Shinzo Abe Killer’s Trial Is Exposing the Christian Cult Entrenched in Japanese Politics

Unification Church members rally in Seoul on Aug to protest against the media coverage the group received in Japan following the assassination in early July of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Photo Anthony Wallace AFP via Getty Images He has a stan practices to rival K-pop idols a fund bankrolled by sympathizers and has been labeled one of the most of achieving assassins in history Beginning on Tuesday Tetsuya Yamagami the man who shot Japan s longest-serving prime minister with a homemade gun is standing trial But in the eyes of a great number of of his countrymen the real defendant in the dock is Japan s political system itself When Yamagami pulled the trigger in July killing Shinzo Abe in a puff of white smoke at a suburban political rally it seemed incomprehensible Modern Japan doesn t have a gun beliefs much less one of assassination Photos soon emerged of Yamagami being wrestled to the ground by prevention his crude blunderbuss held together with gaffer tape smoldering while Abe lay dying I had no choice Yamagami stated police but to choose Mr Abe as a murder target The -year-old saw Abe the third-generation godfather of Japan s largest part powerful political dynasty as the embodiment of a system that had destroyed his family Yamagami described Abe as one of the Unification Church s sympathizers who wields the bulk influence in the real world To the defendant Abe was the figure who could be held responsible for the decadeslong relationship between Abe s right-wing Liberal Democratic Party or LDP and the Unification Church a quasi-Christian movement founded by Korean preacher Sun Myung Moon more than years ago To understand what brought him to that fateful moment we first need to understand the bizarre Korean religious movement that served as the bridge between the two men despite neither being members Moon was born in North Korea in at a time when the country was under repressive Japanese occupation and Christianity was flourishing as both a faith and a source of resistance According to the church s founding beliefs Moon claimed Jesus visited him as a teenager and begged him to complete his mission to create God s kingdom on Earth with Korea as its chosen nation Tetsuya Yamagami the man accused of murdering former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe leaves the police station to head to the prosecutor s office in Nara Japan on July Photo STR JIJI Press AFP Japan OUT via Getty Images In after building a small but devoted following Moon founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity better known as the Unification Church In the United States where it rose to prominence two decades later the group became infamously known as the Moonies noted for its mass weddings at venues like Madison Square Garden before rebranding in the s as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification By the late s he sought to expand his movement which fused Christian teachings with Korean shamanism fervent anti-communism and sexual purity abroad Theologically he viewed Japan as a spiritually corrupt nation whose sins could be cleansed only through devotion and material sacrifice acts he deemed necessary to fulfill a divine destiny uniting the Korean peninsula and establishing God s kingdom Practically he understood that the Japanese economic miracle taking hold offered fertile ground for fundraising and recruitment In Japan the Church s methods were ruthlessly effective They exploited a potent mix of traditional beliefs about inherited misfortune guilt over Japan s colonial past in Korea and the alienation of women struggling to deal with a rapidly changing world Moonies scoured newspaper obituaries for in recent months bereaved widows then appeared at their doors claiming to bear messages from the spirit world that their loved ones were trapped in a kind of purgatory and the only way to free them was by purchasing cheap trinkets at tens of thousands of times their actual worth Kishi helped Moon gain a foothold in Japan granting him political protection in exchange for his fervent anti-left-wing organizing Moon s movement was transformed into an empire by his introduction to Nobusuke Kishi Shinzo Abe s grandfather a wartime minister and suspected Class A war criminal who escaped prosecution and helped form the conservative LDP The party has ruled Japan almost entirely since the party s founding in with Kishi serving as its prime minister from to Kishi helped Moon gain a foothold in Japan granting him political protection in exchange for his fervent anti-left-wing organizing For decades the arrangement worked perfectly The Unification Church offered a disciplined nationwide organization of supporters who worked on campaigns and filled rallies to create a powerful illusion of popular endorsement In return LDP lawmakers bestowed legitimacy on the movement They spoke at events for its countless front organizations but the greater part importantly shielded the Church from the cabinet scrutiny its exploitative fundraising practices would otherwise have invited By the s as Moon consolidated his power as a political and business titan in his new playground of the United States the Japanese branch of the Church had funneled the equivalent of nearly billion to fund his American interests Quietly this lucrative grid of mutually beneficial corruption fusing spiritual coercion and state power had become part of Japan s political DNA It was into this machinery that Yamagami s family was drawn Only a year after he was born in Yamagami s maternal grandmother died in a car accident shattering his mother Ako s already fragile mental soundness When Yamagami was his father killed himself by jumping from a hospital roof leaving Ako with two young sons and a daughter on the way I was raised by a single mother Yamagami wrote in a Twitter post part of a yearslong monologue about his unhappiness to a handful of followers But we weren t poor In fact we were well-off When they were still young his older brother developed brain cancer and lost his right eye a long illness that brought years of suffering Around a stranger visited the Yamagami home offering a prayer healer who promised to lift the family s curse by driving out ancestral evil Ako joined the church soon after telling friends that its teachings saved her Rev Sun Myung Moon left founder of the Unification Church and his wife attend the ceremony after the Peace Cup final match between Hamburger SV and Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma on July in Suwon South Korea Photo Kiyoshi Ota Getty Images After donating her husband s life insurance and assets to the church more than in in the modern day s money she also began volunteering preponderance of her time neglecting three children who were often left dirty and hungry When they turned up on family members doorsteps the money the children brought home would be turned over to the Church Her father s business which appeared to have been keeping the family afloat faltered in the Asian economic predicament Tweets from Yamagami noted that the old man got furious at my mother rather it would be more correct to say desperate That was when he took a kitchen knife Though he did not kill his daughter the act severed all contact and with it the family s only connection to life outside the rapacious Church After her father s death in Yamagami s mother once again donated her entire inheritance to the Unification Church in a further attempt to salvage the family bloodline Within four years the family was bankrupt Even the money set aside for the children s college guidance was gone a lost opportunity that Yamagami often dwelled upon In his mid- s Yamagami took out a life insurance protocol and tried to kill himself hoping to leave behind a few financial assurance for his brother and sister It didn t work The years that followed drifted by in menial jobs and quiet despair There was no wife no children no hope Then in his life was upended once more when his brother worn down by years of illness poverty and tragedy took his own life Several years later Yamagami opened a Twitter account and began recounting three decades of misery brought on by his mother s involvement with the Church It is no exaggeration to say that my experiences during that time have distorted my entire life he wrote vowing to never forgive the Church and its Japanese allies In September Yamagami saw a video of Shinzo Abe praising the Universal Peace Federation one of the plenty of front groups the Unification Church uses to launder its reputation For several years the group has hosted events featuring foreign dignitaries including Mike Pence Mike Pompeo and former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper Donald Trump reportedly received millions to appear via video at Church-related events on three occasions between his presidencies The Abe video seemed to shatter what little strength Yamagami had left Six months later citing exhaustion he quit his job he appeared to have reached the end of the line Broke alone and angry all he had left was a cache of homemade weapons and a deep resentment for the religious organization that dated back to his teens Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe speaks during a press conference at the prime minister official residence on August in Tokyo Abe communicated his resignation due to physical condition concerns Photo Franck Robichon Getty Images Yamagami s original target was the Unification Church itself In he took a Molotov cocktail and a knife to a Church event with plans to assassinate Moon s widow Hak-ja Han the True Mother who inherited leadership of the church after her husband s death a decade earlier But she had a strong safety detail and Yamagami was turned away Later he reported that he also did not want to give her sons several of whom are locked in a bitter succession dispute the satisfaction of having the matter resolved for them So instead he set his sights on the man he saw as enabling it all Shinzo Abe and his blood-soaked lineage On the eve of the killing Yamagami fired into a local Unification Church building He narrated police he required to show he was motivated by Abe s relationship with the Moons not his politics The following morning Abe officially retired but still plying his arrangement on the campaign trail was stumping for his party in the city of Nara ahead of a national polling Instead of thinking about why we can t do it Abe began raising his fist to the crowd before the crack of a homemade gun ruptured the fault lines of Japanese politics Within weeks it was revealed that of the LDP s lawmakers nearly half the ruling party had ties to the Unification Church and its various a great number of affiliates Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was forced to issue a rare apology and purge his cabinet Within months the National Diet the Japanese legislature passed a law called the Improper Donations Prevention Act intended to provide relief for casualties of overzealous religious organizations Under the weight of constituents pressure the Church eventually offered an apology for its practices Nearly half the ruling party had ties to the Unification Church and its a large number of countless affiliates Society fury swelled to the point that the regime took the extraordinary step of moving to dissolve the Church altogether citing its malicious practices In a landmark move this March a Tokyo court acting on a request from the ruling body ordered the Church s dissolution due to decades of manipulative fundraising This places the Church on a similar path to the Aum Shinrikyo cult which carried out the Tokyo subway sarin gas attacks The Church is appealing the decision and a final ruling is expected by March If unsuccessful it will be relegated to the status of an outlaw group akin to the Yakuza organized crime syndicate Earlier this month the Church was dealt another substantial blow after Han was indicted as part of a bribery embarrassment involving the in recent times impeached South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol With its leader in detention its main funding pipeline severed and its founding family embroiled in predicament the once-powerful movement has been reduced to a shadow of its former self albeit one that remains profoundly wealthy While the sensational trial will undoubtedly grab the headlines Japan s reckoning with its political establishment is far from over The country remains bound to a one-and-a-half party system where despite regular elections real power is rarely transferred or held accountable The assassination of Abe has at last cracked this consensus open prompting a moral and political confrontation a large number of Japanese see as long overdue and urgently necessary in a time of economic stagnation and demographic decline This tension is reflected in the masses s response to Yamagami a folk hero to specific equally condemned and celebrated Online his supporters include Yamagami girls and a slew of families who also lost loved ones to the movement In prison he received so much mail that the facility ran out of space to store it Last week s historic ballot of Takaichi Sanae an Abe prot g as the country s first female prime minister has done little to stop the rot If anything Sanae at once made her allegiances clear In a provocative early move the politician likened to Margaret Thatcher appointed Hiroyuki Nakamura a man with deep ties to the Unification Church as vice minister of development This effectively puts a Church sympathizer in charge of the very ministry that initially pushed for its dissolution In a provocative early move the new prime minister appointed Hiroyuki Nakamura a man with deep ties to the Unification Church as vice minister of schooling The trial will be decided by three professional judges and six ordinary citizens with the defense planning to spotlight religious abuse and the deep connections between the Church and the LDP If Japan s political system is opaque its justice system is even more so boasting a notorious percent conviction rate The system s rigidity is such that the verdict in Yamagami s trial has already been scheduled for p m on January Yamagami pleaded guilty for a crime that carries the death penalty but is hoping to be granted leniency due to the extraordinary circumstances of his upbringing In a surprising twist a key witness for the defense will be Yamagami s mother Ako who has been corresponding with her son in prison In a handwritten note she informed him As a parent I feel responsible although she has reportedly avoided addressing the root causes in detail and remains a member of the Church With his fate now out of his hands so too is his legacy Yamagami seemed to foresee this in his final words as a free man in a letter to a journalist written on July He wrote I no longer have the time to think about the political implications and consequences of Abe s death The journalist determined the letter five days after the assassination The post Shinzo Abe Killer s Trial Is Exposing the Christian Cult Entrenched in Japanese Politics appeared first on The Intercept