JJapan

Mother of suspect in Abe assassination was a member of Unification Church, church say.

Mother of suspect in Abe assassination was a member of Unification Church, church say.

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/world/2022/07/11/Mother-of-suspect-in-Abe-assassination-was-a-member-of-Unification-Church-church-say

27 comments

  1. The mother of the man arrested for the killing of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe was a member of the Unification Church, the church’s Japan head said on Monday.

    Tetsuya Yamagami, an unemployed 41-year-old, was identified by police as the suspect who approached Abe and opened fire during a campaign speech on Friday, an attack that was captured on video and shocked a nation where gun violence is rare.

  2. More on this subject from other reputable sources:

    —
    – Straits Times (B): [Unification Church in Japan says mother of Abe’s assassin is a member](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/unification-church-in-japan-says-mother-of-abes-assassin-was-its-member-around-1990s)
    – Insider (B-): [Shinzo Abe shooting suspect’s mom is Moonie, Unification Church says](https://www.businessinsider.com/shinzo-abe-shooting-suspect-mother-moonie-unification-church-confirms-2022-7)
    – Reuters (A+): [Mourners throng Abe’s wake as his party secures sombre Japan election win](https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-pm-kishida-set-consolidate-ruling-party-power-abe-mourned-2022-07-11/)
    – Guardian (C+): [Shinzo Abe killing: ‘Moonies’ church confirms suspect’s mother is member](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/11/mother-of-shinzo-abe-killing-suspect-member-of-moonies-church)

    —
    [__Extended Summary__](https://www.reddit.com/r/newswall/comments/vwj0b1/) | [More: Unification Church in …](https://www.newswall.org/story/unification-church-in-japan-says-mother-of-abe-rsquo-s-assassin-is-a-member-62cc3eae9af8e) | [FAQ & Grades](https://www.reddit.com/r/newswall/comments/uxgfm5/faq_newswall_bot/) | I’m a bot

  4. Japanese only, but this article

    [https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/4791c74c754bfae1b5b4a648c352b666bad16197](https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/4791c74c754bfae1b5b4a648c352b666bad16197)

    It mentions that the killer’s family is not the only one to be forced taking out credit card loans, selling their houses, cancelling life insurances early to “donate” to this cult. Apparently it IS still happening.

    I don’t condone the shooting whatsoever, but this cult is evil and I hope this case opens up their evilness for people to see.

  7. The Moonies had a close relationship with the Abe family, beginning with Shinzo Abe’s grandfather Kishi Nobusuke, [the “Monster of Showa” who led the puppet state Manchukuo and enslaved millions of Chinese laborers](https://palladiummag.com/2022/06/03/the-works-of-the-monster-of-showa/), 40% of whom died industrializing Manchukuo. In the 1960’s, [Kishi formed an alliance with the Unification Church in the name of anti-Communism, and employed lots of Moonies as campaign workers for the LDP](http://www.asyura2.com/0411/war63/msg/1384.html), Kishi’s party.

    Picture of Kishi shaking hands with Reverend Moon in 1973: [https://twitter.com/mrjeffu/status/1545890257723588610?s=20&t=EyyCYR1peAru9EToFnnpzA](https://twitter.com/mrjeffu/status/1545890257723588610?s=20&t=EyyCYR1peAru9EToFnnpzA)

    This cooperation between LDP politicians, including Shinzo Abe, and the Unification Church has continued to this day.

    There is a video of Shinzo Abe delivering a speech to the Unification Church. Although he has sent well wishes in the past, this was apparently the first time he appeared in person to personally deliver remarks praising the Unification Church: [https://youtu.be/PyK-2i-OYBI](https://youtu.be/PyK-2i-OYBI)

    Machiavelli’s Children by Richard Samuels also discusses the close relationship between Kishi and the Unification Church. Here is a page excerpt that someone posted on Twitter:

    [https://twitter.com/sfujihira/status/1546464449845936128?s=20&t=2d05AEzxK2Q-Y6nqFjHnlQ](https://twitter.com/sfujihira/status/1546464449845936128?s=20&t=2d05AEzxK2Q-Y6nqFjHnlQ)

    >Sasakawa’s anticommunism dovetailed neatly with his efforts in conservative politics. Working closely with Kishi Nobusuke, he cultivated relationships with anticommunists throughout Asia. This activity brought them into contact with the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, in the mid-1960s. In 1967, Sasakawa invited the church to use his motorboat racing center in Yamanashi for its first rally in Japan. The following year, three months after the Reverend Moon established his “Federation for Victory over Communism” (Shōkyō Rengō) in Korea, Sasakawa became honorary chairman in Japan. Kishi was impressed: “If all younger people were like Shōkyō Rengō members, Japan would have a bright future.” Sasakawa and Kishi shielded what would become one of the most widely reviled groups in contemporary Japan.
    >
    >As loathed as the Unification Church was for alleged kidnappings and mind control of young Japanese, it proved (and may still prove) to be of incalculable benefit to many Japanese politicians. Its Japan headquarters was built on Tokyo land once owned by Kishi. By the early 1970s, church members – so-called Moonies – were serving some LDP politicians without compensation as industrious and highly valued campaign workers. For many years the church enjoyed protection from prosecution for often fraudulent and aggressive sales and conversion tactics. By the 1980s, Japan reportedly provided some four-fifths of Unification Church revenues worldwide.
    >
    >The Kishi-Sasakawa link to Moon was broadened through the Kishi and allied factions. Fukuda Takeo, direct inheritor of the Kishi faction, praised Reverend Moon as “one of Asia’s great leaders” in 1974, and Nakasone Yasuhiro, the youngest member of the Kishi cabinet and scion of the allied Kōno faction, similarly honored Moon. Abe Shintarō, Kishi’s son-in-law, also depended on Moonies in his election campaigns. A list prepared by the Japanese Communist Party of 126 LDP and DSP politicians who used church “volunteers” to staff their campaign included Ozawa Ichirō, Hashimoto Ryūtarō, and other senior party leaders. In the 1990 general election, more than one hundred Diet members apparently received support from the Federation for Victory over Communism. Moon’s influence is shown by the special permission he received in 1992 to enter the country. Japanese law forbids entry to a foreign national who has served more than one year in jail. Moon had served eighteen months in a U.S. prison for tax evasion, but in March 1992, Kanemaru Shin, vice president of the LDP and head of the largest faction within the party, intervened on Moon’s behalf with the minister of justice.

    Edit: This video taken in 1998 shows two Unification Church officials, speaking in Korean and Japanese, exhorting Moonies to list down all their possessions – homes, cars, buildings, land, etc. to donate to the church, purportedly to help South Korea recover from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. [https://youtu.be/cOz4U6MFZv4](https://youtu.be/cOz4U6MFZv4) It has been exploding on Japanese social media, jumping from around 200 views to over 58,000 views in the days since Abe was assassinated. Viewers are speculating that, perhaps, the killer’s mother donated all her money to the church during one such fundraising drive.

  8. Damn that’s a horrible website.

    Clicked through to see if it was the OP that made a grammatical mistake or the website, then got a popup.

    This website uses “cookies”.

    Why is cookies in quotation marks? Ugh.

  10. You’re telling me that a gun murder in a country where gun murders are practically unheard of…is tied to religion?

    I’m shocked, I tells ya. Shocked.

    “Religion poisons everything”. Christopher Hitchens.

  11. Some (nationalistic) sources claim that this church is a tool established by the former KCIA under Korean junta as an outfit of its operations in Japan

  12. Highly recommend listening to the Being the Bastards podcast which talks about the Moonies – they are a real piece of shit cult that has been around half a century and gained incredible power and wealth by being fanatically anti-communist in a time when that was extremely popular.

    https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-one-the-moonies-are-so-93852606/

    https://www.iheart.com/podcast/105-behind-the-bastards-29236323/episode/part-two-the-moonies-are-so-93952841/

  15. The LDP has been using the moonies for years and protecting them from prosecution for their abuse of members.

  17. Funny now I’ve heard about the Moonies but didn’t realize that they are from the Unification Church.

  20. From Wikipedia:

    >In 2021, Donald Trump and Shinzo Abe gave speeches at the Rally of Hope event hosted by an affiliate of the Unification Church. The Unification Church has ties with Kishi Nobusuke, Abe’s grandfather and former prime minister, and Abe Shintaro, Abe’s father and former foreign minister.

  21. Former member of the Unification church here (born into it) and it was common knowledge within the church that the Japanese members were being financially screwed and no one took a stand against it except the former leader’s son who went on to establish his own church, Sanctuary Church.

    It was very common for members of their church to pay 10~30% of their earnings to the church but while it was encouraged, it was never forced (at least to my knowledge). I have heard many stories of Japanese members who have donated everything to the church, sometimes even taking a loan out to give to the church. Some members have (probably still do) essentially live at the Church, and donate practically everything they earn.

    The church’s justification for this was basically what’s called “Ancestral liberation” where members had to atone for their ancestor’s crime by donating money to the church so they can ‘liberate’ their ancestors from hell basically. It was a blatant bullshit that they pulled to steal more money from their members and Western members just kinda rolled their eyes and looked the other way. I heard they really guilt tripped the Japanese members because of their crimes against the Korean people, demanding more money from them.

    In my opinion it was a matter of time before some loony member/family member to pull something like this. Hearing how much the Japanese members are getting shafted.

  22. I attended a cult “mass” once ,in Kobe.

    The cult let us do drugs (courtesy of them) but the entrance fee was 20,000 yen for 1-2 shots(2 if you can handle it) of the drug.

    I’m a foreign woman and we were not allowed to wear shorts skirts.
    Everybody was not allowed to cross their legs.

  23. A press conference was held today by the Lawyers’ Committee on the Unification Church. All in Japanese, but summarised.

    [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQPc644aNMs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQPc644aNMs)

    -The Unification Church is a Korean cult that brainwashes its followers into donating all their wealth to the church with the idea that ‘Korea is the land of the messiah and Japan is the land of the devil’.

    -The Unification Church wants to “purify the blood of Japan” by brainwashing Japanese women and forcing them to marry poor Korean men and give birth to children with Korean blood. It it said more than 7,000 Japanese women have been taken to South Korea and forced to marry Korean men so far.

    -Selling a book signed by Moon Sun Myung ‘the founder of the Unification Church’ to a follower for 30 million yen.

    -The Unification Church’s founder was an ally of Japanese LDP Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi (Shinzo Abe’s grandfather) and has collaborated with Japanese politics since the 1950s.

    -As of the 1990s, more than 100 of Japan’s Diet members (mostly LDP) had secretaries who were members of the Unification Church, and their activities were reported to and directed by the Unification Church.

  26. Tax religious groups. There’s a reason they hold so much power by not paying taxes…money is laundered through them for political goals.
    Also, do they get national health insurance and social security? That’s also messed up.

  27. Long story short… just be CATHOLIC. no one is forcing anybody to donate. No 10% blah blah blah. Just drop whatever amount in the collection box at mass on a sunday and be on your way. For a bigger donation you may approach the parish priest. Everythings up to you.

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