Abe murder spotlights Unification Church controversy in Japan

France 24 ^

[FarCenter]

...

Japan became a financial hub for the church, which taught Japanese believers they needed to atone for their country's wartime occupation of Korea.

"They allocate different roles to each country intentionally," said Hotaka Tsukada, an associate professor of the sociology of religion at Joetsu University of Education.

"They have (sales) manuals to exploit believers," he told AFP.

The church offered "spiritual sales" of exorbitantly priced goods including a 43-million-yen ($350,000) statuette, which Japanese believers were told would absolve them or their ancestors.

Huge outlays by members led to a backlash.

Japan's National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales says it has filed suits seeking 123.7 billion yen ($900 million) in damages for former followers since 1987.

A series of arrests in the 2000s and verdicts against the church prompted limits on "spiritual sales", but lawyer Yamaguchi says believers are still pressed to meet monthly donation targets.

"It's a goal God decides," he says the church tells members. "It's a quota they need to meet."

The church denies members are pressured.

"Our view is that all donations before Heaven must be freely given," FFWPU press contact Demian Dunkley told AFP.

"FFWPU sometimes makes appeals for donations, but FFWPU members choose whether, when and how much they will give."

In 2005, Yamagami reportedly attempted suicide after his mother's bankruptcy, hoping his siblings would receive an insurance payout.

His older brother, a childhood cancer survivor, died by suicide a decade later.

In a letter to an anti-church blogger sent the day before Abe's murder, Yamagami said his teen years were marred by his mother's "overspending, family disruption and bankruptcy".

"The experience has distorted my entire life," the letter published by local media said.

[Doctor Congo]

I had forgotten that the Unification Church are the Moonies. I had to look it up and then it all came back to me. Their original leader died in 2012 and now his wife leads the cult.

[erlayman]

I’m still waiting to hear any reason for Abe being targeted.

[Vigilanteman]

How did it morph into FFWPU and what does it stand for?

[BobL]

A lot of people don’t like the way Japan has glossed over the horrors they committed in WW2 (particularly the Moonies), whereas Germany was front and center in admitting what they did and making sure their Nazi past was clearly understood by everyone going to the schools in that country.

Obviously, Germany’s approach was better...well, seemed better, at least to me.

But now look at things. Japan is a peaceful, unified, single-culture country, and barring a war with China will DEFINITELY be around in 50 years, and in the same form (albeit with less people), with its people living in peace for all that time.

But Germany (along with most European countries) will have, at best been through incredibly bloody civil wars, as they will have to purge the immigrants (and their offspring), to survive as a German people...or perish as a race.

So, which approach is better now? As to whether the upcoming civil wars in Europe are due to how history was told, or not told, to their people, who knows - but it certainly could be a factor.

[Wuli]

I met two ROK soldiers in Korea in the 1960s who were involved with the Moonies at the time. They were using social work in their off hours, with a little school for poor kids, as their vehicle for introducing people to the Moonie religion.

Hamas too makes social work and social spending as a big venue for spreading its radicalism in Gaza. It’s a good hook especially among the lower economic sector.

It must be very difficult for Japanese of all people to succumb to the Moonie cult. Some very negative social things must happen to them first, I think, in order to buy into a religion begun by a Korean claiming to take over after “Jesus failed”.