TOKYO – The Japanese government filed a court order on Friday to strip the controversial Unification Church of its status as a religious corporation, after the church came under greater scrutiny in the wake of former prime minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination in July 2022.

If the request is granted, the Unification Church would no longer be able to enjoy hefty tax exemptions on real estate and income earned through gifts and donations, although it can still operate in Japan.

On Friday, the Agency for Cultural Affairs submitted 5,000 items of evidence in 20 cardboard boxes to the Tokyo District Court. This included testimony from more than 170 of the church’s former followers, who suffered financial ruin due to the church’s allegedly coercive mind control practices.

There are 180,000 religious corporations in Japan and the court request marks only the third time that Japan has sought a dissolution order to strip a religious organisation of its status.

The move was successfully taken against the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult that murdered 14 and injured more than 6,000 when it released sarin gas on the Tokyo Metro during peak hour in March 1995; and the Myokakuji Temple in western Japan’s Wakayama prefecture, whose priests defrauded people through fake exorcisms. Both orders hinged on criminal convictions.

At the heart of the current case is whether a revocation can be granted without any criminal convictions.

The Unification Church’s allegedly coercive practices are said to have bestowed financial hardship and even bankruptcies on the families of followers. Tetsuya Yamagami, 43, the man accused of shooting Mr Abe at a campaign rally in Nara, told investigators his mother had donated a total of 100 million yen (S$916,000) to the church, which ripped the family apart.

“The church has not been charged under the Penal Code, and so the government intends to convey to the public a strong posture that it was taking the matter seriously even if the court does not order dissolution,” Dr Toru Yoshida, a political scientist at Kyoto’s Doshisha University, told The Straits Times.

“On the other hand, if the government wins, it would be a major legal precedent that a religious organisation can be punished over civil issues,” he added.

Dr Yoshida said the dissolution order was a calculated move by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government, whose approval ratings plunged after revelations of its cosy ties with the church. 

In September 2022, the LDP admitted that 179 of its 379 lawmakers had ties with the church when it released the findings of an internal probe on this issue.

Mr Abe was one of many LDP politicians who had attended Unification Church events, and his alleged killer saw him as an advocate for the church.

Culture Minister Masahito Moriyama estimated on Thursday that about 1,550 people were coerced into making donations to the Unification Church, which has faced civil lawsuits over the years. The total financial damage came to 20.4 billion yen, or about 13 million yen per person, he added.

The Unification Church, known officially as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, was founded in South Korea in 1954. Notorious for its mass weddings, it has come to be labelled as a cult by some countries.

Singapore banned the group in 1982, stating that its activities were “prejudicial to public welfare and good order”.

The church was given legal recognition in Japan in 1968 and now claims to have about 600,000 followers in Japan.

It has decried the government’s actions against it as a “witch hunt”, adding that it had been thrust into the spotlight and portrayed as a “villain” only as a result of Mr Abe’s death. The church has said it was committed to stricter compliance under a 2009 pledge to reform its practices, after an overzealous follower came under probe.

About 53,500 supporters of the church had signed a petition that was submitted to the Agency for Cultural Affairs against the dissolution order, while Christian theologian Haruhisa Nakagawa, who is not from the church, reportedly described the move as a “religious persecution”.

Church member Kunihiko Shibanuma, 78, wrote in the petition that the request of a dissolution order “ignores the hearts of current believers”.

Mr Abe’s assassination thrust what had long been a dirty but open secret in Japanese politics wide into the open. The Unification Church had assiduously courted politicians to give itself a veil of legitimacy, winning support through political and non-profit outfits like the International Federation for Victory over Communism and the Universal Peace Federation.

Its army of supporters not only supplied politicians with volunteers for their electoral campaigns, but also organised votes, said Dr Sota Kato of The Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research think-tank.

The first pre-trial conference for Yamagami was also held on Friday, at the Nara District Court, with his lawyer Takashi Fujimoto saying that Yamagami has been following developments over the dissolution order closely by reading newspapers in the detention centre.

Yamagami may face the death penalty if convicted. In June, a petition with 13,000 signatures was submitted to the court, urging a reduced sentence on the argument that Mr Abe’s assassination had spurred government action against the Unification Church.

It will likely take years for a judgment over whether to revoke the Unification Church of its status to be finalised, given that both sides are likely to fight the case all the way to the Supreme Court. It took seven months in Aum Shinrikyo’s case, and three years for Myokakuji.

Dr Yoshida noted that as much as 60 per cent of the Unification Church’s revenues were reportedly from Japan’s followers, and a revocation order in Japan could thus have global reverberations.

There was also a chance that the church may transfer its existing assets overseas to avoid liquidation – or even make up for the need to pay taxes by collecting more donations from followers, domestic media noted.

“The request for the dissolution of the religious group cannot be accepted as an end to this scandal,” the Asahi Shimbun said in an editorial, urging the government to ensure that all victims are properly compensated.