Shinzo Abe was not his assassin’s favorite target.
Investigators say Tetsuya Yamagami, who fatally shot Japan’s longest-serving prime minister on July 8, originally intended to kill the leader of the Unification Church – a South Korean religious sect that the 41-year-old man years blame for the financial ruin of his family. But the COVID-19 pandemic got in the way.
Hak Ja Han Moon, who has led the church since the death in 2012 of its founder – her husband Sun Myung Moon – had stopped coming to Japan following pandemic-related border closures.
In a letter Yamagami sent to a blogger the day before he shot Abe with a homemade weapon, he wrote that it was “impossible” to kill Hak Ja Han Moon. And although Abe was “not my original enemy”, the 67-year-old politician was “one of the most influential supporters” of the Unification Church, he wrote. “I can no longer afford to think about the political implications and the consequences that Abe’s death will bring,” he added.
The brazen killing in the city of Nara, as Abe gave a campaign speech, shocked Japan, a country where political violence and gun crime are extremely rare. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quick to say he would hold a state funeral for Abe as the Japanese public handed his ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a landslide victory in a House election. high that was held just days after the assassination.
But grief quickly gave way to anger amid growing media scrutiny of the church’s extensive ties to Abe and the LDP, and alleged abuses, including allegations of coerced donations. Kishida, meanwhile, saw his approval rating plunge from 63% at the time of Abe’s assassination to around 29% in mid-September, raising questions about the prime minister’s political future.
“The Unification Church is not so much considered a religious organization, but more of a predatory cult in Japan,” said Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. The LDP “outraged” the Japanese people as if “links to a notorious criminal organization had been exposed”, Nakano said.
Church or cult?
Officially known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Reunification and disparagingly called “the Moonies”, Sun Myung Moon founded the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954. The self-proclaimed messiah was a staunch anti-Communist who advocated conservative family-oriented beliefs. Famously, he oversaw mass weddings in which he matched thousands of couples, sometimes pairing photographs of people who had never met before.
Experts say the church’s right-wing beliefs helped it expand overseas during the Cold War.
Moon became good friends with Nobusuke Kishi, who served as Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960 and was Abe’s grandfather. It was Kishi who helped found the church’s political arm, the International Federation for Victory over Communism in Japan in 1968, according to Japanese media. After gaining a foothold in Japan, the church treated its followers there like an “economic army”, a former senior member told Reuters news agency, raising funds by collecting donations and selling “spiritual goods “such as expensive ginseng tea or miniature stone pagodas. .
In the case of Yamagami, Abe’s killer, relatives say his mother, an avid follower, donated some 100 million yen ($692,000) to the church, much of it coming from a life insurance payout following the death of his father by suicide. The donations bankrupted the family and Yamagami, described by his uncle as “extremely intelligent” and “hardworking”, had to abandon his plans to go to college.
A group of lawyers representing victims of the church’s ‘spiritual sales’ in Japan said the religious group was linked to some 30,000 claims involving losses of 123.7 billion yen ($856 million) since 1987 and that the church had used funds raised in Japan to build and seed a multi-billion dollar business empire across the world.
According to the British Financial Times, Moon founded a conglomerate called Tongil Group in South Korea in 1963, and its subsidiaries now operate ski and golf resorts, a defense company, a chemical group, an auto parts company and a log. In the United States, the church’s business interests include the conservative Washington Times newspaper, the New Yorker hotel in New York, seafood wholesaler True World Foods and an extensive real estate portfolio, he said.
Despite complaints about its fundraising practices in Japan, the church continued to find favor with LDP politicians, with whom it shared conservative values, including opposition to LGBTQ rights.
Investigators say it was a video message Abe sent last year to an event hosted by a Unification Church-affiliated group, the Universal Peace Federation (UPF), and attended by Hak Ja Han Moon, who tricked her killer into considering switching targets. In the message to UPF, Abe praised Hak Ja Han Moon and thanked the group for their “focus and emphasis on family values.”
Japanese media, meanwhile, alleged that the church, which now has around 100,000 active followers in Japan, asked its members to help elect the LDP candidates. A former follower told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that she volunteered in campaigns to help elect Abe’s ally Koichi Haguida to “save” Japan. Five former supporters also told Reuters that church officials had asked them to vote for LDP candidates who opposed gay rights.
“The connection between right-wing politicians and a right-wing Church who both oppose women’s rights, LGBTQ rights and want to reverse the hand of history on social developments involving the family has sparked anger” , said Jeffrey Kingston, professor of history and Asian studies at Temple University in Japan. “Their conservative dogma does not enjoy public support.”
“No Shocking Links”
In a bid to respond to the growing outcry, Kishida reshuffled his cabinet, ordered LDP lawmakers to sever ties with the church and announced a new program to help those having trouble with the group. This includes offering legal assistance to those seeking the return of their donations.
The LDP also conducted an internal survey which found nearly half of its 379 national lawmakers had ties to the church. He said some 96 of the lawmakers said they had attended events organized by the church or its affiliates, while 29 said they had accepted donations from the group. Seventeen others said they received electoral support from church followers who volunteered in their campaigns.
Kingston said a full investigation into allegations of church activities in Japan was needed.
“His extensive and longstanding political role remained obscure until the assassination,” he said. “It is in the public interest to scrutinize the organization and its role in politics and whether it complies with regulations applicable to religious organizations.”
The church denied supporting any particular political party and said it did not provide political guidance to its members. He said, however, that his political arm, the UPF, had courted Japanese lawmakers and that most of them belonged to the LDP because of common values.
A UPF spokesperson, Kajikuri Masayoshi, also told NHK that he did not understand the furor over the links between the two groups. “Our relationship is just normal. In most cases, they sent congratulatory telegrams or did interviews with our magazines. I don’t think there were any legal or ethical issues,” he said. he stated at the end of August.
As Japan prepares to hold Abe’s funeral on Tuesday, some analysts said they expect the outcry to die down.
Masaki Nakamasa, a professor of philosophy at Kanazawa University, said he thought the ties between the Unification Church and the LDP were “not that strong”.
Attending church meetings in order to win electoral volunteers does not make lawmakers believers, said Nakamasa, who was also a former member of the church.
“It’s really hard to turn conservative Japanese politicians into devoted Moonies,” he said, adding, “After the memorial service for Abe, the media and net opinion will lose interest, because he won’t there are no real shocking ties between Abe and Unification.” Church.”