#unification church in japan

[whatisonthemoon]

MAY 8, 2023

Ninety percent of prefectural assembly members with ties to the Unification Church were re-elected in the unified local elections in April, but their popularity showed signs of waning, an Asahi Shimbun survey showed.

The unified elections were the first collective nationwide vote held since the Unification Church came under fire again for its fund-collection methods following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July last year, apparently over his ties to the religious group.

According to an Asahi Shimbun survey conducted in August and September last year, 292 of the 2,314 responding prefectural assembly members acknowledged their connections with the church, now formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The ties included attendance at Unification Church-related meetings or events, and receiving support from the group in election campaigns.

The terms for 251 church-connected assembly members expired in spring. Of them, 228 sought re-election in the April 9 elections held in 41 of Japan’s 47 prefectures, while 23 members did not run due to age or other reasons.

Of these candidates, 206, or 90.4 percent, were re-elected. Twenty-two members, or 9.6 percent, lost their seats.

Among those re-elected, 47, or around 23 percent, ran uncontested.

More than 80 percent of the church-tied prefectural assembly members were from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Among all 1,111 LDP incumbents who ran in the local assembly elections, 98 members, or 8.8 percent, were defeated.

Of all 228 candidates who confirmed their ties to the church, 118 gained fewer votes than in the previous election, while 42 garnered more ballots.

It is not clear if the church ties affected vote counts for 68 of the candidates because they ran uncontested in either of the two latest elections, or won in a by-election held within the past four years.

However, some candidates lost several thousand to 10,000 votes compared to their tallies in the previous election after their connections with the church became known.

Setsuko Sakuraba, 65, an LDP candidate, sought a second term in the Niigata prefectural assembly from the electoral district of Joetsu city.

But she was defeated in the election after gaining 9,536 votes. That was 2,459 votes fewer than her total in the previous election, when she placed fourth and gained one of the five assembly seats for the city.

Sakuraba had attended Unification Church-related events and received support in her campaign from people connected to the group.

These ties were reported in local newspapers and The Asahi Shimbun.

After her election loss, Sakuraba said about her church ties, “It’s hard to say how much, but there must have been a significant impact (on the election results.)”

She said someone had placed stickers with words “Unification Church endorsed candidate” on her campaign posters in Joetsu city.

About 50 to 60 of these stickers were found, she said.

In the Tochigi prefectural assembly election, 82-year-old Kazuyoshi Itabashi of the LDP was elected for a national record 14th straight time.

Itabashi gained 10,411 votes in the election four years ago, but this time he received 7,674 ballots, down by 2,737.

He also received the fewest votes among the five elected candidates representing the Oyama city and Nogi town electoral district.

“I think there was a slight decrease in votes,” he said after the election.

In September last year, reports surfaced that Itabashi was serving as head of the prefectural association of a church-related organization called the Federation for World Peace.

He resigned from the position.

Before the election, a Buddhist organization that had supported Itabashi told him that it would withhold its support because of his connection to the Federation for World Peace.

The Unification Church’s public relations department told The Asahi Shimbun, “Our organization has never had involvement with specific candidates or political parties.”

[jingo]

This has been a long time coming. The lives this organization has ruined, and it's lack of repentance in doing so, earns it the dissolution that has been so desperately needed. This cult has done tremendous damage to Christianity's ongoing efforts to foster trust and love of God's Word throughout the world. The sooner they are gone, the sooner their victims will be free of the financial burdens forced upon them through intimidation and be able to move on with their lives.

"The church said in an online statement that it would immediately appeal to the Tokyo High Court, adding that the order "will create future trouble for all religious bodies.""

You scam artists don't speak for me, for the LCMS church, nor for God. You scam artists were the inevitable future trouble for all religious bodies, and now you are gone. Good riddance.

[breawycker]

Congratulations to Tetsuya Yamagami for the most successful assassination in history.

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in July 2022. Inset: Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon and his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, in 1984.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

On the last morning of his life, Shinzo Abe arrived in the Japanese city of Nara, famous for its ancient pagodas and sacred deer. His destination was more prosaic: a broad urban intersection across from the city’s main train station, where he would be giving a speech to endorse a lawmaker running for reelection to the National Diet, Japan’s parliament. Abe had retired two years earlier, but because he was Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, his name carried enormous weight. The date was July 8, 2022.

In photos taken from the crowd, Abe—instantly recognizable by his wavy, swept-back hair; charcoal eyebrows; and folksy grin—can be seen stepping onto a makeshift podium at about 11:30 a.m., one hand clutching a microphone. A claque of supporters surrounds him. No one in the photos seems to notice the youngish-looking man about 20 feet behind Abe, dressed in a gray polo shirt and cargo pants, a black strap across his shoulder. Unlike everyone else, the man is not clapping.

Abe started to speak. Moments later, his remarks were interrupted by two loud reports, followed by a burst of white smoke. He collapsed to the ground. His security guards ran toward the man in the gray polo shirt, who held a homemade gun—two 16-inch metal pipes strapped together with black duct tape. The man made no effort to flee. The guards tackled him, sending his gun skittering across the pavement. Abe, shot in the neck, would be dead within hours.

At a Nara police station, the suspect—a 41-year-old named Tetsuya Yamagami—admitted to the shooting barely 30 minutes after pulling the trigger. He then offered a motive that sounded too outlandish to be true: He saw Abe as an ally of the Unification Church, a group better known as the Moonies—the cult founded in the 1950s by the Korean evangelist Reverend Sun Myung Moon. Yamagami said his life had been ruined when his mother gave the church all of the family’s money, leaving him and his siblings so poor that they often didn’t have enough to eat. His brother had committed suicide, and he himself had tried to.

“My prime target was the Unification Church’s top official, Hak Ja Han, not Abe,” he told the police, according to an account published in January in a newspaper called The Asahi Shimbun. He could not get to Han—Moon’s widow—so he shot Abe, who was “deeply connected” to the church, Yamagami said, just as Abe’s grandfather, also a prime minister and renowned political figure in Japan, had been.

Investigators looked into Yamagami’s wild-sounding claims and found, to their alarm, that they were true. After a quick huddle, the police appear to have decided that the Moonie connection was too sensitive to reveal, at least for the moment. It might even affect the outcome of the elections for the Upper House of the Diet, set to take place on July 10. At a press conference on the night of the assassination, a police official would say only that Yamagami had carried out the attack because he “harbored a grudge against a specific group and he assumed that Abe was linked to it.” When reporters clamored for details, the official said nothing.

After the election, the Unification Church confirmed press reports that Yamagami’s mother was a member, and the story quickly took off. The Moonies, it emerged, maintained a volunteer army of campaign workers who had long been a secret weapon not just for Abe but for many other politicians in his conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which remains in power under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Later that month, the Japanese tabloid Nikkan Gendai published a list of 111 members of parliament who had connections to the church. In early September 2022, the LDP announced that almost half of its 379 Diet members had admitted to some kind of contact with the Unification Church, whether that meant accepting campaign assistance or paying membership fees or attending church events. According to a survey by The Asahi Shimbun, 290 members of prefectural assemblies, as well as seven prefectural governors, also said they had church ties. The rising numbers exposed a scandal hiding in plain sight: A right-wing Korean cult had a near-umbilical connection to the political party that had governed Japan for most of the past 70 years.

The Japanese were outraged not just by the appearance of influence-peddling but by a galling hypocrisy. Abe was a fervent nationalist, eager to rebuild Japan’s global standing and proudly unapologetic for its imperial past. Now he and his party had been caught in a secretive electoral alliance with a cult that—it soon emerged—had been accused of preying on Japanese war guilt to squeeze billions of dollars from credulous followers.

Follow LINK to read full story

[briteredoctober]

My favorite thing about the assassination of Shinzo Abe with a makeshift shotgun back in 2022 is how the assassin stated his reasoning, and the Japanese population overwhelmingly went "you know, he's not wrong" and started protesting the funeral.

[andallofthemwitches]

Can't be compared. Unification Church scapegoated.

If anything, it seems money and apathy towards the Korean cause is the reason behind the passing of PM Shinzo Abe.

Why?

"Spiritual sales" of "overpriced vases" solicited by the Unification Church were to alleviate the guilt of the Japanese people whose country committed atrocities against the Korean people and taken from the country wholesale. (Not to mention the Chinese.)

Looked it up and the Unification Church's money goes here:

What does this mean?

Tongil means Unification, namely of North and South Korea. Tongil Group is an organization that aims to reunite the divided countries of North and South Korea and the money goes into industry investments that seek improvements in South and North Korean economy for the purpose.

What happened?

(Not to mention everything else Japan did to Korea. Comfort women, attempted eradication of culture, attempted genocide.)

During World War II, the Soviets were told by Japan to instead invade a "Japanese colony" on the island of Sakhalin, where there was a large population of Korean people who had gotten there by boarding Japanese vessels in search of temporary work. They were attacked and never able to come back home to Korea.

At the end of WWII, the Japanese told the Soviets that Korea was a Japanese colony and to go there, not to Japan.

And thereon the 48th Parallel dividing North and South Korea as communist and democratic came to be.

And full circle, this Unification Church is trying to alleviate those strains. They get donations, mostly from Japan. Apathy towards the causes the Unification Church support (Korean reunification) may be involved here in trying to dissolve this church.

Japanese people may have given up fortunes to the Unification Church, leaving family members poorer, but their fortune may have been ill-gotten gains in the first place.

What did it come down to? Money. Families were left poorer because those members of the family who felt guilty paid the Unification Church money as restitution for crimes committed against the Korean people. And those left without an inheritance were bitter against the Unification Church. And PM Shinzo Abe expressed positive words for the Unification Church.

Remember, the Unification Church's aim is to reunite North and South Korea by improving the economy.

The Unification Church is getting scapegoated in Japan so people feel better. Don't let that happen.

As well:

The two situations are different and cannot be compared.

It's good that healthcare is rectifying their actions to what should be done.

Re: the CEO who recently passed.... No comment.

Most politically successful assassination of a head of state by a massive margin

[communist-octoling]

the meme on here thats like "im going to (remembers that suicide jokes only make my mental health worse) kill someone else" is so funny to me because that is literally what happened to the guy who killed shinzo abe. he tried to kill himself because the unification church bankrupted his family, and when he failed he decided to assassinate shinzo abe (who has ties to the unification church)

[mortalityplays]

conclusions may be drawn

[purplespacecats]

y'all please for the love of god do not cite the washington times as if it were a legit source they are literally owned and run by the fucking moonies

[hollow-keys]

In 2020, BLM protestors burnt down the 3rd precinct in Minneapolis in response to the murder of George Floyd, and polling showed that 54% of Americans thought it was justified at the time.

In 2022, Yamagami Tetsuya murdered Abe Shinzo, the former Prime Minister of Japan and leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, in broad daylight because of his ties to the Unification Church, a predatory cult that ruined his and many others families' lives, which led to the entire country basically saying "this guy has a point," increasing scrutiny of the UC and its ties to the LDP, and the subsequent backlash contributed to the LDP's worst election result since 2009.

In 2024, a currently still free assassin murdered Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, one of the largest health insurance companies in America, and also the one with the highest claim denial rate, leaving the words "deny, defend, depose" on the bullet casings, likely in reference to this, and the people appear to be almost unanimously behind him.

Propaganda of the deed is back, baby.

[whatisonthemoon]

Korean Evangelism (1974)

Korean Evangelism By Jonathan Marshall Pacific Research, 5 (September-October 1974), 1-5

Lenin may have exaggerated when he charged that “religion is the opiate of the people,” but his words have long had a ring of truth for Asia. From the days when Christian missionaries were sent to China and Korea to open up new markets for American manufacturers, to the more recent efforts of the American CIA to finance anti-communist religious minority groups in Southeast Asia, the West has consistently used religion as a spearhead of cultural and economic penetration in the Orient. Since World War II, America’s politico-religious programs have been chiefly aimed at stirring up anti-communist sentiment around the world to promote the containment or rollback of leftist regimes. Thus the CIA has at various times backed everything from Asian Buddhist monks to reactionary Russian orthodox churches catering to Eastern European émigrés, to Pope Paul’s Italian anti-communist youth movements.1 Most anti-communist religious fronts, however, are supported by wealthy right-wing individuals or foreign governments, but all have similar ends. Many of these “religious” groups are now affiliated with worldwide anti-communist organizations, especially the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League (formed by Chiang Kai-shek and Korean President Syngman Rhee, in 1954) and its umbrella organization, the World Anti-Communist League. These two groups, although confined largely to propaganda activities . (APACL’s role in the 1954, CIA-organized Vietnam refugee resettlement is one of several exceptions), help coordinate the activities of the world’s leading anti-communists and of regional organizations such as the irredentist Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, the European Freedom Council, and the Free Pacific Association. Also associated with APACL is the International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture headed by an ex-Foreign Minister under Spain’s Franco, and composed of former German Abwehr agents, Ukrainian Catholic activists, professional American anti-Semites, John Birch Society spokesmen, and a former advisor to Syngman Rhee, James Cromwell. Other religious groups represented in APACL/WACL conventions include the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade (American), the Asian Lay-Christian Association (South Korean), and the Asian Christian Anti-Communist Association. All are dedicated to winning the hearts and minds of the world’s many non-Christians and turning them away from the lure of communism.2 South Korea has long been a center of anti-communist Christian agitation in Asia because of its large Christian population (one out of eight South Koreans is Christian, and the number is rising rapidly) and because of the highly favorable political climate offered first by Syngman Rhee and now by General Park, who have subsidized right-wing Christian groups and promoted a “Christianizing” campaign in the military. Evangelists who consider the Third World to be of great “strategic significance” point out that South Korea now boasts over 8,500 seminary and Bible school students. And South Korea has another advantage for Christian activists -- a convenient enemy. During Billy Graham’s famous Crusade to South Korea in mid-1973, which drew over two million people (thanks to some official pressure), chants like “Fifty million for Christ” were instigated to agitate for a roll back of Communism and unification of the Korean Peninsula’s fifty million inhabitants. Thus it was fitting that Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was the home of the first All-Asia Mission Consultation, a meeting of Asian missionaries to plan the evangelization of Asia’s 98 percent non-Christians.3 One American evangelical organization has been quick to exploit the opportunities provided by South Korea: Campus Crusade for Christ International. Founded by ex-California businessman William R. Bright in 1951, Campus Crusade is headquartered in a multimillion dollar luxury hotel located on a 1,735 acre estate at Arrowhead Springs, near San Bernardino. With a full-time staff of over 3,009 people in fifty countries and an annual budget over $15 million, Bright’s organization is dedicated to sparking off a “spiritual explosion across America and around the world” which will Christianize the world in the next decade.4 Campus Crusade experienced a remarkable growth in the past five years through the use of sophisticated computerized marketing techniques and an almost embarrassingly oversimplified set of theological principles. It has, however, met with some opposition from established Christian organizations thanks to its conservative fundamentalist principles and resistance to social change. Campus Crusade speakers typically cite the “great red dragon” of Revelation 12 to warn of the threat of Chinese Communism, and the group’s film, “Berkeley -- A New Kind of Revolution” portrays Martin Luther King and the peace movement, tinted red, as examples of what is wrong with America. The evangelist organ Christianity Today reports that at EXPLO ’72, a student congress on evangelism sponsored by Campus Crusade in Dallas (featuring Billy Graham), “The Peoples’ Christian Coalition, an anti-war group.., kept Crusade officials hopping to head off leafleting and pint-sized demonstrations. Two dozen Coalition members and Mennonites one night in the Cotton Bowl held up a large banner reading ‘Cross or flag, God or country?’ and chanted ’Stop the war’ but were promptly shushed by the crowd.” Indeed, the atmosphere of Campus Crusade’s EXPLO ’72 seemed best described by the popular chant, “Two bits, four bits, six bits, a dollar. All who’re for Jesus, stand up and holler!’’5 Even as EXPLO ’72 was ending, Bill Bright began planning Campus Crusade’s next and even more ambitious venture -- EXPLO ’74 in South Korea. Slated to cost $1.5 million, EXPLO ’74 was planned for an attendance conservatively estimated at 300,000, well over three times the draw of its 1972 predecessor. Campus Crusade got a big boost when Billy Graham plugged his friend’s project during his 1973 expedition to Seoul. Campus Crusade’s high-rise headquarters in central Seoul (on land donated by the government after a battle in 1968 to remove squatters) was mobilized to prepare for the event. And Campus Crusade’s chief representative in Seoul, Joon Gon Kim, drawing upon the organization’s experience in fighting communism in Mexico, Columbia, Brazil, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Thailand, as well as the strong encouragement of his government, directed the entire project.6 Bright suffered a temporary set-back last year when the Korean National Council of Churches officially expressed its “lack of concern” about the evangelical crusade, according to the Washington Post, for “fear it would be used as a tool in the government’s struggle with church groups over social policy, political freedoms and human rights.” Sophisticated Koreans viewed the Graham/Bright efforts as simply a further extension of the government’s program of “undermining strongly anti-government mobilizations among the country’s four million Christians,” writes an informed Japanese journalist.7 Since then, probably to Bright’s embarrassment, the Park regime has greatly stepped up this “struggle,” not only against Church groups, but also to crush students, lawyers, and dissident intellectuals. Since Park suspended the Constitution and promulgated his Emergency Decrees last January, his government has convicted by military tribunal almost two hundred suspected political dissenters and interrogated -- often by torture -- hundreds more. Korea’s only living ex-President was arrested and convicted under the Decrees. Sentences ranging from five years to death have been meted out by these tribunals to large numbers of Protestant clergymen, a famous Catholic bishop, the country’s best known poet, South Korea’s foremost expert on Abraham Lincoln (and Boston University Ph. D.), a dean of theology at a major Korean University, who graduated from Union Theological Seminary, a civil liberties lawyer from Yale University, and many others whose exposure to Western political, values brought them only trouble. Thousands of Korean Catholics (at great personal risk) have attended mass rallies and vigils to protest the jailing of Bishop Daniel Chi Hak Soun. Korea’s Protestant National Council of Churches recently denounced the repression under Park. Christian groups around the world, including the American Jesuit Missions Conference and the World Council of Churches have joined in the protest against the American-backed regime.8 None of this, of course, disturbs veteran anti-communist Bill Bright, whose EXPLO ’74, with government backing, attracted several hundred thousand South Koreans last August. “In no country in the world, including the U.S., is there more freedom to talk about Jesus Christ than in South Korea,” he explains by way of justification. “There is no religious repression here. It is only political, and I believe it is for a good cause.” Bright says that “those in prison” -- presumably including his fellow Christians -- “are involved in things they shouldn’t be involved in.” The slightest expression of dissent, he feels, may cause North Korea to instantly “pounce upon the republic.” He accuses the U.S. press as well as the jailed Korean critics of slandering the Park regime and claims, “Those who oppose the regime are militant in their attack on anything that speaks of God, and if they had their way every Christian in South Korea today would be slaughtered.” Joon Gon Kim, executive director of EXPLO ’74, is no less outspoken in his defense of Campus Crusade’s holy mission against world communism: “When the Korean church becomes aflame with the Holy Spirit God can rend the iron curtain of North Korea, China, Russia and Eastern Europe and the walls will collapse so that the Gospel can be preached.’’9 William Bright in the service of General Park’s dictatorship might seem an extreme case, but his allies, especially those in the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, are no less fervent or dedicated. Just as Bright claims that General Park is working in the service of God by crushing his opponents, so did Bright’s ally and Korean counterpart, the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, achieve notoriety when he announced last year in full page newspaper advertisements across the United States that President Nixon had been put into office by God and could be removed only by His will. Sun Myung Moon’s National Prayer and Fast Committee stuck by Nixon to the bitter end. (Thus did Moon inevitably meet Rabbi Korff, who then obligingly spoke before a Moon-affiliated organization on “The Fact of Communism and America’s Future.” 10 The Reverend Moon is a new phenomenon in America, but not in Asia where his following now totals nearly a million people, concentrated in Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. Moon found his calling back in 1936 when Jesus Christ approached him on a mountainside and asked him to devote himself to God’s service as an evangelist. Moon waited until 1954, however, before organizing a new world religion, the Genri Undo, or Unification Church, formerly called the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity. (Detractors claim he got off to a slow start because of three arrests for sexual offenses.)11 Despite his wide following in Asia, and his whirlwind American tour last year, Moon has not attracted a wide following in the United States, where he can claim only about 25,000 supporters. Now that he can no longer lead the campaign to save President Nixon, Sun Myung Moon has fallen back on more traditional approaches. Recently he spent $350,000 on radio, TV, and other advertising to promote a major evangelical rally at Madison Square Garden to stimulate new support in the East. The event was held September 18 and attracted a large crowd of curious onlookers, hostile fundamentalists, leftist demonstrators, policemen, and atheists.12 Once described as a “Korean-style Elmer Gantry” but preferring the title, “God’s Hope for America,” the Reverend Moon preaches about the many dangers of communism along with his personal interpretations of the Bible. One Japanese source describes his movement as “less a religion than an anti-communist front group.” Rabbi Mark Tannenbaum of the American Jewish Committee observes that “Moon seems to be exploiting the emotional power of religion in order to indoctrinate his anti-communist ideology. The tragedy is that so many young people respond to this emotional appeal.” And he has predictably drawn fire from concerned clergymen, in the words of one, for his “seemingly cozy relationships with the dictatorial Park Chung Hee regime in South Korea.” In reply to these charges a Moon spokesman insists, ��Many religions acknowledge the threat of Communism.”13 Sun Myung Moon can afford to lavishly finance his propaganda activities. Time estimated his personal fortune at $15 million, derived from investments in a tea company, titanium mines, retreat ranches, pharmaceutical firms, and shot gun manufacturers. Recently his Unification Church purchased several estates and an old seminary in New York for about $3 million. The question remains: is this vast international effort just a personal undertaking?14 Moon and his close associates are predictably silent, but disturbing evidence is emerging of his church’s close ties to anti-communist political organizations with less spiritual ends. For example, Moon’s closest associate and English interpreter, Colonel Bo Hi Pak (“God’s Colonel”), formerly a Korean military attaché, has strong links to both Korean intelligence and the American CIA. He heads the Korean Cultural and Freedom Foundation (KCFF) which operates “Radio Free Asia,” possibly an outgrowth of a project by the American organization, Committee for a Free Asia (now the Asia Foundation), funded by the CIA. KCFF also conducts propaganda operations in Vietnam. Its legal counsel is none other than Robert Amory, Jr., former deputy director of the CIA. In 1962 Amory almost became head of the Asia Foundation (he was turned down to avoid blowing the CIA cover); now he is a law partner in Corcoran, Roley, Youngman & Rowe, a firm which has long handled the legal work for CIA proprietaries.15 The possibility of CIA involvement with a right-wing movement now entering the United States is frightening enough. But just as troubling are the close financial ties of Moon’s church to the world of wealthy neo-fascist Japanese capitalists, who seek not only a rollback of Communism but a new “Greater Asia” under the Emperor, based on the integration of Korea and Formosa into the Japanese orbit. In Japan, the chief financial backer and organizer of the Genri Undo is Sasagawa Ryoichi, the 75 year old former Class A war criminal. Back in 1931, with the notorious Kodama Yoshio, he formed a chauvinist patriotic party and intelligence organization that siphoned off enormous wealth from China during the Japanese occupation and ultimately provided much of the postwar financial backing for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. In 1939 he set in motion the negotiations leading to the ’Tripartite Pact between Japan, Germany, and Italy; three years later he was elected to the Diet on an ultranationalist platform of southward expansion. His stint in the Sagumo Prison after World War II for suspected war crimes set back his career only a short while, for he and fellow inmates like Kodama Yoshio and former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke used their influence and time to plan the resurrection of the postwar Japanese Right.16 Both Sasagawa and Kodama still exercise enormous influence in Japan, and are described as “kuromaku” -- powers behind the throne. The New York Times description of Kodama applies identically to Sasagawa: “Yoshio Kodama is among the most powerful men in Japan. He was instrumental in founding the nation’s governing party, he has had a hand in naming several Premiers, he has settled dozens of disputes among top businessmen. He also commands the allegiance of Japan’s ultra-right wing and has strong influence over the yakuza, or gangsters, of the underworld here.”17 Both are dedicated to restoring the power of the Emperor and crushing opposition to the Right. Sasagawa, as president of the Japan-Indonesia Association and Japan-Philippine Association, both reminiscent of the prewar imperialist South Seas Association, has helped to spearhead the southward Japanese commercial advance in Asia. He funded the anti-Sukarno forces which organized the Indonesian coup d’état of September 30, 1965; he likewise supported the Lon Nol faction which overthrew King Sihanouk in Cambodia in 1970, and arranged for Japanese economic aid to prop up the new government. Currently he is active in strengthening Japanese ties with the strategic Arabian peninsula, through his Japan-Oman Association. Most significantly, Sasagawa has long been a leading light in the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, and was behind the recent organization of the World Anti-Communist League. With his vast fortune acquired from shipbuilding, gambling, and organized crime, Sasagawa not only influences the Japanese government but acts as a powerful force in all of “Greater Asia.” His support of Moon’s Unification Church is thus just one of many elements in the constellation of interlocking activities surrounding the Japanese, Asian, and world right-wing movements which still thrive in many forms. American “Bible Belt” fundamentalism has long been known as a source of the most extreme conservatism and almost fanatic anti-communism. Evangelical movements from this tradition,, refined and directed by sophisticated “religious entrepreneurs” with modern marketing techniques and lavish funding, are “going international” on a larger scale than ever before in the service of established right-wing governments and organizations. Linked to old and well established anti-communist fronts composed of Eastern European émigrés, embittered Cuban refugees, and Nationalist Chinese officials, these popular new evangelical movements are the forefront of a new wave of political propaganda, disguised as religion and designed to distract Third World peoples from their more pressing social needs and concerns. Whether this theology of anti-communism will have any appeal to the masses of Asia is doubtful, but it does represent a new level of struggle in the cold war that is still with us. SIDEBAR: CHRISTIAN ANTI-COMMUNIST CRUSADE The Christian Anti-Communist Crusade, although affiliated with APACL, specializes in rooting Communists out of Latin America. Headed by “the amazing Aussie Communist-hunter” Fred Schwartz, CACC is based in southern California at Long Beach, where it draws financial support from such right-wingers as Walter Knott (Knott’s Berry Farm) and Patrick J. Frawley (Schick, Eversharp). Its $350,000 annual income supports many activities, including a Latin American literature project. Back in 1961, Schwartz’s Crusade worked With the U.S. Information Agency (and the CIA) to defeat Marxist candidate Cheddi Jagan in British Guyana’s presidential election. Schwartz admitted spending $76,0.00 to influence the election in favor of the right-wing United Force party. The Crusade’s money allegedly helped finance anti-Jagan street gangs and rioters to discredit his government. Shortly thereafter the CIA began a major campaign to undermine Jagan by infiltrating Guyana’s powerful black labor unions with the help of the CIA-funded American Institute for Free Labor Development. Though no one has ever proven any connection between Schwartz and the US government, his activities closely parallel those of the CIA. US embassy officials have never questioned his work. If he is not a CIA man, he ought to be.

Sources and footnotes below

(Sources: William Turner, Power Out the Right (Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1971); Jane Kramer, “Letter From Guyana,” New Yorker (September 16, 1974), pp. 100-128; Cheddi Japan, The West on Trial (London, 1966), p. 307). FOOTNOTES 1. Stanley Karnow, “The CIA in Flux,” New Republic, December 8, 1973. Between 1961 and 1963 CIA foundations gave $142,500 to the Synod of Bishops of the Russian Church outside of Russia. 2. Peter Dale Scott, “Watergate, Cuba, and the China-Vietnam Lobby” (unpublished manuscript); APACL, All Roads Lead to Freedom: First Report (Taipei, 1955); APACL, Proceedings of the First WACL Conference; APACL, Proceedings of the Third WACL Conference. 3. AMPO, Winter, 1974, p. 17; Christianity Today, August 16, 1974, pp. 28-9; June 22, 1973, pp. 33-4; September 28, 1973, pp. 52-3. 4. Christianity Today, January 1, 1971, p. 43; June 9, 1972, pp. 38-9; Christian Century, December 24, 1969, pp. 1650-1651. Despite its name, Campus Crusade is “not a student-led program” but is controlled by Bright’s central staff. (Christianity Today, April 12, 1968, p. 4O.} 5. Christian Century, May 10, 1972, pp. 549-51; July 19, 1972, pp. 778-80; Christianity Today, July 7, 1972, pp. 31-2. 6, AMPO, Winter, 1974, p. 16; Christianity Today, June 22, 1973, pp. 33-4; June 9, 1972, pp. 38-39. Campus Crusade actually has staff members at work in over fifty countries, where, as in the United States, its chief target group is students. 7. Washington Post, August 19, 1974; AMPO, Winter, 1974, p. 17. 8. The American press, especially the Washington Post and the New York Times, provided extensive coverage of the growing repression in Korea during the summer of 1974. 9. Washington Post, August 19, 1974; New York Times, August 19, 1974. 10. On Korff’s close relationship to Moon, see Washington Post, July 25, 1974; New York Post, September 16, 1974. Rabbi Korff’s latest project is to force Congress to impose severe curbs on the media, which he blames for President Nixon’s downfall (Washington Post, August 17, 1974). 11. Daily News (New York), September 13, 1974; Christianity Today, March 1, 1974, pp. 101-02; AMPO, Winter, 1974, p. 43; New York Times, September 16, 1974; Village Voice, September 12, 1974. Estimates vary as to the size of Moon’s worldwide following; Moon’s chief associate put the figure at over two million (New York Times, September 16, 1974). 12. New York Times, September 16, 1974 (including full-page advertisement on p. 40); Daily News, September 13, 1974; New York Times, September 19, 1974; UPI dispatch, September 19, 1974; Wall Street Journal, September 20, 1974. 13. AMPO, Winter, 1974, p. 43; New York Post, September 16, 1974. Moon’s organization has created a number of secular anti-communist front groups including the ]nfernationai Federation for Victory over Communism, the World Freedom Institute, and the Freedom Leadership Foundation. The South Korean Government sends its civil servants to an anti-communist indoctrination center in Seoul operated by the Church (Village Voice, September 12, 1974; New York Times, September 17, 1974). 14. Time, October 15, 1973, pp. 129-30; Daily News, September 13, 1974; Christianity Today, March 1, 1974, pp. 101-02. Moon’s church is worth “far more” than Moon’s personal $15 million (New York Times, September 16, 1974). 15. Village Voice, September 12, 1974; Steve Weissman and John Shoch, “CIAsia Foundation,” Pacific Research, September~October, 1972. One of Corcoran’s earliest projects for the CIA was representing Chennault’s Civil Air Transport, now Air America. CIA officials deny any ties to Moon’s Unification Church, but funding of the Church remains mysterious (Wall Street Journal, September 20, 1974). 16. AMPO, Winter, 1974, p. 43; New York Times, July 2, 1974; Don Kurzman, Kishi and Japan (Astor-Honor). 17. New York Times, July 2, 1974. Sasagawa has been implicated in recent Japanese election irregularities. See Far Eastern Economic Review, September 6, 1974, p. 28. 18. AMPO, Winter, 1974, pp. 43-5.

[arcenciel-par-une-larme]

You seem to be quite involved in the subject. Do you have any materials which we could read to learn more about this cult?

This has been a long time coming. The lives this organization has ruined, and it's lack of repentance in doing so, earns it the dissolution that has been so desperately needed. This cult has done tremendous damage to Christianity's ongoing efforts to foster trust and love of God's Word throughout the world. The sooner they are gone, the sooner their victims will be free of the financial burdens forced upon them through intimidation and be able to move on with their lives.

"The church said in an online statement that it would immediately appeal to the Tokyo High Court, adding that the order "will create future trouble for all religious bodies.""

You scam artists don't speak for me, for the LCMS church, nor for God. You scam artists were the inevitable future trouble for all religious bodies, and now you are gone. Good riddance.

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-us-are-studying-outcome-talks-ukraine-riyadh-kremlin-says-2025-03-25/

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Mrs. Moon demanded that all UC paid staff resign by October 1st.

News about the Unification Church of Japan Hak Ja Han doesn’t want to pay her staff, but instead use that money to fund her newest temple.

For the past two years donations have been almost zero in Japan. In the midst of a serious financial crisis with no donations from Japan, Mrs Moon is still pouring everything into the Cheonwon Palace at Cheongpyeong. She sold real estate and borrowed from financial institutions.

All church money is being pulled into her temple.

It’s being said that every time Mrs Moon tours the temple to check on the building progress she finds more ways to spend money either in furniture, more elaborate decorations or upgrading tech.

Then there is this Japanese leader who is receiving revelations from Sun Myung Moon in the spiritual world. With passionate yelling he tells members that Moon is a hundred percent supporting Mrs. Moon, and the light from the new temple will transform the evil. This leader is known in Japan for creating a team and a teaching that would help members file for bankruptcy, believing that bankruptcy was a divine law.

In the end Mrs. Moon is running out of money and probably losing membership because of her own greed.

Also her closest two aides, one of which is Mrs. Won Ju McDevitt, are under investigation by the police for tax evasion and embezzlement.

___________________________________

Unification Church President Hak Ja Han issued an emergency directive, “Submit resignation letters en masse!”

통일교 한학자 총재 긴급 지시, “일괄 사직서 내라!”

統一教会の韓鶴子総裁緊急指示「一括辞表を出せ！」

Hak-Ja Han kicked out three of her sons and became the sinless object of worship in the movement founded by Sun Myung Moon

$42million of Donations Gambled Away by Hak Ja Han and Unification Church Leaders in Las Vegas

[captain-price-unofficially]

ASSASSINATIONS WORK!

[talonabraxas]

For the first time since 165 years ago, Neptune enters Aries TODAY. It will stay here for 13 years until 2038. - Neptune is the Planet of Highest Spirituality, dissolving separation and Love/Unity. - Aries is the sign of WAR. When Neptune enters Aries, it tell us that HUMANITY IS GOING TO FIGHT FOR THE HIGHEST TRUTH ONCE AGAIN. - For the last 13 years, Neptune was in Pisces, which is the sign of deception and illusions. Our understandings of God were obscured by deception and confusion perpetuated by the Dark Elites using institutions such as the Church and Education System - Events that happened the most recent time Neptune was in Aries? The American Civil War began (1861); the Unification of Italy (1861); the Restoration in Japan (1868); Invention of Dynamite by Alfred Nobel (1867) - For the next 13 years, expect lies to be exposed (think Hollywood, Church, Fed, Government etc), and dark institutions to be progressively dismantled. However, the destruction will be painful especially early, and remember that we have 13 years. "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are years where decades happen" by NeoSpirituality art: Dream guide by mendezmendez @mendezmendezart