Commentary | Levi McLaughlin, A Grudge Against the Unification Church Motivated the Murder of Japan’s Most Prominent Politician
Media sources worldwide now report that the brutal assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzō while he campaigned for his Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) last Friday was motivated by his ties to a religion. Abe’s assassin appears to have been angered by the former PM’s relationship with the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), a group previously known as the Unification Church and pejoratively referred to as “the Moonies.” This reported motive for the shocking slaying of Japan’s highest-profile political figure reveals that, while people in Japan may be reticent about self-identifying as religious and remain leery of religion in the public sphere, religion and its political intersections are just as important in Japan as they are in other countries.
Though he was no longer Prime Minister, Abe remained Japan’s most powerful politician. He was head of the LDP’s largest faction, comprising 94 Diet members (including Abe). The LDP has long dominated politics in Japan, and the agenda Abe put in place during his record-long tenure as PM between 2012 and 2020 has continued to steer the party’s policymaking. A divisive figure who promoted historical revisionism to foster a “beautiful” Japan and cultivate a populace with pride in its past, Abe pushed to retain conservative social norms that perpetuated traditional gender roles and reverence for Japan’s imperial house, and sought to amend the 1947 Constitution in order to remilitarize the country. Abe was also credited as a regional leader in matters of international trade and played a significant role in cementing U.S.-Japan relations and fortifying Japan’s security posture.
Scoops on Abe’s killer have largely been released by Japan’s tabloid press, which has been on the forefront of digging into his family’s past and Abe’s links to religious organizations. A strong caveat: many details remain unconfirmed, and Japan’s tabloids have a history of rumor-mongering and leaning on salacious detail. One notable effect at present is a ramping-up of high-pitched rhetoric being broadcast via broadcast and social media about “cults” and rumors of their insidious influence at the top levels of Japanese society.
“One notable effect at present is a ramping-up of high-pitched rhetoric...about ‘cults’ and rumors of their insidious influence at the top levels of Japanese society.”
Here is what has been reported at present. The accused, Yamagami Tetsuya (41), told police that he had no conflict with Abe’s politics, but he bore a grudge against the FFWPU. He was angry about his mother’s immersion in the church and harbored resentment against it for convincing her to donate large sums of money. The Yamagami family appears to have once been well-off. The killer’s father was an engineer who had graduated from a prestigious university and worked at his family’s construction firm in Nara, an ancient city in western Japan. When Yamagami was five years old, his father died; the Daily Shinchō suggests that he may have taken his own life after a nervous breakdown. The family then moved into the father’s family home, and it was around this time that Yamagami’s mother converted to Unificationism. She inherited her husband’s business and home after her father-in-law’s death, and then sold them and their land, giving the proceeds – reportedly in excess of US $365,000 – to the Unification Church. Even after she was forced to file for bankruptcy in 2002, she continued to donate funds. The financial strain on the family was extreme to the extent that they struggled to keep food on the table. Yamagami was reportedly one of the only students from his selective high school to not attend university. He instead attended a trade school and joined the Maritime Self-Defense Forces (Japan’s equivalent of a navy), where he served from 2002 to 2005. Turmoil over the family’s financial ruin split up the family home, and they were afflicted by the further strain of his elder brother committing suicide after a long illness.
In the years since his family’s collapse, Yamagami appears to have lived a lonely existence. He clearly suffered an enormous amount of family strife, but he otherwise seems to fit the profile of atomized young men of his age, growing up socially isolated in the “lost decades” since the 90s with hampered socioeconomic prospects. He resigned this past May from his job at a forklift operator at a Kyoto factory, claiming fatigue. When police raided his one-room apartment in Nara’s Saidaiji neighborhood, they found a number of improvised firearms of the same type he used to shoot Abe.
Shock over Abe’s murder has been compounded by the use of this kind of weapon, because gun violence of any sort is extremely rare in Japan: there were only nine gun deaths recorded in Japan in 2018, compared to 39,740 in the U.S. the same year. Instructions on how to make the weapon Yamagami built circulate online. It is likely that time spent in online circles fed Yamagami’s animosity to the former Unification Church. Conspiracy theories circulated by Japan’s netto uyoku, or online rightwing activists, include animus against the church in their hostility to Korea and new religious groups.
The FFWPU’s Japan chair Tanaka Tomihiro acknowledged in a press conference on Monday that Yamagami’s mother is a parishioner who has attended services since the late 1990s but denied that the church pressures its members to make donations. They also played down their influence with Abe and other politicians. The FFWPU was founded in 1954 in South Korea as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity by Moon Sun-myung (1920-2012). It became infamous in the 1960s and 70s in the United States and Europe for its conversion tactics, mass weddings in which couples are matched by church leadership, deleterious demands on its practitioners, and a reported practice of separating converts from their families. Testimonials from former parishioners and members’ families served as primary motivations for the start of the anticult movement in North America; Steven Hassan and other prominent anticult activists are former “Moonies.” Since the 1980s, the church has gained a significant following in Japan, where it now claims approximately 600,000 parishioners. It has a largely negative public image in Japan and attracts anticult activism thanks to its aggressive proselytizing, a practice of convincing adherents to donate extravagant sums, reportedly setting norms for monetary donations, and its proactive lobbying of conservative lawmakers. Japan’s National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales has launched thousands of lawsuits against the church since 1987 and has won damages in excess of 123.7 billion yen (more than US$900 million).
The gunman reportedly bore a particular grudge against Abe in part due to the Abe family’s long-term connections with the Unification Church. Abe’s grandfather Kishi Nobusuke, also a prominent Prime Minister, forged close ties with Moon. Abe’s father Shintarō, who held the post of Foreign Minister, reportedly received support from Unification Church adherents in his electoral bids. Abe Shinzō, along with Donald Trump and other prominent politicians, spoke in 2021 on the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 at a “Rally of Hope” event organized by Hak Ja Han Moon, Reverend Moon’s widow. Yamagami reportedly told police that it was difficult for him to target the church leadership, but when he learned that Abe would be on the campaign trail near his home, he planned his attack.
The murder of Japan’s most powerful politician poses the risk of a moral panic that may spell danger for some of the country’s least powerful and most marginalized residents: ethnic minorities and members of minority religions. There are worrisome precedents for how events may transpire, given the connection of Abe’s assassination to a Korean religion. Relations between Japan and Korea have long been icy, at best. This is a trend driven in part by racism mobilized online, through broadcast media, and in Japan’s streets by far-right activists. Animosity against a Korea-based church poses a corollary danger to the hundreds of thousands of people of Korean descent who live in Japan; on July 8th, the South Korean consulate in Fukuoka tweeted a caution about the possibility of hate crimes. Anger directed toward the Unification Church may amplify targeting of Korean people and establishments, which persists as an incipient threat in Japan.
At the same time, groups that carry the problematic labels “new religion” or “cult,” and perhaps even religious and religion-affiliated organizations in general, are liable to endure a heightened risk of persecution. People in Japan are typically leery of self-identifying as “religious.” A religious motivation for Abe’s murder has surprised many, in part because Japan ranks near the bottom of global religious affiliation surveys. As few as one in five survey respondents in Japan affirm that they have religious faith, and Japan’s 1947 Constitution contains multiple articles guaranteeing separation of religion and state. Nonetheless, religion remains a vital part of Japanese life, and religions and religion-affiliated lobbyists foster governmental influence and comprise an essential part of politics in Japan. Politically influential groups include the Association of Shinto Shrines, Nippon Kaigi (Japan Conference), and other religiously motivated nationalists with close links to the LDP. The LDP’s national-level junior coalition partner Komeito is a party founded, and powered, by the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. In this regard, Abe’s connection with the former Unification Church was not unusual or exclusive. It was one of many interest groups, religious and otherwise, with which he maintained ties in order to further his and his party’s aims.
There is precedent in Japan for heightened anger about religion in the wake of calamity, and specifically for backlash against politically significant religions. This was most notable in the wake of the March 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subways by the apocalyptic group Aum Shinrikyō. The Japanese generation that came of age after Aum developed an acute allergy to religion that remains prominent today. We may see a resurgence of anti-religious sentiment triggered by the religion-related motivation for Abe’s murder.
The average local-level attendee at an organization like the FFWPU is someone like Yamagami’s parent, a mother who faced compound hardships and found meaning in a religion’s community and practices. To defend her, and others like her, is not to defend the usurious practices of her church. However, uncritical invocations of “nefarious cult” tropes rarely impact leaders who engage in exploitative practices. They instead perpetuate hatred against local-level believers who already face persecution and exploitation. It is possible to criticize exploitative groups while condemning how this critique can advance bigotries. Most importantly, we should condemn the persecution of those who already bear the brunt of exploitation and populist anger.
Levi McLaughlin is Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. He is co-author of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (IEAS Berkeley, 2014) and author of Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan (University of Hawai`i Press, 2019), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on religion and politics in Japan.
To cite this Commentary essay, please use the entry suggested below:
Levi McLaughlin, “A Grudge Against the Unification Church Motivated the Murder of Japan’s Most Prominent Politician,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, July 13, 2022; https://doi.org/10.52698/RUVM3596.