The Unification Church in Japan was criticized by the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales for being involved in several controversies including "spiritual sales", unlawful adoption practices and a change of name to mask its purposes, according to reports. The Unification Church was founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon in 1954 in South Korea. Moon claimed to have had a vision of Jesus at age 16, prompting him to preach a new doctrine starting in 1946 in North Korea. After fleeing to South Korea, he established the church. It expanded to Japan in 1958, helped by the Cold War's anti-communist climate, connecting with Japanese politicians and establishing the Asian People's Anti-Communist League. The reunification of Korea and anti-communism were the main goals of the Unification Church.
Background According to research by Elif Sercen Nurcan, Meiji University, Japan and Mursel Dogrul, Turkish National Defense University, since 1971, the Unification Church has been preaching that Japan betrayed Korea because of its invasion and that it must pay for its sins. Because of this teaching, Japanese church members were pressured to donate huge sums of money to erase "negative ancestral karma'', a tactic called "spiritual sales". Church members are instructed to buy statues, prayer beads, etc. from the church at extremely high prices. Spiritual sales, as a social problem, has been raised in Japan's National Diet since the 1980s. In 1993, the Fukuoka District Court found the leadership of UC to be guilty of this practice.
The Unification Church maintained very good relations with the Abe family through 3 generations. Abe's grandfather Kishi allowed the UC to use his official residence for its activities and attended their meetings as well as those of an anti-communist organization known as the "International Federation for Victory over Communism".
In 2022, former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzō Abe was shot during a campaign speech in the city of Nara. According to the Guardian, the killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, a gunman with a grudge against UC, turned his focus to Abe because of his association with the Unification Church, after seeing Abe delivering a recorded address at an online event sponsored by an affiliated organization. Yamagami admitted that he opposed Abe's support for the Unification Church, which sparked public interest in Japanese politicians' ties to the church.
After Abe's death, reports emerged of the church's close ties to politicians, particularly from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In response to these reports, Kishida ordered party members to sever their ties with the Unification Church. He also launched an investigation into the financing of the church's activities around the world. In its response, the church denied any wrongdoing and promised to prevent "excessive" donations from members. The Ministry of Education spent a year investigating the church and its internal documents and collected testimonies from people about its finances and allegations of excessive donations. The government stated that it had discovered the illegal actions of the church.
Today, the church has 50,000 to 70,000 members in Japan. It has faced criticism for "spiritual sales" and unlawful adoption practices, from groups like the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales. The Japanese government is considering stripping the church of its religious status, which the church defends as based on "biased information" from leftist groups and denies any wrongdoing.
The church promises to prevent excessive donations and continues to defend its actions.
Rebranding In 1997, the Japanese Unification Church applied to the Agency for Cultural Affairs (ACA), a department directly under the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, to change its name from "The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity" (世界基督教統一神霊協会) to "Family Federation for World Peace and Unification" (世界平和統一家庭連合). According to the then chief of the Religious Affairs Division, , the application was rejected by the ACA because the church was involved in civil lawsuits under its old name at the time.
In 2015, while Hakubun Shimomura was Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology under the Third Abe Cabinet, the Unification Church again applied to change its name, and this time it was approved. Shimomura denied any involvement in the approval process, explaining that the decision was made by the head of the ACA, but acknowledged he had received reports about it and that this was unusual. The 2015 head of the ACA confirmed Shimomura's description of events.
Spiritual sales According to two former church officials, Hiroaki Soejima and Inoue who spoke with The Washington Post in 1984, most of the international Unification Church's financial support has come from Japan, since the 1970s. $800 million they said were transferred from Japan to the United States between 1975 and 1984. Religious icons (marble vases, miniature treasure pagodas, and other religious icons) were distributed by Happy World Inc. and said to possess supernatural powers that were allegedly connected to the church. Hiroshi Sakazume, former Japanese Unification Church's director general of public relations denied the church had any relationship with Happy World, claiming "the Unification Church has nothing to do with sales activities". "We don't know what each church member is doing. But as a church, we don't do any sales [...] Happy World is a different company, a separate organization."
The Unification Church employed assertive tactics when soliciting money from Japanese recruits, characterized by their persistence. Recruits were informed that donating money to the church was necessary to alleviate the suffering of their ancestors in hell due to past sins. Additionally, recruiters would inquire about recruits' personal struggles and financial situations. A legal network in Japan aimed at reclaiming donations from former members and employees of the church has filed around 35,000 compensation claims, resulting in the recovery of over $206 million since 1987.
The National Network of Lawyers against spiritual sales accuses the Unification Church of engaging in "Spiritual Sales", alleging it has made its adherents invest large amounts of money to the point of bankruptcy. The Unification Church's president in Japan, Tomihiro Tanaka, stated any trouble with illegal solicitation and large donations were a thing of the past and since 2009 has had no trouble due to stress on legal compliance. The Network of Lawyers was set up in 1987 to impose countermeasures to what has been perceived as damages amounting to 123.7 billion yen caused by the Unification Church, based on statistics compiled by the association's lawyers between 1987 and 2021, obtained via 34,537 complaints submitted to Government Consumer centers. The network reported about 300 million yen in 2021.
Hiroshi Yamaguchi claimed the Unification Church has caused considerable pain to families of donors. Yasuo Kawai suggested it negatively impacts families and accused Japanese politicians and administrators of taking no action against the Unification Church for over 30 years. Kito Masaki called for Japan's National Diet to conduct a bipartisan investigation.旧統一教会問題「行政も思考停止」 紀藤弁護士、国会での調査求める警察はなぜ旧統一教会を放置し続けた？ 1995年の摘発を退けた「政治圧力Tsuyoshi Hida. (2018) 記者襲撃 赤報隊事件30年目の真実. pp.160–168 Iwanami Shoten. Tak Ji-il asserted the Unification Church "is a business based on religion" and is motivated by financial concerns rather than religious principles.
Akahata and () and the Zenkoku genriundo higaisha fubo no kai (lit. National Association of Parents of Victims of the Moonism) claimed that the Unification Church views Japan as having a historical obligation to serve Korea due to past aggression, leading to financial fraud through "fortune telling".Japanese Communist Party Newspaper Akahata 2010/05/11The LDP's Tangled Ties to the Unification Church – The Diplomat 2022.7.28 Yoshifu Arita suggested the Church exploits young Japanese people's guilt over Japan's colonial rule of Korea to defraud them.
Tomihiro Tanaka argued donations are made voluntarily by the individuals themselves, with amounts based on the individual's beliefs, at the same time acknowledging that people had donated large sums of money in the past. and stated there were no teachings on how much one can contribute to how much was needed to donate to be saved, nor were there any instructions that obliged families in bankruptcy to donate even more. Tanaka claimed at a press conference that the Unification Church had had problems with its followers in the past due to illegal solicitations and large donations. He claimed that since 2009, when it began to emphasize legal compliance, there had been no trouble between the Unification Church and its followers. They stated donation amounts are determined by individual members. In an interview conducted with Japanese believers, Kook Jin Moon claimed the church was not pressuring its Japanese members to make large donations in order save their deceased loved ones, stating instead the members informed him it was their own ancestors that instructed them to make large donations.
Japanese courts ordered the Unification Church to compensate plaintiffs, declaring its missionary work illegal. In 2009, the Tokyo District Court issued a suspended prison sentence to Unification Church members for pressuring passersby to buy expensive seals, ruling that their actions involved exploiting anxiety about ancestral pasts.
On December 10, 2022, Japan enacted a new law aimed at providing relief to individuals affected by the Unification Church, along with an amendment to the Consumer Contract Act. The bipartisan-supported law will prohibit coercive donation solicitations and impose criminal penalties for non-compliance, granting individuals the right to revoke donations made under undue influence and extending the period for contract revocation related to spiritual sales.
Assassination of Shinzo Abe On 8 July 2022, Shinzo Abe was assassinated by former Maritime Self-Defense Force seaman Tetsuya Yamagami, whose mother is said to be a member of the Japanese Unification Church since 1998. Yamagami claimed the church was behind his family's financial situation, making his mother donate most of the family fortune to the church, and saw Abe as "deeply connected" to the church. The assassination prompted sympathy for Yamagami, and also increased scrutiny of the Unification Church and the LDP, leading to backlash against them. It was found that almost half of the 379 National Diet (parliament) members of Abe's Liberal Democratic Party "admitted to some kind of contact with the Unification Church". The church "maintained a volunteer army" of members to work on political campaigns for Abe and other politicians in his party. Journalist Robert F. Worth writes that the believers he talked to "described a litany of insults and abuses" they had been subject to in the year since the assassination.
The Unification Church is said to have historically had a close relationship with the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. In 2019, the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales protested in writing Abe's congratulatory messages sent to events affiliated to the Unification Church in fear such messages enhanced the church's authority and encouraged what they considered its "anti-social activities".