Ex-minister admits lobbying for Unification Church’s name change
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A former Cabinet minister has admitted to lobbying in support of the Unification Church’s controversial 2015 name change, telling The Asahi Shimbun he acted because the group had provided him with crucial election support.
Yoshiaki Harada, 81, a former environment minister and Lower House member for the Liberal Democratic Party, justified his intervention by saying it was “natural for a politician to respond” to petitions from those who had helped them.
The group, originally founded in Seoul in 1954 as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, became widely known as the Unification Church.
Certified as a religious corporation in Japan in 1964, its practices of “spiritual sales” and soliciting large donations became a major social problem from the 1980s onward.
HIDING TRUE IDENTITY
The church’s efforts to rebrand itself began much earlier.
In 1997, it consulted the Agency for Cultural Affairs about a name change, but the request was denied on the grounds that it “would help conceal the group’s true identity,” according to a former senior education ministry official.
Despite the rejection, the church persisted, and the issue came to a head in 2015.
That March, the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, representing victims of the church’s activities, urged then-education minister Hakubun Shimomura to block any future application.
But around the same time, Harada, at the church’s request, called an Agency for Cultural Affairs official.
Three months later, the church formally applied to become the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and the change was approved in August under the second administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
A POLITICIAN’S ‘DUTY’
The revelation of an alleged internal church document, the “TM Special Report,” late last year shed new light on the group’s political ties.
The report, submitted to the church’s president in South Korea, highlighted the Japanese leadership’s success in cultivating relationships with LDP politicians.
It lauded Harada specifically, noting he “made a very large contribution” to the name change, and describing him as “really close to us, a person who always comes to our gatherings.”
Harada agreed to an interview after The Asahi Shimbun presented him with the document’s contents.
He recalled several senior church officials visiting his office in 2015, telling him, “The education ministry won’t approve the name change. We want to file a lawsuit.”
A qualified lawyer, Harada advised them that a lawsuit “would not be beneficial” and instead called a senior official at the Agency for Cultural Affairs to lobby for the change.
He said he made “one or two” such calls about three or four months before the change was approved. The official was noncommittal, he said.
He was later informed by church leaders that the effort had succeeded, adding that they “were very happy.”
Speaking of the church officials’ motives, Harada said, “Their social reputation under the old Unification Church name was not good, so I imagine they wanted to change it.”
While downplaying his own influence, Harada was explicit about why he acted.
“I don’t know if the name was changed because of my phone call,” he said, adding, “They helped me so much during elections with things like making phone calls and distributing fliers, so I wanted to do something for them.”
“When you receive a petition from those who have helped you, it is natural for a politician to respond in kind,” he said.
DENIALS AND DISSOLUTION
The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Religious Affairs Division denied any record of Harada’s involvement in the decision-making.
A representative said the decision was “made clerically as a result of repeated legal reviews” in accordance with the Religious Corporation Law.
The division chief and department director from 2015 both declined to comment.
The church acknowledged consulting two lawmakers, including Harada, but said it had “no intention to use politicians to apply pressure.”
Harada was first elected to the Lower House in 1990 and served eight terms before losing his seat in 2021, having served as vice minister of education from 2003 to 2004 and environment minister from 2018 to 2019.
The circumstances surrounding the 2015 name change came under intense scrutiny in the Diet following the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe by a man whose mother had donated large sums of money to the church, which financially ruined his family.
Tetsuya Yamagami, 45, who was sentenced to life in prison for the slaying, said he targeted Abe because of his ties to the religious organization.
On March 4 this year, the Tokyo High Court issued a dissolution order for the church, but the group on March 9 filed a special appeal to the Supreme Court.
Content retrieved from: https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/16407863.
