The Unification Church and Its Japanese Victims: The Need for “Religious Literacy”

What Is the Unification Church?

The Unification Church, formally generally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, has come below sharp scrutiny in Japan for the reason that man arrested in reference to the July capturing dying of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō advised investigators he was motivated by rancor in opposition to the UC and the idea that Abe had shut ties to the motion. The incident ignited a firestorm over the group’s allegedly fraudulent and coercive fund-raising strategies, in addition to its hyperlinks with the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

The Unification Church was established by Sun Myung Moon in 1954 in Seoul.(*1) Loosely tied to Judeo-Christian custom, it preaches that humankind fell from grace because of Eve’s fornication, and that Moon himself was the second Messiah, despatched to purify humankind by way of his “blessing ceremonies” (see beneath). Controversy has lengthy swirled across the faith, recognized for its mass weddings and high-pressure fund-raising actions, main many to model it a cult. Nonetheless, it boasts between 50,000 and 70,000 believers in Japan, in line with Sakurai. That is greater than twice the variety of followers in South Korea and an enormous chunk of the UC’s world membership, estimated at between 100,000 and 200,000.

In 1964, the Unification Church in Japan secured the authorized standing of a non secular company, entitling it to preferential tax remedy. In 1968, it established a separate political arm, the anticommunist International Federation for Victory Over Communism. Experts say that the motion’s controversial ties with LDP politicians may be traced again to this anticommunist campaign. According to Sakurai, an ongoing behind-the-scenes marketing campaign to affect authorities coverage is a fundamental function of the UC as a non secular motion.

“They don’t do it out in the open,” Sakurai stresses, evaluating the UC’s technique with that of the Aum Shinrikyō cult accountable for the lethal 1995 sarin assaults on Tokyo’s subway system. “Aum Shinrikyō harbored delusions about taking political control of Japan. They believed they could attract more and more followers and eventually field candidates who would win elections. The Unification Church is more realistic. They know they couldn’t win with their own candidates, but by leveraging the power of bloc voting, they figure they can gain the ear of enough politicians to exert an influence over the country as a whole.”

The UC can also be recognized for its lobbying and different political actions within the United States. The Washington Times, a conservative US newspaper, is owned by a UC-affiliated group.

Japanese Attitudes Toward Religion

On the entire, the Japanese individuals don’t think about themselves very non secular. The Nationwide Survey on the Japanese National Character, carried out by the Institute of Statistical Mathematics each 5 years, asks respondents if they’ve any private non secular religion. Since the primary survey in 1953, greater than half of respondents have answered no, and within the newest survey (in 2018), a full 74% responded within the detrimental.

The animism of the native Shintō faith laid the foundations for a fairly diffuse, unfocused, and versatile spirituality. When Buddhism entered Japan within the sixth century, it initially got here into battle with native Shintō beliefs and practices. But by the Nara interval (710–94), the 2 religions weren’t merely coexisting however fusing in a type of syncretism, shinbutsu shūgō, that handled the Shintō kami as incarnations of varied Buddhist deities.

“Buddhism has been evolving continuously since it arrived in Japan,” says Sakurai. “Since the Meiji era [1868–1912], Japanese Buddhism has diverged from the norm [in other countries] in that monks marry and have families instead of entering monasteries, and the leadership of temples is hereditary. The next stage in evolution was the rise of shinshūkyō, new religions rooted in lay Buddhism” that appeared from the mid-nineteenth century on.

At the identical time, Christianity has exerted a powerful affect on Japanese attitudes towards faith within the fashionable period. “Today the Japanese have an image of religious faith as something with a clear object of worship, an organized church to which one belongs, and communal rituals and ceremonies,” says Sakurai. “From the Japanese standpoint, being on the rolls of a temple or shrine doesn’t count as having religion. That’s why most Japanese people don’t consider themselves religious, even though they engage in religious activities like praying at shrines or temples on the New Year, visiting ancestral graves, and holding Buddhist memorial services for the dead.”

Despite this normal lack of spiritual fervor, many new religions and cults have discovered fertile soil in Japan. How can we clarify this seeming paradox?

Searching for Community

The Fifties and Nineteen Sixties witnessed probably the most fast enlargement of latest religions in Japan, says Sakurai. It was the interval of fast financial progress, when hundreds of thousands have been migrating from rural communities to the cities to search out work. Far from their houses and households, many have been hungry for a way of group.

“The Buddhism-based new religions of that time targeted workers in small factories and shops and offered them a sense of belonging. They were also adept at building their organizations,” says Sakurai. By far the quickest rising of those new religions was Sōka Gakkai, a lay motion rooted in Nichiren Buddhism. “During those years, Sōka Gakkai recruited somewhere between six and seven million members. It held regional gatherings once a month, and the members contacted each other frequently and looked after one another. The organization filled the function of a surrogate family or village.”

The Unification Church had an identical enchantment, though its preliminary enlargement happened totally on college campuses, the place the unconventional leftwing actions of the Nineteen Sixties left numerous college students alienated. In the Nineteen Sixties and Seventies, the group unfold below the guise of the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles. In the Nineteen Eighties, amid a booming financial system, it stepped up and expanded its recruitment and fund-raising efforts—and bumped into severe hassle.

Uproar over “Spiritual Sales”

Probably the most important supply of the motion’s notoriety in Japan is its fund-raising strategies, significantly the “spiritual sales” (reikan shōhō) that prompted a public furor within the Nineteen Eighties. Members would go door-to-door providing Korean items like ginseng and marble vessels, typically utilizing predatory gross sales ways. Vulnerable individuals grew to become satisfied that their troubles have been tied to generations of ancestors struggling in hell and have been persuaded to purchase exorbitantly priced items (equivalent to seals and urns) and companies (equivalent to divination and “ancestral counseling” that claimed to determine issues rooted in a single’s household previous) as a way to reverse that karma. As a results of such practices, the UC was topic to quite a few authorized claims and was extensively vilified within the press.

“From the late 1980s on, the Unification Church was obliged to modify its approach and recruit new members without revealing its true identity. It drew people in through services like palmistry and fortune telling—targeting middle-aged and older individuals as well as younger people—and then invited them to seminars and other events. It also shifted its fund-raising focus from ‘spiritual sales’ to extracting large donations from members.”

The mom of Yamagami Tetsuya, the shooter apprehended on the scene of former Prime Minister Abe’s assassination, apparently paid the UC a complete of greater than ¥100 million, together with her husband’s life insurance coverage. Yamagami claims her donations bankrupted and destroyed the household.

In September 2022, Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency launched a report on complaints in regards to the UC lodged with shopper affairs facilities across the nation. According to the report, within the 2020–21 fiscal yr, members paid the group roughly ¥2.7 million on common. A devoted shopper hotline arrange by the federal government in September has obtained a flood of calls, a big portion of which concern cash solicited for the aim of “ancestor liberation.” In some circumstances funds starting from round ¥100,000 to a number of million yen continued over a interval of a decade.

According to the Divine Principle of Sun Myung Moon, humankind fell from grace when Eve fornicated with the fallen angel Lucifer, who later grew to become Satan. As a results of this perversion of God’s love, all of Adam’s descendants inherited a contaminated bloodline and have been alienated from God. Eventually God despatched Jesus because the Messiah to redeem humankind, however God’s plan to cleanse humanity’s sinful bloodline by having Jesus marry and begin a household didn’t come to fruition. As Plan B, God despatched the Messiah Sun Myung Moon, who embodied the Second Coming. Mass weddings are a part of the plan. The thought is that when two believers, chosen and matched by the Messiah, are united as man and spouse with the Messiah’s blessing, their youngsters are born freed from sin.

But there’s extra to the doctrine than that. According to Moon’s dogma, Japan is the “Eve nation” and is accountable for the autumn of Korea, the “Adam nation.” As a end result, it’s simply and correct for Japan to serve Korea. Of the Japanese girls who’ve been married in a UC blessing ceremony, an estimated 7,000 now dwell in South Korea.

“The purpose of the Unification Church in Japan,” asserts Sakurai, “is to raise money to send to South Korea.” (Millions have additionally been raised within the United States by way of UC-affiliated enterprise enterprises just like the fish wholesaler True World Foods, which provides sushi eating places across the nation.)

The Need for Religious Literacy

How has such a company managed to safe the loyalty and devotion of so many believers in Japan?

“A major reason,” says Sakurai, “is that the Japanese lack a prior knowledge of religion. As a consequence, they find nothing particularly strange about the doctrines of mass marriage or of Moon as the Messiah. They even accept the teaching that their ancestors are all suffering in hell and can only be saved by their own ‘good works’ in the form of financial donations. No one schooled in mainstream Christianity or traditional Japanese ancestor worship would buy into that.”

A contributing issue could be the absence of any alternative to study faith in Japanese colleges. The Constitution, drafted with an consciousness of the harm carried out by State Shintō, mandates the separation of faith and authorities and thus prohibits non secular training in public colleges. But Sakurai believes it ought to nonetheless be potential to offer a normal, nonsectarian introduction to faith.

“As an aspect of cultural literacy, we should begin cultivating a basic knowledge of religion in elementary school, including instruction about the diversity of the world’s major faiths,” he says. “This would foster the development of basic standards in our society, a kind of conventional wisdom regarding religion, and people would be naturally suspicious of teachings that diverge too far from those norms. Without religious literacy, people are basically defenseless against the fantastic claims of proselytizers.”

Sakurai, a professor at Hokkaidō University in Sapporo, has years of expertise counseling college students ensnared in cults, in addition to their mother and father. But he acknowledges that there’s a restrict to what counseling can accomplish. “In Sapporo there are two dōjō operated by a cult called Aleph, which took over from the defunct Aum Shinrikyō. I know university students who joined and were still members when they graduated. Aleph follows the teachings of Asahara Shōkō [the executed leader of Aum Shinrikyō], and it continues to recruit students nationwide. The Aum threat isn’t over.”

According to Sakurai, social media has change into a serious car for such non secular proselytizing. “They begin with online chats, with the identity of the group concealed. If the target looks promising, they’ll create an opportunity to meet in person—in a cafe, for example—and then invite him or her to participate in some event or study group, gradually drawing the target in. During the pandemic, a lot of students were lonely because they couldn’t make friends, and they responded to such invitations without a second thought.”

What the Government Can Do

But isn’t non secular proselytizing and fund elevating protected by the Constitution, with its assure of freedom of faith?

“There are inherent limitations on religious liberty,” Sakurai insists. “You’re free to believe whatever you want. But you can’t infringe on others’ freedom in the process. It’s not permissible to conceal your true identity when recruiting followers or to deprive people of their power of independent judgment by fueling unfounded fears.”

But why the furor over lawmakers’ connections with the Unification Church? Although the Constitution states that “no religious organization shall receive any privileges from the State, nor exercise any political authority,” it doesn’t ban the involvement of spiritual organizations in politics or elections. Sōka Gakkai (traditionally affiliated with the Kōmeitō social gathering) is legendary for mobilizing its followers at election time, and it is only one of many Japanese non secular teams concerned in politics.

“Where the Unification Church is concerned, the problem is that politicians concealed their ties with the group,” explains Sakurai. “To publicly reveal that they were getting organizational support from a group that continued to harm the public through fraudulent ‘spiritual sales’ and excessive donation demands would be tantamount to admitting that they placed their own interests over the good of the country and its people.”

How, then, ought to the authorities take care of the Unification Church now that the menace has come to gentle?

“The most realistic approach would be to seek an order of dissolution under article 81, paragraph 1, of the Religious Corporations Act. The government should set the process in motion by putting the issue to the Religious Corporation Council, which includes legal and religious scholars as well as representatives from religious groups, and releasing its conclusions to the public.”

Article 81 states that the Agency for Cultural Affairs, public prosecutors, or different competent authorities can request a court docket order revoking a company’s authorized standing “when the religious corporation commits an act which is clearly found to harm public welfare substantially.” The provision has been enforced solely twice: in 1995, when Aum Shinrikyō was ordered dissolved, and in 2002, when the Myōkakuji temple group had its standing revoked over fraudulent practices just like the UC’s “spiritual sales.”

Up till lately, authorities officers have expressed doubts as as to if the process would apply to the UC, provided that not one of the group’s officers have been arrested or charged in reference to any crime. But with public outrage mounting by the day, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio introduced on October 17 that his authorities would launch an investigation below the Religious Corporations Act. This may open the way in which for a dissolution order.

“It’s a very simple and effective means of rectifying the relationship between religion and politics,” says Sakurai. “If the government requests a dissolution order, the organization has no choice but to release internal information if it wants to defend itself, and that means disclosure of the organization’s operations. But even without that, very few politicians are going to want to maintain ties with a group whose behavior led to a request for dissolution. Ordinary people will be more cautious as well, so there are major benefits to this process.”

That mentioned, a dissolution order merely revokes a non secular group’s authorized standing; it doesn’t assure an finish to the group’s actions.

“Affiliated organizations, such as the Universal Peace Federation and the Women’s Federation for World Peace Japan, will continue to exist,” Sakurai acknowledges. “The movement will doubtless reorganize itself and continue its activities. There’s a limit to what legal regulation can accomplish. That’s why we need to foster religious literacy and give people the tools to defend themselves.”

(Originally written in Japanese by Kimie Itakura of Nippon.com. Banner picture: Japanese girls and different followers of the Unification Church in South Korea exhibit in Seoul on August 18, 2022, protesting the “persecution” of believers in Japan. © AFP/Jiji.)