The Assassination of Shinzo Abe & the Unification Church
Untangling the Connections Between the Former Japanese Prime Minister and the Korean Church
Japanese news reports state that the gunman, 41 year old Tetsuya Yamagami, blamed the former prime minister after his “family disintegrated because of his mother’s obsession with a religious group he accuses Abe of promoting.”
When I heard this, I was certain the religious group in question was Soka Gakkai. This new-age Buddhist group, through its political wing, Komeito, has long collaborated with Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and was in a coalition government with Abe throughout his long premiership.
So when my co-editor,
, said the group was the Unification Church, my reaction was huh?She sent me some links. I was sure they were fake news. The Japanese press wasn’t reporting it. Neither was any English-language site I could find.
But as information trickled in, it appears she was right. She even told me of a connection between the church and Trump which seemed fanciful until it turned out to be legit. Which led me down a rabbit hole of Japanese, English, French, and Korean sites trying to figure out the story.
Let’s start at the top. Sorry to disappoint you, but there was no international conspiracy to silence Former PM Abe. He was killed by a gunman acting alone, and probably struggling with mental illness.
The killing of Abe was not ordered by American Democrats protecting Hillary Clinton.
Dante’s Inferno only has 9 levels; mine goes to 11. And level 11 is reserved for evil people who spread fake news. This is the work of minions of the devil who turn man against man.
Fortunately, most of the awful people who spread fake news are idiots. This supposed tweet from Abe the day before he died claims to have information that will lead to the arrest of QAnon’s favorite bogeywoman — Hillary Clinton.
To Mr. Michael Malice, I recommend you learn how to use Google Translate. I don’t know where you got the Japanese you used in your fake tweet, but it doesn’t say anything like what it claims. In fact, it’s completely messed up.
Unfortunately, a fact check like this one from Reuters will mean nothing to 12,600 people who liked it, retweeted it, and spread its stupidity across the twitterverse.
But just because there wasn’t a conspiracy to kill Abe doesn’t mean Abe wasn’t tied to a new-age Korean religion.
Piecing together what seems to have happened, it appears the mother of Yamagami, the gunman, became involved with the Japanese Unification Church and donated gobs of money to them. Japanese news reports that Yamagami’s mother was indeed a member of the church, and they had a local office less than 500 meters from the spot where Abe was shot.
Yamagami felt resentful against the church and blamed it for his family’s financial problems. If confirmed, that makes sense, at least in a twisted blame-someone-for-my-own-problems kind of way.
But how do we get from hatred of a sticky-fingered new age church to murdering a former prime minister? Here’s where things get interesting, because the Unification Church is closely tied into politics in South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, generally known as the Unification Church was founded in 1954 in Seoul by Sun Myung Moon who claimed to be the messiah. It has approximately 3 million members worldwide. In the U.S., it is known as the Moonies where it was famous for young church members who left school and careers to devote themselves to the church, especially fundraising, offering flowers in exchange for donations on the streets and in airports.
Moon involved himself and the church in hard-right conservative causes as an anti-communist. He supported Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal, then founded the Washington Times newspaper as a precursor to Fox News. It remains a standard bearer for conservative politics and to be owned and managed by companies affiliated with the church. Ronald Reagan credited it with helping win the Cold War. It continues to this day to be a leading voice of Republican causes and a supporter of Donald Trump.
Here is a video of Trump speaking at a church affiliated event and thanking the church’s organization, Universal Peace Federation, as well as founder Moon and the Washington Times.
Former Prime Minister Abe also spoke at the same event:
In Japan, the church is known as Touitsu Kyokai (統一教会) where it is famous for its mass weddings, including one in 1988 marrying 8,000 Japanese among the 13,000 brides and grooms that hadn’t even met each other until just before the ceremony.
The connection between Abe and the Unification Church begins with his grandfather, Prime Minister Kishi. According to this research paper by the Japan Policy Research Institute, the church built their Japanese headquarters on land previously owned by Kishi, and helped his LDP party by providing church members as campaign workers.
In return, for many years the Church enjoyed protection from prosecution by Japanese authorities for their often fraudulent and aggressive sales and conversion tactics. Not incidentally, by the 1980s, Japan reportedly provided some four-fifths of Unification Church revenues worldwide.
According to the paper, Abe’s father, Shintaro Abe, an LDP leader and cabinet member, also depended on Unification Church members as campaign workers.
Reports trickling in are claiming that the younger Abe, as well, had close connections to the church.
This report from 2006 shows ongoing connections between Abe and the church.
Though not confirmed, it appears that the shooter was angry that the church had taken all of his family’s money and that the police wouldn’t do anything because they were protected by Abe. This article has some details.
Whether there were connections between Abe and the Unification Church, secret or otherwise, we don’t need a complex conspiracy to explain the lack of action by local police. Realistically, the police wouldn’t do anything because the church hadn’t done anything illegal.
Soliciting donations from members is what religions do. And even if they somehow cross the line in coercing donations, it’s impossible to prosecute. It hardly takes a friendly prime minister to protect them, but this angry, struggling man must have discerned a deep-state conspiracy behind the lack of response that went up to the very top.
So we come full circle. While not a conspiracy to murder Abe, a lone gunman saw a conspiracy by politicians including Mr. Abe to protect the church as the reason to murder him.
It’s a shame that the Japanese press doesn’t publish this information themselves. If there is a real conspiracy, it’s by the press to censor itself. This allows corruption to fester and people to spread rumors that may or may not be true.
For more information, see this article from Gendai:
And this thread from Jeffrey J. Hall:
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