by JEFF KINGSTON
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Abstract: The assassination of Abe Shinzo in July 2022 not only felled a political giant, but also propelled the government to seek dissolution of the Unification Church (UC), known as the Moonies in the Anglophone world, because the gunman told police that he targeted Japan’s longest serving prime minister (2012–2020) due to his links with the UC. Ironically, the South Korea-based UC enjoyed extensive influence in the Abe faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a strange brew of clashing nationalisms given that Abe was an advocate of historical revisionism, a rightwing political movement that promotes an exonerating and glorifying narrative of Japan’s shared past with Asia, while the UC was guilt-tripping donors about Japan’s colonial rule in the Korean peninsula (1910–45).
The assassination of Abe Shinzo in July 2022 not only felled a political giant, but also, by October 2023, propelled the government to seek dissolution of the Unification Church (UC), known as the Moonies in the Anglophone world, because the gunman told police that he targeted Japan’s longest serving prime minister (2012–2020) due to his links with the church. This article traces the unlikely arc of dynastic links between one of Japan’s most powerful political families with a South Korean fundamentalist Christian group established by the self-proclaimed messiah Sun Myung Moon. The UC is infamous in Japan for controversial fundraising and recruiting methods in addition to conducting mass weddings. However, it was only in the summer of 2022 that the media drew back the veil on the UC’s extensive political connections with Japan’s long dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), igniting a firestorm of public condemnation.
Yamagami Tetsuya, the gunman, told police, “I believed Abe was tied to the Unification Church. Nobusuke Kishi [Japan’s Prime Minister from 1957 to 1960 and Abe’s grandfather] had brought the Unification Church to Japan. That’s why I killed him” (Tokumoto 2023). His mother donated the family fortune to the UC, leaving the household destitute. As a result, Yamagami became increasingly resentful about a descent from a comfortable life to a precarious existence. Armed with a homemade blunderbuss, he took revenge, managing to come up from behind Abe and shoot him at close range while he was campaigning for an LDP candidate. In a society where guns are tightly controlled and violent crime is uncommon, the nation was left shocked by Abe’s murder.
PM Kishida Fumio quickly announced there would be a state funeral to honor Abe, only the second for a post-WWII prime minister. Initially, there was strong public support for this initiative, but the mood quickly shifted as the media spotlighted the UC’s cozy ties with the LDP and its extensive record of coerced donations and dubious practice of ‘spiritual sales,’ charging exorbitant amounts for various ‘sacred’ objects ostensibly as atonement for ancestral sins. Suddenly a nation grieving Abe’s death discovered a hidden world where a notorious religious group held enormous influence in the corridors of power. The subsequent anti-Abe backlash was quick and widespread, fed by the UC revelations and extensive reporting about a series of cronyism scandals implicating Abe that slashed his approval rating to 34 per cent (NHK 2020) on the eve of his 2020 resignation (Nakano NYT 2020).
Clarifying his motive, Yamagami also told investigators about Abe’s upbeat video message of support in 2022 to the Think Tank Rally of Hope, an event hosted by the Universal Peace Federation, a UC affiliate founded by Moon in 2005; Abe was introduced there as an heir to the Kishi political dynasty (Asahi 2022a). Abe previously had sent congratulatory messages to this group in 2006 when he served as Chief Cabinet Secretary. This drew criticism, because by this time there was widespread public condemnation of the UC’s deceptive marketing schemes and many complaints about coerced donations. In response to the uproar, Abe’s office asserted that the telegram had been sent by mistake and that the person responsible was reprimanded.