The logo of of Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, formerly known as Unification Church, is seen on the wall of the the building housing its headquarters in Tokyo, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. Japan’s government is convening a meeting of religious affairs council Thursday to ask experts to decide whether to seek a court order to revoke legal status from the Unification Church, whose devious fundraising tactics and cozy ties with the governing party have triggered public outrage.
“It is our deepest regret that the Japanese government made the serious decision based on distorted information provided by a leftist lawyers’ group formed for the purpose of destroying our organization,” the church said in a statement late Thursday. “It will be a stain in Japan’s Constitutional history.”
The tactics seriously deviated from the law on religious groups, in which the purpose of the churches’ legal status is to give people peace of mind, he said. “The activities are wrongful conducts under the Civil Code and their damages are immense.” The investigation followed months of public outrage and questions about the group’s fundraising and recruitment tactics after former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination last year. The man accused of shooting Abe allegedly was motivated by the former prime minister’s links to the church that he blamed for bankrupting his family.