A Religious Group or an Antisocial Group?---If you see the Unification Church as a religious group, you will arrive at the wrong conclusion

Even sardine heads have values to people who have faith in them (an old Japanese proverb) — The doctrines don’t matter

It has been nearly three weeks since the former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s death was brought about through various conditions and coincidences. Judging from the police report, Mr. Yamagami, the suspect, has had a grudge against the Unification Church for a long time and actually wanted to retaliate towards the Church not towards individual, Abe. Mr. Abe was a substitute for the Church’s leader because he knew that the former PM sent a message that he admired the Church. Those facts make me think how should I take this could-be historical event; Is this a religious issue, a political issue or a social issue? What are differences between religions and cults? Groups which have strange doctrines, are all cults?

Answering to those questions is not easy. However, I would like to say that the doctrines don’t matter. Their behavior in society DOES matter more. We should not call them CULTs only because they have unusual and weird doctrines. We should focus on the quality of their influence to people and communities.

The Unification Church has been treating Japan as a cash cow — they have been committing crimes, repeatedly prosecuted, and lost in court of justice

The Unification Church was founded in 1954 in South Korea and came into Japan in 1959. In the 1960s and 1970s the Church aggressively recruited new members in Japanese colleges. In the 1980’s to 1990’s, the Church committed many crimes and held mass wedding every year in which some famous people participate in the ceremony; The Church worshippers or believers sold ceramic pots and decorative objects at an excessive price to other people for their own donation to the Church. They cleverly persuaded buyers with such a fearful mongol that the dead ancestor’s pain would not be eased without the pot or object. ’Comforting dead people’s souls’ was an extremely effective phrase for most of the Japanese people whose basic principles are caring about their own ancestor souls, purifying karma and reincarnation. Those tricks were called 霊感商法 [ reikan sho ho]. (Japanese word 霊感 means spiritual sense, 商 means business, or selling, and 法 means ways to practice something. So in my translation, that’s ‘Dirty Spiritual Business’. The NBC calls it ‘spiritual merchandise’ in the article.*1) In short, that’s a massive fraud.

At that time the Church had to face many lawsuits for fraud, in which it lost most of the cases, (actually it is the same still now) and the main stream media reported what horrible ways the members used to deceive the victims, and criticized how cleverly the Church pulled the invisible strings of its members. However, I don’t know when and why, the media stopped such reporting and criticizing.

Since the 21st century began, they have continue brainwashing many people and milked them dry for money through exploiting people’s fears and weaknesses more deviously than ever. Assassination of Abe shed light on this issue. The suspect’s mother donated enormous amount of money to the Church and he had have a huge grudge about it.

According to the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales Japan, who have been supporting the victims of The Unification Church’s crimes for more than three decades, they had confirmed 47 cases, totaling about 300,000,000 yen (about 2.2 million US dollars) damages to the victims in 2021. The total amount of the damage that only came from the last thirty-four years is 123,700, 000,000 yen (about 88 million US dollars)*2.

The Church has expanded to other countries through the world, it is said that total number of believers are not so many(in Japan, 100,000~200,000, in the world less than three million). However, it is illegally collecting money only in Japan. The Japanese members also have to donate significant amounts of money towards ‘the ancestors’ soul’ theory. Some researchers estimated that the annual income of the Church would surpass 50,000,000,000 yen and that’s 70~80 % have come from Japan. *3 The Church also justifies such illegal and immoral collection of money for the terrible things that Imperial Japan had done to Korean people during the colonial age of the Imperial Japan, 1910 - 1945.

You should think of the Unification Church as a SOCIAL issue, not a RELIGIOUS one

First of all, you have to discard the idea that the Unification Church is A RELIGIOUS group. It is a vicious criminal group that has devastated (is still devastating now) many Japanese people’s lives psychologically, socially, physically and economically. Someone would say like this: ‘ Whatever you believe in is O.K. That’s religious freedom. An individual believes it and pay for something. That’s his/her own responsibility. Other people can’t say anything about that.’ But you have to hit it back. ‘ This group is a massive fraud group pretending to be religion, exploiting christianity and using mind control. That’s a huge antisocial existence. It’s not a religious freedom issue but a social one. Once brainwashing is completed, it is so difficult to remove it. Can you really say that it is individual responsibility?’

I think that the Unification Church should be dissolved. The Church members and the related dummy companies for committing fraud should be investigated as soon as possible. Inspection of relation between Japanese politicians and the Church members should be done after that.

Reference

*1 https://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/national-international/unification-church-at-center-of-abe-assassination-under-increased-scrutiny/3775817/
*2 https://www.stopreikan.com/madoguchi_higai.htm
*3 https://dailycult.blogspot.com/2012/06/blog-post_01.html

Other techniques and tricks to deceive

https://howwelldoyouknowyourmoon.tumblr.com/post/131647536438/the-activities-of-the-unification-church-in-japan

ttps://jashow.org/articles/an-introduction-to-the-unification-church/