday seeking an order revoking its legal status. The process involves hearing from both parties and will take some time.
Japan has obstacles in limiting religious activities due to lessons learned from the suppression of freedom of religion and thought before the war and during the war.
Since the 1970s, the church has been accused of underhanded business and recruiting tactics, including brainwashing its members into making large donations to Moon that jeopardized their financial condition. Experts say its followers in Japan are being asked to pay for sins committed by their ancestors during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945, and most of the church’s worldwide funding comes from Japan.
If the court grants the order, the Unification Church would become the first religious organization in Japan to lose its legal status due to civil law violations.
Two previous cases involved criminal prosecutions – the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday sect, which carried out the sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and the Myokakuji group, whose executives were convicted of fraud. (ab/uh)