Solidarity With Japanese Ex-Moonies
From an American Ex-Moonie
I once read a book called The Middle East Crisis Factory, which was written by Palestinian Arab Spring activist Iyad El-Baghdadi and British-Libyan Arab Spring activist Ahmed Gatnash. The aim of the book is to look at the roots of the problems plaguing the Middle East and provide democratic, human rights-based solutions. Early on, they look at the 9/11 attacks against the U.S. which killed nearly 3,000 people. They note that the question many asked in the aftermath, “Why do they hate us?,” ignored a great deal of America’s history in the Middle East region. In particular, they noted that while Bin Laden did not find a lot support in Middle East, “many Muslims were nonetheless sympathetic to his narrative of humiliation and stolen agency, due to their distrust of both their own regimes and the West” (39). It’s pretty obvious that El-Baghdadi and Gatnash are not apologists for Al-Qaeda, but they believe that the best way to prevent terrorism is dismantle the factors that drive people into its embrace.
On July 8th 2022, the former Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, was assassinated in Nara, Japan by a lone gunman after giving a speech. This was quite the shock, considering how hard it is to get a gun in Japan. It later came out that the killer, Tetsuya Yamagami, was the son of a devoted member of the Unification Church, whose heavy donations to the group ruined his career prospects. He murdered Abe for his connections to the group.
I spent ten years of my life in the Unification Church (UC), also known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU). Many consider it to be a cult, and its members are often called “Moonies.” I sincerely believed that its founder, the Korean billionaire Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012), was the messiah would bring about world peace by creating God’s kingdom on Earth. I left the group after realizing that Moon was a cruel authoritarian, his theology was morally bankrupt, and that his utopia would never come. I was angry after uncovering this fraud, but I put my anger into blogging, not violence.
I was not a huge fan of Abe. Though I agreed with his support for Taiwan, I was disgusted with his denialist views on Japan’s World War II war crimes. I nevertheless condemn Yamagami actions without reservation. In democracies, we should not settle our differences through violence, but through debate, voting, and protest.
At the same time, I cannot dismiss Yamagami as insane. What drove him to this precipice? Why did his terrible actions resonate with so many Japanese people? Like El-Baghdadi and Gatnash, we must not be afraid to look deep into the factors that made Yamagami a murderer. We need to take a critical and honest look at the activities of the Unification Church in Japan. Not to apologize for the crime, but to ensure that such things will never happen again.
Moon and the LDP
Sun Myung Moon formally founded the UC in 1954 in the aftermath of the brutal Korean War (1950–1953) between North and South Korea. The war and Moon’s horrific torture in a North Korean prison camp, probably influenced his strict anti-communist views. These views put him into the company of fascists and the far-right, who were also opposed to communism. US journalist Robert Parry (who uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal) wrote in Consortium News that Moon made an alliance with Kim-Jong Pil, who founded the KCIA in 1961. Pil headed South Korea’s negotiations to improve relations with Japan, and this diplomacy helped connect Moon to fascist war criminals Yoshio Kodama and Ryoichi Sasakawa. Sasakawa himself was named as an advisor to the Japanese UC.
Moon also had connections with Shinzo Abe’s grandfather, Prime Minister Nobuske Kishi of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which remains Japan’s largest political party. When the UC first entered Japan in 1959, it placed its headquarters right next to Kishi’s home in Shibuya, Tokyo. Kishi had collaborated with Moon in founding the International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFVC) in 1968, in which both he and Sasakawa served as heads. Kishi remained ever loyal to Moon. In fact, when the reverend was imprisoned in the US for tax fraud in the 1980s, Kishi wrote a letter to President Reagan requesting his release.
The ties between the LDP and the UC have remained deep ever since. As Richard J. Samuels of the Japan Policy Research Institute wrote:
“By the early 1970s, a number of LDP politicians were using Unification Church members as campaign workers. While the politicians were required to pledge to visit the Church’s headquarters in Korea and receive Reverend Moon’s lectures on theology, it did not matter whether they were members of the Church. Actual Church members -- so-called "Moonies" -- were sent by the Federation to serve without compensation as industrious and highly valued campaign workers.”
Abe, like his grandfather before him, maintained friendly ties with the UC. In 2006, he sent congratulatory telegrams to a UC organization, the Universal Peace Federation (UFP). In 2021, he appeared alongside many political leaders, like U.S. President Donald Trump, at the UPF’s Rally of Hope, where he praised the work of Moon’s widow, Hak Ja Han. He sent the UPF another congratulatory message in 2022, not long before his death.
In response to the Abe assassination, a survey in 2022 found that nearly half of all LDP lawmakers had links to UC organizations. These links included attending events, giving donations, and receiving election support. Japanese politics expert, Jeffrey Hall of Kanda University, noted that the unpaid UC members who campaign for the LDP can serve as useful voting blocs for candidates who lack the fame or support to win on their own. The UC found common ground with the LDP over their opposition to LGBT rights. Homosexuality is a sin in the UC theology. Moon himself referred to gays and lesbians as “dung eating dogs” and said that AIDS victims should be publicly humiliated. Five ex-members of the Japanese UC told Reuters that UC officials had ordered them to vote for anti-LGBT candidates.
In exchange for this support, LDP lawmakers would look the other way at the UC’s questionable fundraising tactics. Japanese parliamentarian and journalist, Yoshifu Arita, was told by a police official that intervention by politicians often prevented legal accountability for the UC.
Japan in UC Theology
Although the UC was founded in Korea, Japan has proven financially lucrative to its business. The Washington Post reported that the UC earns as much as 70% of its funds from Japan. Its membership in the country is also between 300,000 and 600,000 adherents. The question before us is this: “How does the UC get so much money from its Japanese followers?” The answer is in historical guilt.
Moon’s theology, as laid out in The Divine Principle, teaches a type of karmic justice known as “indemnity.” If you do sinful things, you will be punished for them. To quote UC theologian Young Oon Kim:
“If one does evil, there is no way to escape its consequences. Somehow and sometime one has to pay the heavy price and restore his proper state through the compensation of numerous good deeds.”
However, you can also suffer for the sins of your ancestors. Moon said in one speech that members may have to make “indemnity conditions for other people’s sins.” The most egregious example of this is when Moon said that the Holocaust was a result of the Jewish “failure” to accept Jesus.
To avoid the most severe punishments, it is advised that you take an active role in paying off your spirituals debts through “conditions.” Conditions can include fundraising or witnessing for the UC, taking cold showers, fasting for many days, and making many bows before Moon’s photo. Under this framework, it isn’t hard to imagine that someone could feel pressured to do rather extreme things in order to pay off their indemnity. Moon was well-known as a strict and demanding leader, who would not settle for those who did things half-way, as he once said of indemnity conditions, “We have no time to sleep at night. We don’t have spare time to sit comfortably and eat. Unless we have that kind of desperate heart, we cannot go the way of restoration.”
Moon, as I wrote earlier, suffered under the Japanese military occupation of Korea (1905–1945). While he said that he no longer saw the Japanese people as the enemy, he nonetheless made it clear that there would be indemnity for them to pay. In one speech, Moon said, “Japanese members need to work three times as much as Americans, three times as hard as before.” He said also said that Japan represented “Eve” while Korea represented “Adam.” Thus, in order for Japan to be restored, it must serve Korea: “Japan must restore all material things and offer them to Korea, the Adam nation and her original husband.” Moon also told Japanese members who complained about his high demands that “if Japan is in the position of Eve nation toward the Adam nation, you should resolve not to give me any moment of doubt, worry or pain.” He also made it explicit that this service would often be financial,
“Japan was able to gather money worldwide in order to restore what Eve had lost. That money is not for the sake of Japan alone. Japan will be flattened unless she invests for the sake of the world throughout Asia. This year is the border line. I am doing these things because I do not want Japan, which is on this border line, to be destroyed. Money is flowing into Korea not because I need it, but for the sake of Japan. An amount of 2,400 trillion worth of money is lying around in Japan, with nowhere to spend it. They do not know how to use the money. Japan only knows how to make money. She does not know how to use it. Since Japan is a woman, she should make a handbag and save up all her money. Would she not then get married and share everything with her husband’s house? That is how it is, for Japan is literally that Eve nation.”
Moon also told Japanese members that they should be grateful to him since Japan’s postwar economic success is due to him appointing it for this servant role, “The reason Japan was able to become a global economic empire in just forty-seven years is not because Japan excelled in some way. It was because she was chosen as the Eve nation.” Hak Ja Han reiterated this claim to Japanese followers as late as 2013, saying, “You must not forget that present-day Japan exists because of True Parents' forgiveness, love and the grace of the Blessing.”
So far, I have established that according to the UC theology: Japan must pay indemnity for past war crimes, that Japan only has wealth thanks to Moon, and that this wealth must be shared with Korea. Given these facts, the allegations against the Japanese UC of financially exploiting people does not seem out of place. I should add that towards the end of his life in 2011, Moon appeared to admit to the UC’s PeaceTV that, “I haven’t been able to release my grudge towards the Japanese people yet.”
Spiritual Sales and Fundraising
The primary form of the UC’s financial exploitation occurs through “spiritual sales.” US ex-member and counselor, Steve Hassan, told The Washington Post that during these sales, Japanese members “would scan the obituaries and knock on people’s doors and tell them that ‘your dead loved one has communicated with us and they want you to go to your bank and send money to the Unification Church so that your loved one can be elevated in the spirit world.”
The Asia-Pacific Journal noted that these sales were of overpriced cheap products, which were used to fund Moon’s fledgling US newspaper:
“Most of the money came from gullible and superstitious Japanese who were peddled marble vases, ivory seals, and miniature pagodas said to have miraculous powers, along with ginseng teas, at vastly inflated prices. Japanese members of the cult were given sales quotas requiring them to transfer to the United States about $2.5 million a month earmarked for the Washington Times, which lost an estimated $150 million in its first two-and-a-half years of operation…”
A 1980s report from the Japanese Consumer Information Center found that between 1976 and 1982, around 2,600 complaints about such sales were made. These complaints often involved claims of evil samurai ancestors who would torment the potential buyer unless they bought the trinkets. Former Japanese UC member, Soejima Yoshikazu, who was once the editor of a UC paper, Sekai Nippo, told The Washington Post for its 1984 report that in some cases, a vase worth $21 was sold for $8,300. Hiroko Yamasaki, a former Olympian who was in the Japanese UC from 1989 to 1993, once described paying 1.2 million yen for a set of three seals.
When The Philadelphia Inquirer confronted the UC about these sales in 1987, the Japan branch leveled a flat denial, stating that communists, socialists, and atheists were behind the claims. The US branch, however, admitted that individual members had participated in the sales, but denied that the UC proper was officially involved.
Many of these cheap products are distributed by Happy World Inc. In 1984, the Japanese UC publicly denied to The Post that they were affiliated with Happy World, though four former members who were assigned to these sales disagreed, with one woman telling The Post: “I was told it was the economic department of the Unification Church.” In fact, a Japanese member, Hisako Watanabe, recalled that in 1973, when the Japanese faithful were chosen to come to evangelize in America, “…40 were chosen from Happy World, who were used to fundraising.” The UC itself, upon reviewing a 1981 list of UC front groups from an ex-member organization, listed Happy World as still active. Lastly, as of 2010, Moon’s daughter Sun Jin Moon serves as the company’s chairman.
In 1987, Asahi Shimbun further reported that there 15,000 complaints from 1980 to 1987, with puchases totaling 317 billion yen (Pearce, 413). In response to these complaints, a group of 300 lawyers known as the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (NNLASS) was founded in 1987 to legally combat the fraud.
With more scrutiny on these sales, the UC had to change tactics, with a focus on fundraising. To quote the Asia-Pacific Journal:
“The new donation strategy reportedly led to a substantial increase in financial demands placed upon Japan. Sakurai Masaue, a disillusioned former cult official, told the Mainichi that in the two decades before he quit in 2017, the Unification Church in Japan had an annual fund-raising target of around ¥30 billion, or $209 million. The extreme burden placed on Japanese members pushed many into bankruptcy, he said.”
Indeed, as late as 2015, the Sapporo High Court in Hokkaido, Japan, upheld a ruling which stated that the Japanese UC’s donation and solicitation activities, were not motivated by religion, but by profit. Keep in mind, however, that these increased fundraising demands did not halt the “spiritual sales.”
Consider that in 1996, The Post wrote of a widow, Atsuko Nakajima, whose bereavement was taken advantage of by a UC member who told her that her husband would burn in hell unless she donated $50,000. Indeed, the NNLASS reported in 2022 that that the UC has been linked to 30,000 complaints since 1987, with losses of up to 123.7 billion yen. Nevertheless, the fundraising demands did provide a heavy burden on members, particularly their children. Let’s return to Testuya Yamagami.
Kyodo News reported that Yamagami’s mother joined the UC in 1991 after his father’s suicide in 1984. His mother donated a total of 100 million yen to the UC, 60 million of it from his father’s life insurance. This led Yamagami’s mother to suffer bankruptcy and Yamagami to attempt suicide in 2005. Yamagami’s uncle has said that he received calls from the children of Yamagami’s house who often complained of having nothing to eat. UC spokesman, Hideyuki Teshigawara, acknowledged that they received 100 million yen from Yamagami’s mother, and returned about half of it to Yamagami’s uncle. They also clarified that he was never a member. As I mentioned earlier, most Japanese politicians had links to the UC and were reluctant to hold it to account. Yamagami saw killing Abe as the only way to strike back.
The Aftermath
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
The assassination led to a massive backlash in Japan against Abe and the UC, with many going so far as to oppose the late prime minister’s state funeral. Several LDP members, including Abe’s younger brother, Nobuo Kishi, admitted links to the UC, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shuffled his cabinet to remove UC-linked figures.
The UC admitted to SBS News that it had conducted “spiritual sales” in violation of the Specific Commercial Transactions Act in 2009, but insisted that such practices no longer occur. UC spokesman, Hideyuki Teshigawara, pledged to further reform the recruitment and donation process in order to prevent families from suffering financial harm. Former chairman of the UC and honorary president of the UC’s Global Peace Foundation (GPF), Chung Hwan Kwak, apologized on the UC’s behalf, acknowledging that donations from Japan were very important to Moon’s operations. While Kwak split with the main branch in 2009, he still supports Moon’s son, Hyun Jin “Preston”, who runs a new sect under the GPF. In South Korea, thousands of UC members protested what they called the Japanese media’s biased coverage, claiming that the situation will lead to repression of religious liberty. The UC has also stated that their members had received death threats, though it also acknowledged that these threats were from Japan’s anti-Korean far-right.
The president of the Japanese UC, Tomihiro Tanaka, gave a press conference in 2022 where he reiterated the claim that the UC had not practiced “spiritual sales” since 2009. This claim was directly contradicted by the NNLASS, who noted that they had to deal with 564 cases over the past five years. Lawyer Hiroshi Yamaguchi further cited a 2020 ruling by a Tokyo District Court which found that the UC had defrauded a follower of 4.7 million yen.
Many Japanese ex-members of the UC also came forward to tell their stories. After the government set up a victim hotline for ex-members, it received around 3,800 calls. One anonymous ex-member testified to being married to a Korean man in 1995 who repeatedly assaulted her. When she asked for a divorce, she was victim-blamed by her mother for lacking faith. When she was finally allowed to remarry, the UC demanded that she donate $10,000. Another anonymous ex-member told Nippon.com that she always had trouble reconciling “how society viewed the UC with what I was being told by my parents.” When tried to leave, her parents chased and harassed her, calling her a devil, and she eventually had to call on lawyers to break free of them.
The most well-known of these ex-members, Sayuri Ogawa, testified before the Foreign Correspondents Club of Japan in 2022. She said that the pressures of the UC hurt her mental stability and that her parents took 2 million yen from her part-time job savings. She was also sent to Korea to be exorcised of evil spirits, where she was sexually harassed by a UC leader. Her parents tried to censor her and stop the conference.
After listening to many ex-members, Kishida passed a law near the end of 2022 restricting the UC’s donation practices, allowing “believers, other donors and their families to seek the return of their money and prohibits religious groups and other organizations from soliciting funds by coercion, threats or linking donations to spiritual salvation.”
Kishida has also ordered a probe of the UC under the Religious Corporations Law, which gives them the right to question certain religious groups. If the probe finds that the UC violated the civil code, then it could be stripped of its legal religious person status and tax exemptions.
Witch Hunt?
“It is, of course, important for scholars to speak out when the civil rights of religious movements are in danger. However, the importance (and necessity) of such activities should not lead scholars into the assumption that new religions against which accusations have been made are always or necessarily victims.”
“Both in historical and present-day context — atheists and secularists are scorned and dehumanised by society worldwide.”
- Aki Muthali, feminist and secular activist, “Atheistophobia: It’s time to talk about the world’s most persecuted minority.”
As a second-generation member of the UC, I was often told of Japanese members who were kidnapped by “deprogrammers” hired by concerned family. These deprogrammers forcibly confined the members until they recanted their beliefs. I even wrote paper on the subject in high school. UC leader Dan Fefferman, an advocate of religious freedom, has written that hundreds of Japanese members are subject to kidnapping, detainment, and forced de-conversion, with the police apparently doing little about it.
While most reporting on this issue is from UC or UC-friendly sources, enough kidnapped or missing members have been named to persuade me that there is likely some legitimacy behind these complaints. People like Mitsuko Ishikawa (who was kidnapped twice), Takako Fujita (who tragically committed suicide after confinement), Hiroko Tomizawa (who was forcibly confined for 15 months), and many others. Forcible deprogramming in Japan was even acknowledged by the U.S. government’s Commission on International Religious Freedom. The most famous incident was that of Toru Goto, whom a Tokyo High Court ruled in 2014 was confined for 12 years against his will from 1995 to 2008. While I believe there is truth behind these accusations, I want further investigation of these matters from non-UC journalists and human rights organizations.
Let me be clear, I condemn any forcible deprogramming. It is a blatant violation of human rights and has no place in democratic societies. Religious abuse should not be met with anti-religious abuse. If anything, such crimes will reinforce the beliefs of the victims. It also contributes to narratives in these groups that any criticism towards them is “persecution,” which can obscure the genuine critiques of critics and ex-members. The average Moonie is just as much as victim of exploitation as the ex-Moonie. People who engage in such kidnapping practices should be held accountable to the furthest extent of the law. Ex-member and UC expert Steve Hassan, told Fefferman the following, “I think that any approach to help cult members should be one of love, compassion, and positive communication, not force. Otherwise, kidnapping or involuntary detention will invariably be traumatic.”
Furthermore, some are concerned that the effort to deprive the UC of its tax-exemption and religious person status could inspire bigotry. President of the Shingetsu News Agency, Michael Penn, who has criticized the UC’s activities in Japan, warned against this:
“Now that many of the facts have finally come to public light, the proper policy approach is not to crush the Church and to drive its followers underground, hotly pursued by an outraged mob carrying clubs and torches. Rather, what is needed is to investigate and regulate the Church’s activities in the manner which should happened decades ago.”
Levi McLaughlin, an expert on religion and politics in Japan from North Carolina State University, is also concerned that criticism of the UC, if not done with care, could lead to the persecution of Korean minorities,
“The murder of Japan’s most powerful politician poses the risk of a moral panic that may spell danger for some of the country’s least powerful and most marginalized residents: ethnic minorities and members of minority religions. There are worrisome precedents for how events may transpire, given the connection of Abe’s assassination to a Korean religion. Relations between Japan and Korea have long been icy, at best. This is a trend driven in part by racism mobilized online, through broadcast media, and in Japan’s streets by far-right activists. Animosity against a Korea-based church poses a corollary danger to the hundreds of thousands of people of Korean descent who live in Japan; on July 8th, the South Korean consulate in Fukuoka tweeted a caution about the possibility of hate crimes. Anger directed toward the Unification Church may amplify targeting of Korean people and establishments, which persists as an incipient threat in Japan.”
To Penn’s concerns, let me reiterate that the dissolution order would only affect the UC’s legal status as a religion and its tax exemption. The UC could still exist in Japan and its members would still be free to worship as they pleased. While potentially concerning, this hardly amounts to crushing the UC with clubs and torches.
To McLaughlin’s concerns about attacks on minorities, I agree that we should be vigilant in keeping racists and fascists out of this discourse. I would also reply that many ex-Moonies are either Korean or of Korean heritage. They would not want to see hate crimes against fellow Koreans, and indeed, would suffer the brunt of such racism. Most ex-members and critics (like Hassan), also oppose violating human rights through methods such as forced deprogramming. Many ex-Moonies, including me, were conscious of the discrimination we might have suffered as members of a minority religion. Some of us still have friends and family in the UC. Ex-Moonies especially are guarded with their pasts around friends and lovers for fear of being seen as “damaged.” It is my hope that we can separate genuine critique from bigotry.
Now it is concerning that Kishida has lowered the bar of dissolution from violating the penal code to violating the civil one. While I regard the UC as being run by a theocratic gangsters, I’m also uncomfortable with giving governments too much leeway in determining what is a “religion” and what is not. That said, if the government probe can reveal to the public convincing evidence of deeply serious crimes, which is easily conceivable, then a deprivation of the UC’s religious status may be a justified response. If Japan, however, does decide to go this route, then it should also ensure that the human rights of UC members are vigorously protected.
Many can reasonably disagree with Penn and McLaughlin’s opinions, while acknowledging that they are clearly not apologists for the UC. They are against the change to its legal status, yes, but they are fair enough to recognize the suffering which the UC has inflicted on the Japanese people. Consider that Fefferman, who attended an anti-cult conference with Toru Goto in 2010, was pleased to see forcible deprogramming condemned by Hassan, but did not acknowledge that the UC has done things which invited such harsh criticisms. To quote an anonymous open letter to Fefferman in 2011, “If the Unification Movement were truly interested in “religious freedom,” Dan, it would take care of the real 800-pound gorilla in our room, the horrendous treatment of the Japanese members…”
Responding To Bitter Winter
These days, the most prominent defender of the Japanese UC is not even a member, but a scholar named Massimo Introvigne. Introvigne is an Italian academic with a degree in the sociology of religions. He has also written a book on the UC and has given speeches at UC events. He founded the organization CESNUR (Center for Studies of New Religions) which studies “new religious movements” and is the editor-in-chief of Bitter Winter, which highlights human rights in China and religious liberty.
In Bitter Winter and other places, Introvigne, as well as Masumi Fukuda, have authored a number of essays defending the UC from scrutiny. I believe that these defenses are sloppy at best and dishonest at worst. I will respond to two major claims which are repeatedly made in these essays:
I. “Spiritual sales” have never been a problem, and the controversy over them has been fabricated by anti-cult lawyers.
II. Ex-member “apostates” are unreliable because they have been “coached” by anti-cult lawyers.
I. Spiritual Sales
Introvigne’s views on “spiritual sales” are best conveyed in his 2022 article “The Abe Assassination. Donations to the Unification Church: Separating Facts from Fiction.” He opens by saying that accussing the UC of being greedy will lead to mass murder, bringing up past massacres of Catholics and Buddhist monks that occurred after similar accusations. In other words, he believes that critics of the UC’s donation practices are would-be genocidaires.
He writes that the sales of Happy World vases and pagodas and claims about their mystical powers had nothing to do with the UC proper, but with individual members. They were apparently only accused of “spiritual sales” for donating part of the profits to the UC. And yet, the UC owned Happy World, with one member being told that it was the economic arm of the religion. So the UC proper might as well have been selling the objects.
Introvigne acknowledges that while some seals and stamps were “sold at prices higher than usual,” he is careful to note that they were exquisitely crafted, made of expensive materials, and like many Japanese artifacts, were believed to bring good luck. Introvigne curiously does not mention prices, particularly how much higher these objects were sold over their market price. As ex-member Soejima told The Washington Post in 1984 that ginseng worth $42 could sell for eight times that price.
Introvigne often refers to the NNL as “hostile lawyers” who have also unfairly attacked donations to the UC as “spiritual sales” simply because they are expensive. He dismisses worries about these donations, saying that they are no different than tithing, or donations made to any other religion. He writes that to atheists and critics of the UC, “no caution would be good enough, and no donation would ever be recognized as the fruit of a free and reasonable choice.”
Keep in mind that the accusation of “spiritual sales” is not simply about high donations or pricey objects. It is a scheme where vulnerable people are told that if they do not pay a high amount, that they will be cursed by evil spirits. Atsuko Nakajima was told that her dead husband would burn in hell unless she continued to pay high amounts to the UC. They ultimately bilked $424,200 out of her. Hashida Tatsuo and his wife were farmers on Shikoku, who were told their rice paddy had evil spirits. They had to sell their paddy and give the profits of $678,000 to the UC. An anonymous ex-member told Yomiuri News that she paid a total of 5 million yen to “liberate” 28 generations of her ancestors. Introvigne refuses to consider the possibility that this system could be abused to take advantage of people. Nor does he ask why a billionaire family which builds palaces and flies around in private jets and helicopters, needs such high donations. Nor is he particularly bothered if these heavy sales lead to financial ruin.
Introvigne gives us the impression that this outrage has been trumped up by “hostile lawyers.” He ignores that before NNLASS was founded in 1987, the Japanese Consumer Information Center found 2,600 complaints of “spiritual sales” between 1976 and 1982. While Asahi Shimbun found 15,000 complaints between 1980 and 1987, with purchases totaling 317 billion (Pearce, 413). The NNLASS did not come out of thin air. They were founded in response to the problems many had with the UC’s money-making tactics. Does Introvigne also believe that the 30,000 complaints received by the NNLASS since 1987 are pure fabrications?
Introvigne also repeats the UC talking point that the “spiritual sales” ended after 2009, in accordance with the Specified Commercial Transactions Act, “…the Unification Church adopted a new policy counseling members whose businesses sold “lucky” artifacts, including stamps, to strictly comply with the 2000 law.” He ignores claims by the NNLASS that they had dealt with 564 cases over the past five years, a Sapporo High Court which found in 2015 that the UC’s donation activities were motivated more by profit than by faith, and a 2020 Tokyo District Court ruling which found that a follower had been defrauded of 4.7 million yen.
There are no atheists campaigning against tithing because it only takes 10% of ones income. There is no history of believers being bankrupted by tithing. There are no fraud lawsuits against the Catholic Church for selling holy water from Lourdes. This is because you can buy a bottle of it at the online gift shop for less than 3 euros. In Islam, paying a portion of your income to charity is called zakat, but it only amounts to 2.5%. Furthermore, only Muslims who make a certain amount of money, known as nisab, are obligated to pay zakat. The average video game is more expensive than the holy objects I’ve seen for sale at most Shinto shrines. Even secular people have adopted tithing through charities like Giving What We Can. A religion, or any group, which demands thousands of dollars of its followers and threatens them with hellfire otherwise if they refuse, is acting in an extreme and unsettling way.
On a final note, Introvigne seems pleased that the UC has prevented future lawsuits by having patrons “sign notarized statements where they state that they are donating freely, understand all the implications, and will not sue the Unification Church in the future.” That the UC could be pressuring or deceiving followers into signing these statements in order extort them without consequence does not occur to him.
II. The “Apostates”
In his essays for Bitter Winter, Introvigne repeatedly smears ex-members as “apostates.” “Apostate” is a loaded word with very negative connotations. In the Abrahamic tradition, an apostate refers to someone who leaves the faith, and doing so is a grave sin. As journalist Jeffrey Augustine wrote of Introvigne’s loose usage of the word: “Anyone who is, or has even been, a member of any religious group in the Judeo-Christian or Islamic faith traditions knows just how severe the term “apostate” (murtād (مرتدّ) is. The Bible and the Qur’an make it clear that God’s wrath is to be poured out upon apostates.”
Introvigne defends himself by claiming that only ex-members who have been convinced by the anti-cult movement to attack their former beliefs are apostates, and has insisted that they are not reliable sources of information,
“Apostate stories about religions attacked as “cults” were immediately popular with journalists. Unlike complicated accounts by scholars, they painted simple black-and-white stories with clearly identifiable heroes (the apostates and the anti-cult activists) and villains (the cult leaders, and sometimes the scholars who doubted the reliability of the apostates). They also included lurid tales of abuse, which made for good copy.”
By this standard, Malcolm X, an “apostate” of the Nation of Islam, was brainwashed by anti-cult activists. Are “apostates” of Aum Shinrikyo and the People’s Temple unreliable? On a personal note, I have read the accounts of many ex-Moonies: Steven Hassan, Nansook Hong, Lisa Kohn, Allen Tate Wood, Diane Benscoter, and K. Gordon Neufeld. None of them are in the Manichean terms that Introvigne describes. They are intimate, complex accounts of people who were sincere in their faith but broke under the demands and contradictions of the UC. Introvigne seems hesitant to acknowledge that ex-member accounts can be accurate in describing real abuse.
Introvigne defends himself by stating that “apostate” accounts should be compared with those of believers and scholars. Fair enough, but he refuses to follow this standard himself in his writings on the UC. As I demonstrated in his piece on “spiritual sales”, he neither quoted nor sought out the views of a single ex-member. Nor does Introvigne apply the same level of doubt or skepticism to defenses from the UC.
I should note that being an “apostate” is a crime that carries the death sentence in 13 countries, and that discrimination against non-believers is widespread across the globe. In 2015, I wrote about the case of Raif Badawi, a Saudi atheist who was lashed in public for blogging about liberal topics. Even after enduring a ten year prison sentence, he is still forbidden from leaving the country. Using such a hateful word like “apostate” against an ex-member is akin to calling Salman Rushdie a “blasphemer.” It’s demonization and incitement.
Introvigne seeks to discredit the testimony of Sayuri Ogawa. He accuses her of lying about her experiences, on the primary basis that Ogawa’s mother categorically denies everything. He claims that the mother provided bank statements which disprove the claims of heavy donations. He claims that Ogawa has no evidence to prove her side of things, on the basis that her mother asked for evidence and did not receive it, and yet he did not try to contact Ogawa himself. Ogawa, for what it’s worth, has posted chat messages she had with her father in 2018 to Twitter. She essentially asks him to pay back the money she gave. Massimo claims that Ogawa’s mother only borrowed 160,000 yen, “not the millions Ogawa now mentions.” However, Ogawa said to her father in a text message, “I have become an adult, but you’ve taken more than a million yen from me.”
Introvigne also argues that since Ogawa was not critical of the UC until after Abe’s death, she was coached into attacking it by anti-cult lawyers. He claims that after she left the UC she sang at a UC event. He cites no evidence for this other than the words of Ogawa’s mother. Even if this is true, leaving a religion is not always a clean break. Sometimes people miss the sense of belonging or lack the confidence to back out. I myself attended at least one UC service after I left. In any case, the 2018 chat messages with her father reveal that she was critical of the UC’s financial practices well before the Abe assassination.
Another piece of evidence Introvigne cites to prove his “coached” claim is that Ogawa now supports the “dissolution” of the UC. He fails to clarify that dissolution only means a loss of tax exemption and religious person status. Members could still worship and the UC could still work in Japan. Sometimes lawyers inform people of legal options to counter injustice which they were previously unaware of. This is why they are lawyers. Even if you disagree with dissolution, is it not possible that Ogawa supports it based on her own experiences?
I should repeat that on the day of Ogawa’s conference, the FCCJ was sent a warning message from Ogawa’s parents and UC lawyers to stop the conference. Why is it that Introvigne doesn’t accuse Ogawa’s parents of being coached by lawyers? Why doesn’t Introvigne stand up for Ogawa’s free speech rights? He defends the intervention on the basis that Ogawa is mentally ill. He refers to a tweet, (which he does not cite), where Ogawa described herself as “suffering dissociate identity disorder, depression, and panic attacks.” Is it Introvigne’s opinion that mentally ill people can’t be trusted to talk about their experiences? Nor does Introvigne cite any health evaluations which show the extent of Ogawa’s mental illness.
He disputes Ogawa’s sexual harassment claims on the basis that her mother was never told of them. Is it Introvigne’s opinion that if a victim of sexual harassment doesn’t tell their parents, it never happened? Survivors of abuse don’t speak about their trauma on a set timeline. Sometimes, people need years, decades, to come forward with what happened to them. Were the women who came forward after #MeToo untrustworthy because they hadn’t told anyone for so long? At no point in the essay does Introvigne express any skepticism or doubt towards the denials of Ogawa’s mother. He assumes her version of events is the truth.
Masumi Fukuda is also skeptical of Ogawa’s story, though I question by what editorial standards Fukuda was hired to write about the UC, when by her own admission she had “little interest in or knowledge of the former Unification Church until the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.” Recall that Introvigne once derided Ogawa for being an “overnight expert” in the UC. Fukuda’s lack of expertise becomes evident when she boldly claims that the UC “has not harmed a single person.” (Moon once had a Zimbabwean he claimed was possessed by his son beat the sin out of UC members). She claims that a neutral view on UC matters is taboo, and yet her series on Ogawa has the inflammatory title: “When Apostates Slander The Unification Church.” For all her claims of objectivity, she finds it hard to believe that the UC could be all that bad because of a pleasant chat she had with a reporter at one of its papers. She also neglects to mention that a longtime editor at this paper, Soejima Yoshikazu, was fired over a dispute around editorial independence.
Her arguments, such as they are, reiterate Introvigne’s objections, but in greater detail. While I can’t go into everything, I would not regard her as sincere. Consider, for instance, the curious double standard she has in where she places her skepticism. Unlike Introvigne, Fukuda did try to contact Ogawa for an interview, but her lawyers refused. (Maybe they saw Introvigne’s hit pieces). Fukuda finds this refusal suspicious, and yet, when Ogawa’s father refuses to speak with his daughter for a NHK documentary, she thinks nothing of it.
Compare Bitter Winter’s treatment of Ogawa to that of UC members. They write positively of their charitable work, their fears, and of hate directed at them. Again, these stories have a right to be told, but why is all the sympathy on one side? Many ex-Moonies in Japan are anonymous due to the harassment they receive. Why isn’t Bitter Winter telling their stories, sharing their fears, or praising their good deeds? Introvigne claimed that “apostate” narratives are overly-simplistic, with clear good guys and bad guys, and yet through his own writings on the UC, he is guilty of the very Manicheanism he decries.
While I would welcome more investigation into Ogawa’s story, I don’t believe that the objections of Bitter Winter disprove it. It is a plausible story which is consistent with what is known about the UC and how it operates in Japan. I would expect a fake story to be more gratuitous. Even if, for the sake of argument, we were assume that Bitter Winter is correct and Ogawa is lying, does that disprove the testimonies of all the other ex-members? Atsuko Nakajima, Hiroko Yamasaki, Soejima Yoshikazu, Hiroaki Inoue, Hashida Tatsuo, Fumiaki Tada, all of them, liars? What if we applied this standard to other frauds who claimed victimhood?
Misha Defonseca famously wrote a fake Holocaust memoir, does this mean all Holocaust survivors are liars? Anti-trafficking activist, Somaly Mam, faked her story of sexual abuse, does this mean human trafficking is a hoax? North Korean defector, Shin Dong-Hyuk, admitted to fabricating his account, does this mean North Korean defectors are unreliable? Tawana Brawley lied about being gang-raped, does mean rape victims can’t be trusted? If Introvigne thinks this is wrong, then why does he find it acceptable to hold ex-Moonies to this unfair standard?
Final Words
Moon only hated Japan’s war crimes when it was convenient for him to do so. Nobuske Kishi, Ryoichi Sasakawa, and Yoshio Kodama were all war criminals. Sasakawa not only cheered on Japan’s war of aggression, but made profits from it in the process. As did Kodama, who also planned terror plots against moderate Japanese politicians. Kishi was known as the “Monster of the Showa,” who brutally industrialized in Manchuria, which led to the deaths of thousands of forced Chinese laborers. Moon made allies of these fascists, while holding innocent Japanese people to account for their crimes. Abe himself was a denier of Japan’s war crimes, and yet Moon bore no bones about courting his favor. Moon was a Judas Iscariot, a Benedict Arnold, a Vidkun Quisling, a traitor to his own. He abused the memory of World War II to exploit and shame the Japanese people. They are right to oppose him and his legacy. He deserves none of their respect.
To Japanese ex-Moonies, or those still on the fence, I want to let you know that there are many around the world who hear your stories and applaud your courage. I support you all the way. You are not alone. You are not crazy. You are not damaged. You have broken free. You have spoken the truth. Be proud of yourselves, love yourselves, and never give up.
宗教二世たちへ、
世界中に宗教二世の話を聞いたり、自分の勇気を支援したりします。私も支援していますよ。君たちは一人じゃなくて、狂わなくて、傷物じゃないです。自由になって事実を伝えました。誇りに思くて、自分を許して、諦めないでください。
Bibliography
Pearce, Thomas H. “Tenchi Seikyo: A Messianic Buddhist Cult.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. Vol 21. No 4. 1994. 413.
