The church’s connection to Abe’s murder and Japan’s political issues

• His assassin did not favor killing Shinzo Abe.
• A South Korean religious organization that the man blames for his family’s financial downfall.
• Hak Ja Han Moon stopped visiting Japan.

His assassin did not favor killing Shinzo Abe.

According to investigators, Tetsuya Yamagami, the 41-year-old who shot and killed Japan’s longest-serving prime minister on July 8, initially intended to kill the leader of the Unification Church, a South Korean religious organization that the man blames for his family’s financial downfall. However, the COVID-19 epidemic hampered progress.

Following border closures brought on by the pandemic, Hak Ja Han Moon, who has been in charge of the church since the passing of its founder, her husband Sun Myung Moon, in 2012, stopped visiting Japan.

A day before killing Abe with a homemade gun, Yamagami wrote to a blogger that it was “impossible” to murder Hak Ja Han Moon. And although the 67-year-old congressman was “not my original enemy,” he was “one of the most powerful sympathizers” of the Unification Church, he wrote. He continued, “I can no longer afford to consider the political ramifications and consequences that Abe’s passing will bring.

Japan, a country where political violence and gun crimes are incredibly rare, was stunned by the heinous murder that took place in the city of Nara while Abe was giving a speech. Days after the killing, the Japanese public gave the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) a resounding victory in an upper house election, prompting Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to promptly announce that he would perform a state funeral for Abe.

But when media attention on the church’s close ties to Abe and the LDP and allegations of mistreatment, like as coerced donations, increased, the grief soon gave way to resentment. Between the time of Abe’s murder and mid-September, Kishida’s support ratings fell from 63 percent to about 29 percent, prompting concerns about the prime minister’s political future.

In Japan, the Unification Church is more commonly viewed as a predatory cult than as a religious organization, according to Koichi Nakano, a political science professor at Tokyo’s Sophia University. According to Nakano, the LDP has “outraged” the Japanese people as if its “links to a prominent criminal organization” had been made public.

Sun Myung Moon established the Unification Church in South Korea in 1954. He is the official founder of the Family Federation for World Peace and Reunification and is derisively referred to as “the Moonies.”

The so-called messiah was a fervent opponent of Communism and a supporter of traditional, family-oriented values. Famously, he presided over mass weddings at which he had paired thousands of couples, occasionally by matching photos of individuals who had never met.

Also Read

Shinzo Abe is honored in Japan with a divisive state funeral

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is being laid to rest with a rare...