A court orders the Unification Church in Japan dissolved
[March 25, 2025]
By MARI YAMAGUCHI
TOKYO (AP) — The Unification Church in Japan was ordered dissolved by a
court Tuesday after a government request spurred by the investigation
into the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The church said it was considering an immediate appeal of the Tokyo
District Court’s revocation of its legal status, which would take away
its tax-exempt privilege and require liquidation of its assets.
The order followed a request by Japan’s Education Ministry in 2023 to
dissolve the influential South Korea-based sect, citing manipulative
fundraising and recruitment tactics that sowed fear among followers and
harmed their families.
The Japanese branch of the church had criticized the request as a
serious threat to religious freedom and the human rights of its
followers.
The church called the court order regrettable and unjust and said in a
statement the court's decision was based on “a wrong legal
interpretation and absolutely unacceptable."
The investigation into Abe's assassination revealed decades of cozy ties
between the South Korea-based church and Japan’s governing Liberal
Democratic Party. The church obtained legal status as a religious
organization in Japan in the 1960s during an anti-communist movement
supported by Abe’s grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi.
The man accused of killing Abe resented the church and blamed it for his
family's financial troubles.

The church, which officially calls itself the Family Federation for
World Peace and Unification, is the first religious group subject to a
revocation order under Japan’s civil code. Two earlier case involved
criminal charges — the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult, which carried out a
sarin nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, and Myokakuji group,
whose executives were convicted of fraud.
To seek the church's dissolution, the Education Ministry had submitted
5,000 documents and pieces of evidence to the court, based on interviews
with more than 170 people.
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Nobuya Fukumoto, foreground center, a lawyer for the Unification
Church, is surrounded by reporters after the church was ordered
dissolved by the Tokyo District Court, in front of the court in
Tokyo Tuesday, March 25, 2025. (Kyodo News via AP)

The church tried to steer its followers’ decision-making, using
manipulative tactics, making them buy expensive goods and donate
beyond their financial ability and causing fear and harm to them and
their families, seriously deviating from the law on religious
groups, officials and experts say.
The Agency for Cultural Affairs said the settlements reached in or
outside court exceeded 20 billion yen ($132 million) and involved
more than 1,500 people.
The church, founded in Seoul in 1954, a year after the end of the
Korean War, by the late Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the self-proclaimed
messiah who preached new interpretations of the Bible and
conservative, family-oriented value systems.
It developed relations with conservative world leaders including
U.S. President Donald Trump, as well as his predecessors Richard
Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
The church faced accusations in the 1970s and 1980s of using devious
recruitment tactics and brainwashing adherents into turning over
huge portions of their salaries to Moon. In Japan, the group has
faced lawsuits for offering “spiritual merchandise” that allegedly
caused members to buy expensive art and jewelry or sell their real
estate to raise donations for the church.
The church has acknowledged excessive donations but says the problem
has lessened since the group stepped up compliance in 2009.
Experts say Japanese followers are asked to pay for sins committed
by their ancestors during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of the
Korean Peninsula, and that the majority of the church’s worldwide
funding comes from Japan.
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