RURIKA IMAHASHI and ALICE FRENCH, Nikkei staff writers
SEPTEMBER 7, 2022 06:00 JST
TOKYO -- On Nov. 10, 2019, Ichiro Inamori was met with enthusiastic applause onstage at a gathering in Ginowan, a sunny beach town in Japan's southern Okinawa prefecture. He was about to give a lecture regarding "pure love, happy family and sound society" at an event entitled "Lecture on Families of Hope."
His 90-minute speech would go on to detail how same-sex unions endanger Japan's national stability and destroy families. "In countries where same-sex marriage is legalized ... the number of homosexuals is increasing and society is becoming unstable," Inamori declared. "We cannot allow that. That is Satan's strategy!"
"That's right!" an audience member shouted.
Inamori's speech was delivered amid growing public debate surrounding a proposed ordinance to promote gender equality and diversity, which Ginowan's mayor was preparing to submit to the city council at the time. The proposed ordinance aimed to prohibit human rights violations and hate speech based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity.
Inamori was introduced at the event as a former president of the Youth Federation for World Peace and former vice chairman of the Association for the Promotion of True Families, both affiliated organizations of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, widely known as the Unification Church. His audience was mostly filled with members of the church.
Masahisa Miyazaki, a lawmaker from Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party, city council chairman Yasuyuki Uechi, and several other city council members were also in attendance. In an address, Uechi told the audience: "It is too shameful for the future of Japan to allow a legal body to create an ordinance and recognize [same-sex unions]."
The coastal town of Ginowan in Okinawa passed a pro-gender diversity ordinance in March 2021. Individuals linked to the Unification Church were heavily involved in opposing it. © Kyodo
Inamori's speech, which showcased the Unification Church's conservative views on gender, was a key moment in the campaign to oppose Ginowan's proposed gender diversity ordinance, which was rejected by the city council seven months later. A church-affiliated organization of which Inamori is an adviser declined to comment on his lecture in Ginowan.
Now, almost three years later, the church's role in the same-sex marriage debate in this seaside town could be just one tile in a growing mosaic that is shaping up to be Japan's largest political scandal in decades.
The fatal shooting of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8 thrust the Unification Church into the national spotlight. Abe's assassination unleashed a cascade of revelations about links between the LDP and the church, which has mostly avoided the limelight in Japan in recent years.
Tetsuya Yamagami, the suspected shooter, says he targeted Abe because of a grudge against the church. Yamagami's mother, whom the church on July 11 confirmed was a member, reportedly donated upward of $700,000 to the group, leaving her family in financial ruin.
Yamagami's declared motive reopened a particularly scandalous chapter in the history of the church, which has been previously accused of defrauding followers in Japan by conducting "spiritual sales" -- cajoling members to buy exorbitantly priced items to save their ancestors' souls.
Mourners lay flowers in front of a photo of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was shot and killed on July 8. (Photo by Yo Inoue)
Yamagami told police he shot Abe, Japan's longest-ever serving prime minister, due to the former lawmaker's perceived connections to the group. Abe had appeared in a video telegram shown at a church-affiliated Universal Peace Federation event in South Korea last September.
The assassination and resulting scrutiny of the LDP's close ties to the church have plunged the government into turmoil and sent its approval ratings plummeting.
Since Abe's death, more than 100 of Japan's 712 Diet members have admitted to having ties to the Unification Church, according to a Kyodo News survey with an 80% response rate that was released on Aug. 13. Almost 80% of the 100-plus politicians belong to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's LDP. Ties include having spoken at church-affiliated events and receiving support from church members in elections.
At a news conference on Aug. 10, Tomihiro Tanaka, president of the Unification Church in Japan, confirmed that the church and its affiliated groups were working with politicians to make Japan "as it should be." He added that the church had a particularly large number of connections to LDP politicians due to the party's right-wing, "anti-communist" stance.
Running for cover
Anticipating an onslaught of public anger, Kishida on Aug. 10 reshuffled his cabinet and party executives in an apparent attempt to remove prominent LDP politicians with strong links to the church, such as Nobuo Kishi, former defense minister and Abe's brother, from top positions.
But it later came out that even following the reshuffle, many LDP lawmakers with connections to the church remained in senior roles. Mio Sugita, the new parliamentary vice minister for internal affairs and communications, was revealed to have twice spoken at events held by Unification Church-affiliated organizations. Sugita is known for her anti-LGBTQ and anti-feminist views.
The revelations have been met with public outrage -- the hashtag "the LDP is disgusting" was trending on Japanese Twitter last week.
"The Unification Church is seen by many in Japan as a criminal organization, due to its predatory spiritual sales practices of the '80s and '90s," Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Tokyo's Sophia University, told Nikkei Asia. According to Japan's National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, the church was linked to over 30,000 incidents involving spiritual sales from 1987 to 2021, resulting in total damages of 123.7 billion yen ($873 million).
"To find out that such a group was able to infiltrate the political arena so successfully is really quite shocking," Nakano added.
The public's shock was reflected in the cabinet's approval ratings. A Nikkei survey published on Aug. 12 showed support for Kishida's cabinet had fallen to 57% from a high of 66% in May. Of the respondents, 82% expressed dissatisfaction with the government's handling of the Unification Church scandal. A Yomiuri Shimbun poll conducted from Sept. 2 to Sept. 4 showed the cabinet's disapproval rating stood at 41% -- the highest since Kishida became prime minister last October and an increase of 17 points since July.
With new discoveries about his party and the church hitting Japan's headlines on a near-daily basis, on Aug. 31 Kishida vowed to "sever all ties" between Diet members and the church, promising to "restore the public's trust" in the government.
Retracing the steps
So how did a loosely Christian, Korean-founded religious organization become so intertwined with the government, in a country where more than 60% of the population consider themselves nonreligious?
Researchers say the answer lies in the Unification Church's anti-communist roots. Founded in Seoul in 1954 by the late Sun Myung Moon -- a self-appointed "reverend" born in what is now North Korea -- the church originally stood for Korean reunification and the downfall of communism, along with its family-oriented spiritual beliefs.
The group's scripture, the Divine Principle, strictly forbids premarital and same-sex relationships, and teaches that only heterosexual marriages between fellow Unificationists are capable of producing children born free from "original sin." Famously, Moon often "blessed" thousands of unions simultaneously at mass weddings.
In 1968, the group founded the International Federation for Victory Over Communism (IFVOC), which aims to "clearly expose the threats and problems of communism" and vows not to rest until "there is not even one Communist left in the world," according to its website.
Yoshihide Sakurai, a longtime researcher of Japanese cults from Hokkaido University, told Nikkei that the church's right-wing beliefs helped the group to expand overseas during the Cold War era, gaining members, funding and even support from international leaders.
"When the church was recruiting in Japan at first, it presented itself as a political or social activist group, rather than a religion," Sakurai said. "Many university students, disillusioned by the left-wing political protests of the 1960s, were attracted to the church's anti-communist ideas."
The church's membership in Japan today mostly consists of those who were recruited as university students in the 1960s and their children, Sakurai explained. He estimates that the church's active membership is now around 60,000 -- about a 10th of what the church officially reports -- as most second-generation members are not actively involved in church-related activities.
The church was also building links with Japan's top right-wing politicians throughout the early Cold War period. Moon became good friends with Nobusuke Kishi, prime minister from 1957 to 1960, a founding member of the LDP and Abe's grandfather. In his book, Osami Kuboki, former chair of the Unification Church in Japan, wrote that Kishi's support was key to the group's fight against communism.
The LDP and the church became even closer after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Moon appeared to be abandoning the IFVOC's attack on communism -- he even met with former North Korean leader Kim Il Sung in 1991 -- and the IFVOC became disillusioned with the church in South Korea. "So the church in Japan reached out to the LDP as a vehicle to further its [anti-communist] agenda," and as a source of political protection at a time when suspicion around spiritual sales was at its peak, Sakurai told Nikkei.
In return, the LDP gained guaranteed support from followers in elections, which became especially important after Japan updated its electoral system in 1994, Sophia University's Nakano told Nikkei. The new system, which included some elements of first-past-the-post, was first implemented in the 1996 general election, when a two-horse race between the LDP and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) emerged.
"The LDP got closer to the church and moved even further to the right, in an effort to differentiate itself as much as possible from the DPJ, which seemed left-wing and dangerous," Nakano said.
Incidentally, it was also during this period that Shinzo Abe rose to prominence as a young leader within the LDP. "Abe understood very well how to utilize the support of religious groups," Nakano said.
Abe, who inherited links to the church from his grandfather, Kishi, and his father, Shintaro Abe, a foreign minister in the 1980s, often appeared at events hosted by church-affiliated organizations. In May 2006, mere months before becoming prime minister for the first time, then-Chief Cabinet Secretary Abe sent a congratulatory telegram to the UPF. A similar message sent to the same organization last year is what suspected assassin Yamagami told police alerted him to Abe's link to the church.
When the LDP in 2012 came back to power after a three-year interregnum and resumed its ongoing, decadeslong reign, the Unification Church's support was "instrumental" in the party's rebranding and election success, Nakano said. Abe's party won a landslide victory with 294 out of the Diet's 480 seats.
"The Unification Church's membership may be small, but they are very loyal," Sakurai said of the church's role in elections. "If a church leader tells members to vote for an LDP candidate, they will."
On Aug. 31, LDP Secretary-General Toshimitsu Motegi told reporters that the party had already confirmed not having any "organizational relationship" with the Unification Church. Motegi also stressed that LDP lawmakers will be forbidden from having links with "socially problematic" organizations such as the church in the future.
However, the church appears to have mobilized its membership to get conservative LDP candidates elected in July's Upper House election, Sakurai said, citing Yoshiyuki Inoue, a lawmaker and Abe's former secretary who was recently elected to Japan's upper house, as one example.
Inoue, who spoke out against gay rights and same-sex marriage during his campaign, denied receiving any donations from the group but admitted to having been an "informal member" in the past in a statement to Kyodo News. In a hearing held by the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party on Sept. 1, a church member said that the church "as a whole" had backed Inoue in the election, and the member had been explicitly told to vote for him.
The Unification Church is far from the only religious group that the LDP has leaned on for support. Nippon Kaigi, a right-wing organization with strong links to state Shintoism, has backed the party since its foundation in 1997. Soka Gakkai, whose roots are in Buddhism, is a well-known ally of Komeito, the LDP's longtime coalition partner.
"The majority of a population does not have to be religious for religion to influence a country's politics," Nakano told Nikkei. Japan's electoral system and historically low voter turnout mean "the votes of these small religious groups really add up," he said.
The church and gender policy
That the LDP and the church have enjoyed a close relationship for decades is clear, but the extent to which this relationship has influenced government policy remains up for debate. Nakano believes that LDP policy and the church's ideology "are so similar that it's like asking what came first: the chicken, or the egg?"
According to Eito Suzuki, a freelance journalist who has been investigating the church for two decades, the group in 2007 allocated 5 million yen per month to its public relations team, whose main job was to build a network with lawmakers. "We need to verify to what extent [the church] has influenced lawmaking," Suzuki said.
One area in which the church could have exerted influence is on issues of gender and sexuality, commentators say. Japan remains the only Group of Seven country not to legally recognize same-sex unions.
"The Unification Church and other right-wing religious groups are very much interested in topics of gender and sexuality," said Masami Saito, an expert on feminism and a part-time lecturer at the University of Toyama. "The mass media's coverage of this field has been weak."
When asked about their stance on gender diversity and LGBTQ issues, the church-affiliated IFVOC told Nikkei they are concerned that "the norms of heterosexuality are collapsing" and that "troubles and incidents regarding love and relationships" are on the rise in countries that allow same-sex unions.
Almost two decades ago, the church was already getting involved in local governments' diversity policies. In 2003, the city of Miyakonojo, in Japan's southern Miyazaki prefecture, enacted an ordinance promoting gender equality that respected all people's human rights "regardless of gender and sexual orientation," for the first time in the country. In opposition, anti-LGBTQ leaflets were distributed in the city by a church-related civil group and the church's affiliated media frequently and negatively reported on the ordinance.
Three years later, when the city merged with neighboring municipalities, the ordinance was reenacted under a new mayor, with the "sexual orientation" part removed. "The magnitude of the church's influence at the grassroots level -- building a network with local politicians and other locally influential people -- is often ignored," Saito said. "But it is large."
A representative for the Unification Church told Nikkei that the group "[does] not instruct our members to engage in grassroots activities" to influence national or local politics.
But in recent years, the church has nonetheless played an outsized role in Japan's gender diversity debates, and been instrumental in opposing LGBTQ rights, activists say.
Last year, the LDP failed to submit to the Diet a cross-party bill to promote awareness of sexual minorities among the public. The bill was intended to be passed before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, but many conservative lawmakers opposed it, arguing that the inclusion of a clause that would render discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity "unacceptable" -- although not on legal grounds -- was too strict. The bill was shelved in May 2021.
Tomomi Inada, an LDP Diet member who was chairperson of the special mission committee that introduced the bill, said in an interview with Nikkei that she has lost the support of Unification Church members since starting to pursue what are considered pro-LGBTQ policies.
Inada said that she had attended church gatherings when she was first elected to the Diet and has "no doubt" that many church members rooted for her in past elections. But "the rift between my [gender-related] policies and [the church's] values is big now," Inada said, adding that she feels like both voters and the LDP have "forsaken" her.
Inada, who considers herself "actually very conservative," said that she has recently faced "huge criticism" in her constituency, Fukui prefecture. In the run-up to the lower house election last year, Inada said that constituents received anonymous postcards telling them not to vote for her because she was "promoting LGBTQ."
The diversity awareness bill is still up in the air. "I cannot say with certainty that religion influences national gender policy," Inada told Nikkei. "But it should be made clear to voters that religious groups play a role in the opposition of LGBTQ issues."
Politics professor Nakano explained that the strongest links between the LDP and the church are found among the party's most conservative right-wingers, who are likely to oppose LGBTQ rights.
Eriko Yamatani, who was close to Abe and is known for her conservative views on abortion and sex education, was one of the lawmakers who blocked the diversity bill last year. She said "ridiculous things are happening" regarding LGBTQ rights, citing a case where a transgender woman wanted to use a women's restroom.
Yamatani was recently accused of having links with the Unification Church on Twitter. Former upper house parliamentarian for the Constitutional Democratic Party, Yoshifu Arita, recently posted what he says is an "internal document" shared by a church-affiliated group 12 years ago. The document asked church members to vote for Yamatani in a past upper house election and described her as an "indispensable" lawmaker, without whom "our will cannot be fulfilled."
Yamatani's office told Nikkei that there has never been any contact between her and the church, nor has her political activity ever been influenced by the group.
Grassroots attacks on diversity
Back in Okinawa's Ginowan, a few months after the first draft of the pro-gender diversity ordinance was rejected by the city council in June 2020, a second draft was proposed, acknowledging discrimination only on the basis of gender, not on sexual orientation or gender identity. The draft, however, was accompanied by an explanatory text in which sexual orientation and gender identity were mentioned, which opponents took issue with.
A civil group that strongly opposed the second draft in late 2020 submitted a petition with 1,360 signatures to Ginowan Mayor Masanori Matsugawa. Nikkei's investigation found that the woman responsible for collecting the petition's signatures had attended the 2019 lecture by Ichiro Inamori -- the former executive of two Unification Church-affiliated organizations -- and had told the audience of her strong opposition to same-sex partnerships.
Nikkei Asia found the contact details that appeared on the anti-ordinance petition featured the same address as the campaign office for Ginowan city council member Takeshi Henza, whose father, Tadao, is a former council member and attended the church-led gathering in 2019. Henza denied any links to the church in comments to Nikkei.
Ginowan's gender equality ordinance was finally enacted in March 2021 but does not mention sexual orientation, gender identity or hate speech -- a victory for gender diversity opponents, including the Unification Church. City council chair Uechi, who had spoken at the November 2019 event, told Nikkei Asia that the ordinance's outcome was not influenced by the church but said that he would "never attend their gatherings ever again."
In 2019, Ibaraki prefecture held study sessions to discuss introducing same-sex partnerships and other support measures for LGBTQ people. Ten speakers from different backgrounds and representing both sides of the debate were chosen, including one woman who represented "ordinary citizens."
Nikkei later found that the woman was a former chairperson of the Ibaraki chapter of the Women's Federation for World Peace, a Unification Church-affiliated organization.
Sources that attended the prefectural study sessions told Nikkei that the woman argued strongly against introducing a same-sex partnership system and against educating children on LGBTQ issues. "I wonder if it is appropriate if a person linked to [the church] got involved with a local government's discussion of human rights measures," one attendee told Nikkei.
A representative of the Ibaraki prefectural government told Nikkei that the woman in question was randomly chosen from those who had expressed opinions against LGBTQ rights when the government had asked for public comments on the issue. The representative said it was important to include an opposing voice at the sessions for balance, and added that they were not aware of any links between the speakers and the Unification Church.
In July 2019, Ibaraki became the first prefecture in Japan to recognize same-sex partnerships.
Church activities in cyberspace
The church seems to have taken its anti-LGBTQ activities online. Nikkei's open source investigation found that an anti-LGBTQ website called Fair Space was created by a male Unification Church member who used to work for the church's public relations division and is active within the anti-communist, church-affiliated IFVOC. The church member asked to remain anonymous.
One article on the Fair Space website claims that there are many cases in which "conversion therapy" -- the scientifically discredited use of psychology and hormone treatments to alter an individual's sexuality -- and "faith" have "naturally" changed people's sexual orientation.
"The Unification Church, along with its affiliated organizations and media, are internet-savvy and have effectively leveraged the internet to spread their opinions," Tomomi Yamaguchi, an associate professor of anthropology at Montana State University in the U.S., told Nikkei.
Fair Space, which lists Eiji Inoue, a former city council member in Saitama prefecture's Kasukabe city, as its administrator, features no mention of the church. The IFVOC confirmed to Nikkei that their member helped to create the site as an "individual volunteer" because Inoue needed help with technology. The IFVOC denied any organizational relationship with Fair Space.
Tomihiro Tanaka, center, president of the Unification Church in Japan, on Aug. 10 confirms church links to the LDP. (Photo by Ken Kobayashi)
Inoue has previously been in the spotlight for his anti-LGBTQ remarks and links to the Unification Church. In September 2020, he told a Kasukabe city council meeting that there was no need for a system protecting LGBTQ rights and that the petition to create such a system was a "leftists' operation." In May this year, an interview with Inoue appeared in a book entitled "The hidden truth of LGBT," produced by a church-affliated publisher.
Yamaguchi argued that nonreligious people could be influenced by the arguments of religious groups online, without being aware that the information comes from a religious source. "The current discrimination against transgender people is a prime example of that," she added.
Mameta Endo, a trans man and social activist, senses firsthand a growing hostility against the transgender community from groups such as the church. "[Religious groups] have money to distribute colorful anti-LGBTQ leaflets, and they can mobilize people to send many negative opinions to local governments," Endo told Nikkei.
Long-term implications for the LDP
With as long as three years to go until Japan's next general election, it remains to be seen whether the Unification Church scandal will impact the LDP's hold on power.
Some analysts say the damage is irreversible. "[The Unification Church's] ties with the LDP run so deep that it will be impossible to get rid of them all," professor Nakano told Nikkei. "People think that the LDP is too big to fail, but under Kishida that doesn't seem to be the case."
When asked if the church's links with the LDP would affect their choices at the next election, a second-year student from Tokyo's Toyo University told Nikkei that they wanted to vote for a party "with as many 'clean' candidates as possible." The student added that from now on they would only be supporting politicians who were "sincere" with the public about who they associate with.
Others predict the LDP will emerge relatively unscathed. "We Japanese tend to forget things very quickly," cult expert Sakurai said. "As soon as this issue disappears from headlines, people will fall back into the way they did things before."
For LGBTQ rights campaigners, the revelations only prove how far the LDP still is from updating its anti-same-sex marriage stance. "It is wrong to only blame the Unification Church for lack of progress in LGBTQ rights," said Soshi Matsuoka, who heads Fair, an organization that provides support to sexual minorities. "Even if the LDP cuts ties with the church, I don't think their approach will change."
Matsuoka added that the church is just one of many organizations that back the LDP's conservative views on gender, and so losing its support would not make much difference. In June, Matsuoka exposed a booklet distributed at a conference held by LDP lawmakers linked to the Shinto Association of Spiritual Leadership -- a conservative organization whose members are affiliated with Shinto shrines across Japan. The booklet calls homosexuality a "disorder" and an "addiction."
One thing academics and rights campaigners agree on is that the current scandal presents a rare and valuable chance to review the often hidden links between politics and religion. "It is up to the media," Nakano said, "to keep this issue in the public eye and force discussions on the meaning of democracy."
.. RT right now the most honest
