TOKYO — The day earlier than Shinzo Abe was assassinated, Tetsuya Yamagami despatched a letter saying that the Unification Church had ruined his life, “destroying my household and driving it into chapter 11.”
Mr. Yamagami’s mom had been a member of the church for over twenty years, making prodigious donations over her household’s objections. “It’s no exaggeration to say that my expertise with it throughout that point continues to distort my complete life,” he wrote to a blogger who lined the church. The Japanese police have confirmed that he despatched the letter.
The following day, Mr. Abe was useless, shot at shut vary with an improvised gun whereas campaigning within the metropolis of Nara.
The police have charged Mr. Yamagami with homicide, saying he was indignant at a “sure group” and determined to focus on Mr. Abe, the previous prime minister of Japan. The authorities haven’t named the group, however a Unification Church spokesman stated that Mr. Yamagami was most certainly referring to them. It stays unclear why Mr. Yamagami directed his animus at Mr. Abe.
The July 8 capturing has thrust the church’s authorized troubles again into the nationwide dialogue, specifically its battles with households who stated they’d been impoverished by massive donations. These funds had been amongst billions of {dollars} in income from Japan that helped finance a lot of the church’s international political and enterprise ambitions.
In a single judgment from 2016, a Tokyo civil courtroom awarded greater than $270,000 in damages to the previous husband of a church member, after she donated his inheritance, wage and retirement funds to the group to “save” him and his ancestors from damnation.
In one other civil case from 2020, a decide ordered the church and different defendants to pay damages to a lady after members had satisfied her that her baby’s most cancers was attributable to familial sins. On their recommendation, she spent tens of 1000’s of {dollars} on church items and companies, like researching her household historical past and shopping for blessings.
Final week, church officers stated they’d struck an settlement in 2009 with Ms. Yamagami’s household to repay 50 million yen, or about $360,000, in donations she had made through the years. In an interview, Mr. Yamagami’s uncle stated she had given a minimum of 100 million yen.
Many households have settled complaints in opposition to the church by way of court-arbitrated agreements, in line with Hiroshi Watanabe, a lawyer who has negotiated a few of them.
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Eri Kayoda, 28, grew up in a family dedicated to the Unification Church.
She stated that her mom gave the church an inheritance and the proceeds from the sale of their house. The household needed to squeeze right into a tiny Tokyo residence embellished with dear Unification Church books and vases thought to deliver luck, she stated.
In center faculty, Ms. Kayoda stated, she started retaining an in depth eye on her dad and mom’ funds and satisfied them to avoid wasting for a automotive and a house. Her mom now donates modestly. Whereas Ms. Kayoda condemned Mr. Abe’s capturing, she stated she hoped it might draw consideration to the “many circumstances of households which were destroyed.”
Susumu Sato, a spokesman for the Unification Church in Japan, stated that some members had inspired followers to donate excessively, however that the majority donors had been motivated by their religion.
“These days, it appears unthinkable, however these folks believed in God,” stated Mr. Sato, who stated he feared church members would turn out to be scapegoats for Mr. Abe’s dying.
The Rev. Solar Myung Moon based the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954. 5 years later, he opened its first abroad department, in Japan, which rapidly grew to become the church’s largest income supply.
Mr. Abe’s grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, a former prime minister, appeared at occasions sponsored by a bunch Mr. Moon established to struggle communism. Many years later, in 2021, Mr. Abe spoke by video feed to a convention in Seoul sponsored by a church-affiliated nonprofit group, praising its “focus and emphasis on household values.”
An ardent Korean nationalist, Mr. Moon was educated in Japan whereas his personal nation lived beneath its colonial rule. His theology mirrored his ambivalence towards Japan, describing it in his sermons as each a possible savior and a satanic energy.
Throughout visits, Mr. Moon warned his Japanese followers that they had been steeped in sin and exhorted them to sacrifice every thing for the church.
“Every of you wants to revive, by way of paying indemnity, the sins dedicated by your ancestors in historical past,” he instructed a bunch of believers in 1973, instructing them to “shed blood, sweat and tears.”
A whole bunch of 1000’s heeded his name. By the mid-80s, billions of {dollars} in donations had flowed from Japanese households into the church’s coffers. Mr. Moon used the cash to construct a sprawling enterprise empire and a community of nonprofit organizations and media shops, like The Washington Instances, that he leveraged for political affect.
Households had been requested to make fixed donations and pay steep charges to buy varied spiritual companies and leather-bound volumes of Mr. Moon’s teachings, in line with courtroom judgments handed down in subsequent civil fits in opposition to the group.
Companies linked to the church generally used high-pressure gross sales techniques to collect much more funds. Judgments from civil fits describe how followers used warnings of ancestral curses to promote merchandise like ornamental vases imported from South Korea. The church determined whom its followers would marry and despatched 1000’s of them — principally ladies — overseas to turn out to be the spouses of church members.
By the early Nineteen Nineties, Mr. Moon’s energy in Japan had peaked. In 1995, sarin gasoline assaults by members of the spiritual cult Aum Shinrikyo created a backlash in opposition to what are referred to within the nation as new religions. Suspicion of the Unification Church hardened as former followers printed tell-all accounts and lawsuits started to mount.
The National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, a bunch that has spent a long time crusading in opposition to the church, began receiving complaints about it within the late Nineteen Eighties. It will definitely collected greater than 34,000, claiming damages in extra of $900 million.
As criticism constructed, the Unification Church went on the offensive, arguing that years of detrimental consideration had led to its followers’ persecution. In a single case, a younger man, Toru Goto, was confined in a Tokyo residence for over 12 years as relations tried to deprogram him, in line with a civil go well with he filed in opposition to his dad and mom and others within the metropolis.
Fearing that the Japanese authorities would revoke its legal status, the church introduced new controls on recruiting and donating.
Within the years since, the church’s energy and affect in Japan — in addition to the complaints in opposition to it — have ebbed. However “even now, there are lots of people like Mr. Yamagami’s household,” stated Yoshifu Arita, a member of Parliament who has steadily spoken out concerning the concern. “Japanese society simply doesn’t see them.”
Mr. Yamagami, nonetheless, by no means overlooked the Unification Church. His mom’s actions had “plunged my brother, my sister and me into hell,” he wrote on a Twitter account. The account title was included within the letter he despatched earlier than Mr. Abe’s capturing.
Amid anti-Korean screeds, misogynistic musings about incel tradition and commentary on Japanese politics, the account — which has been suspended — describes a painful childhood and a seething fury at his mom’s allegiance to the Unification Church. He blamed the connection for his personal failings in life.
Mr. Yamagami was born right into a rich household, however when he was 4, his father killed himself. A decade later, his grandfather died immediately, leaving nobody to cease “my mom who had been channeling cash to the Unification Church,” Mr. Yamagami wrote on Twitter.
She “wrapped our complete household up in it and self-destructed,” he wrote.
Within the letter he despatched earlier than the capturing, Mr. Yamagami stated he had spent years dreaming of revenge, however had turn out to be satisfied that attacking the church would accomplish nothing.
Mr. Abe is “not my enemy,” Mr. Yamagami wrote, “he’s nothing greater than one of many Unification Church’s strongest sympathizers.”
However, he added, “I now not have the posh to consider the political that means or penalties that Abe’s dying will deliver.”
