The man said he targeted the former prime minister in July 2022 because he believed he was associated with the church that allegedly bankrupted his family.
The Japanese government on Friday asked a court to order the dissolution of the Unification Church’s branch in Japan following the assassination of the country’s former prime minister Shinzo Abe in July 2022.
The government’s move comes after a months-long investigation into the church, formally known in Japan as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
The investigation followed allegations by the alleged gunman, Tetsuya Yamagami, that he shot Abe because he believed the leader was associated with the church, which Yamagami blamed for bankrupting his family through excessive donations made by his mother, who was a member.
In early January, Japanese prosecutors indicted Yamagami for murder and carrying a firearm.
The government’s investigation concluded that the religious group’s practices – including fundraising activities that allegedly pressured followers to make exorbitant donations – violated the 1951 Religious Corporations Act.
This law allows Japanese courts to order the dissolution of a religious group if it has committed an act “clearly deemed substantially detrimental to the public welfare”.
The Tokyo District Court will now make a decision based on the evidence presented by the government, according to Japanese public broadcaster NHK.
This is the third time the Japanese government has sought a dissolution order for a religious group accused of breaking the law.
The government has also sought to dissolve the Aum Shinrikyo cult, after some of its members committed a deadly sarin gas attack in 1995 on the Tokyo subway system that left dozens dead and thousands injured, and the Myokaku-ji Temple, whose priests are accused of defrauding people by charging for exorcisms.
The courts ruled in agreement with the government in both cases.
The Unification Church in Japan has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, promising reforms and labeling news coverage against it as “biased” and “false”.
On Thursday, the group issued a statement, saying it was “very regrettable” that the government was seeking the dissolution order, especially since it had been “working on reforming the Church” since 2009. It added that it would present legal arguments against the court order.
If dissolved, the Unification Church, founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon in South Korea in 1954, would lose its status as a religious corporation in Japan and would be deprived of tax benefits. However, it could still operate as a corporate entity.
Experts argue that an order to completely dissolve the group could take years to process and could even risk driving the entity’s activities underground.
Reverend Sun Myung Moon, controversial Korean religious leader and founder of the Unification Church
Why this order?
The Unification Church has become known worldwide for its mass weddings, in which thousands of couples marry simultaneously, with some brides and grooms meeting their partners for the first time on their wedding day.
Public scrutiny of the church in Japan increased after Abe was shot dead during an election campaign speech in July last year.
Abe’s alleged attacker told police that his family was ruined because of the huge sums in donations his mother made to a religious group, which he claimed had close ties to the late former prime minister, according to NHK.
A spokesman for the Unification Church confirmed to reporters in Tokyo that the suspect’s mother was a member of the church, Reuters reported, but said that neither Abe nor the alleged killer were members.
Following Abe’s death, local media published a series of reports alleging that several other lawmakers from the country’s ruling party had links to the church, prompting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to order an investigation.
Kishida told reporters on Thursday that ruling party lawmakers had cut ties with the religious group amid concerns that the Unification Church was trying to exert political influence.
Since November last year, Japan’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs has questioned and sought documents from the Unification Church, while also collecting testimonies from around 170 people who say they were pressured into making massive donations known in Japan as “spiritual sales”.
The practice involves asking the faithful to buy objects such as urns and amulets, claiming that this will appease their ancestors and save future generations, according to Sakurai Yoshihid, an expert in religious studies at Hokkaido University.
Previous controversies
This is not the first time that the Unification Church has been at the center of a controversy. Naomi Honma, a former member of the Unification Church, told CNN that between 1991 and 2003 she worked on a legal case called “Give Us Back Our Youth”, a lawsuit which alleged that the Unification Church had used deceptive and manipulative techniques to recruit unsuspecting members of the public.
This, they argued, had the potential to violate the freedom of thought and conscience upheld by Article 20 of Japan’s Constitution.
After a 14-year trial, several depositions of plaintiffs and a 999-page report describing the group’s “mind control” process, the trial came to an end.
The Sapporo District Court made a landmark ruling in favor of 20 former Unification Church members who sued the group as part of the case.
It ordered the Unification Church to pay around 29.5 million yen (around R$1.01 million) in damages for recruiting and indoctrinating people “while concealing the true identity of the church” and for “coercing some former members to buy expensive items and donate large amounts of money”.
In another controversial case, between 1987 and 2021, the Unification Church in Japan incurred compensation claims for the sale of amulets and urns totaling around US$1 billion, according to the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales – a group set up in 1987 specifically to oppose the Unification Church.
Nobutaka Inoue, a specialist in contemporary Japanese religion at Kokugakuin University, criticizes the techniques used by the church to recruit and raise funds. However, he also notes that some of its members felt happy and at peace after making donations to the Unification Church.