Japanese Court dissolves Unification Church

The Tokyo District Court revoked the religious movement’s status. Founded by Sun Myung Moon, the Church was involved in financial scandals over the years, which emerged following the murder of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2022. The Church, which will still be able to operate in Japan, plans to appeal, but it loses its tax benefits in the meantime.

Tokyo (AsiaNews) – The Tokyo District Court has ordered the dissolution of the Federation of Families for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), better known as the Unification Church, due to irregularities related to its fundraising practices and after its controversial relations with Japanese politicians came to light.

Today’s ruling strips the Church of its status as a religious body, as well as of its tax exemptions, but does not ban its activity in Japan. It is expected to immediately file an appeal, sources report.

The decision comes more than two years after the violent death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. His killer stated that he had acted because the former prime minister’s ties to the religious movement, which he blamed for his mother’s financial ruin after she made huge donations to this church.

The murder in July 2022 brought to light close ties between the Church and numerous members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has been Japan’s dominant political party for decades.

Following the assassination, the party launched an internal investigation, which revealed that about half of all its lawmakers had ties with the religious movement. The case damaged the party’s image, eventually leading it to lose its majority in the House of Representatives, the lower house of parliament, in October 2024.

Japan's Ministry of Education and Culture filed a request to dissolve the Church in 2023, a year after Abe's murder, alleging that the group puts psychological pressure on its members.

According to the government, several rulings by Japanese courts document the Church’s coercive practices. “We believe our claims were accepted,” said Education Minister Toshiko Abe.

The Unification Church rejected the decision, stating on its official website that “this ruling was based on an incorrect interpretation of the law and is totally unacceptable to this organization."

It goes on to say that it had adopted structural changes in recent years and that it believed that the legal conditions for dissolution are not applicable in its case.

Founded in Seoul in 1954 by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who had fled North Korea, the movement gained worldwide notoriety in the 1970s with its “mass weddings” involving thousands of couples even though bride and groom barely knew each other.

Members are informally called "Moonies” named after the founder. Over the years, accusations of financial misdeeds have been repeatedly made against the Church. Moon himself, who built an economic empire in the United States, was accused of tax evasion.

Under Japanese law, the authorities can ask courts to dissolve a religious body if it "commits an act which is clearly found to harm public welfare substantially."

The dissolution order issued against the Unification Church is the third of its kind since the end of the Second World War.

The best known precedent occurred in 1995, when the authorities dissolved “Aum Shinrikyo”, a sect responsible for the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway, which killed 13 people and injured thousands.

The other was the Myokakuji temple, a group whose priests scammed people by saying that they were possessed by evil spirits and had to pay to be exorcised.

• japan
• unification church
• dissolution
• shinzo abe
• assassination