The Government of Japan, led by Fumio Kishida, is seriously questioned by citizens: only 24% of Japanese people approve of its management, according to a survey by the Yomiuri Shimbun media carried out in January.
This is a historic low.
Trust with the Government, in the hands of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (PLD), has been deteriorating for more than a year, specifically when the focus was placed on the party's links with a sect with Christian roots, whose abusive practices were revealed after the assassination in 2022 of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, of the same formation.
In November, this citizen indifference increased exponentially after a case of corruption within the conservative party was revealed: the diversion of funds of more than 500 million yen (about 3.5 million euros).
An unprecedented scandal that has led to the dissolution of several factions within the PLD.
The opposition lacerates the Executive with both issues, with an eye on the next general elections, scheduled for October 2025;
On the street, six out of 10 Japanese believe that the prime minister should resign.
If he does not come back [in the polls], there is a possibility that he will not make it [to the elections],” stated a former member of the Government in
The
Japan Times,
on condition of anonymity.
A chill ran through Japanese society on July 8, 2022. That day, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot by a man in Nara (a city about 40 kilometers south of Kyoto), where he was participating in a political event.
The authorities immediately arrested Tetsuya Yamagami, 41 years old.
The man detailed that he attacked Abe - who led the country for nine years, between 2006 and 2007 and from 2012 to 2020 - because he considered that he, like other members of the PLD, had links with the Unification Church, a sect founded in 1954 by the Korean Sun Myung Moon - because of his last name, his followers are called
moonies
- in his native country.
The attacker said that his mother had been recruited decades ago by that organization, which, over the years, had asked the lady for “enormous donations”, amounting to half a million euros, which ended up sinking the family financially. .
Yamagami considered that Abe had collaborated to give the sect power of influence in Japan.
An internal investigation of the PLD has confirmed that almost half of its current deputies (47%) have had some type of interaction with the church and its faithful.
“During its expansion, in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore or the United States, the Unification Church relied on anti-communist rhetoric that led it to be supported by politicians from the conservative sphere,” explains Susumu Shimazono, professor emeritus of Humanities and Sciences. Sciences of the University of Tsukuba.
This expert in politics and religion has studied the sect since its origins and has published an essay on its links with power, with the PLD, as well as with other conservative formations internationally.
“It was founded with a clear vocation to have political influence,” says the expert.
Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather and Japanese Prime Minister between 1957 and 1960, was one of the first to cultivate relations with the cult, which came to have the protection of the US Republicans: “One of the people closest to Moon “He had contacts with Richard Nixon's team,” says the professor.
Years later, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the church sought a new sociopolitical agenda: “Anticommunism had lost strength, so they focused on the defense of the traditional family, the attack on feminism or the LGTBI collective, with a tough opposition to same-sex marriage,” says Shimazono.
In fact, they began to be called: Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
For the researcher, “they established links with power in search of support in exchange for manipulating people and getting them to vote in favor of ultra-conservative factions.”
In their strategy, they appealed to emotions, with messages that spoke of a collapsing world that must be saved, vindicating certain supposedly better traditional values that have been lost, or denying climate change.
“In the Unification Church they were pioneers in the cultural war,” he highlights and then highlights that currently “something similar is happening in the United States or Europe.”
The tentacles of the Unification Church are not limited to the most right-wing sectors of the LDP - the party is organized into factions, with different sensitivities, which exercise organic power - but have reached Prime Minister Kishida (who was a member of Kochikai, more moderate than, for example, the Abe faction).
The opposition in the Japanese Parliament has brought up a meeting that Kishida held in 2019, then as Foreign Minister, with the American, Republican and ultra-conservative congressman Newt Gingrich.
A delegation from the Unification Church joined the event.
“That does not mean that I have ties to the Unification Church,” he defended himself, insisting that he was not part of it.
Abe never joined the congregation either, and yet his name has remained attached to it.
Yes, he participated in its events, he enjoyed their support, and was nourished by their votes.
“Japan is not a mobilized society,” explains philosopher Kohei Saito, a professor at the University of Tokyo: “Many people have barriers when it comes to participating in demonstrations or exercising activism.”
Which increases interest in taking advantage of the
Moonies
' mobilizing capacity , either during a campaign or on election day.
Several people who left the sect - which, according to its own figures, currently has 10 million followers in the world;
600,000 of them in Japan, although not all active, as they have acknowledged, have recounted how they were instructed to vote for LDP candidates in various elections.
A former follower, whose mother was still in the cult, defined it this way in a statement to the Reuters agency: “Our lives were worth less than our votes.”
Polarizing strategy
The LDP has exercised power in Japan almost uninterruptedly since 1955, except for four years: from 1993 to 1994 and between 2009 and 2012. “The loss of the elections in 2009 disconcerted the conservatives and forced them to think about how to improve their campaign. ” says Maiko Ichihara, an expert in international politics and associate professor at Hitotsubashi University.
“So, they created a group on the Internet – a kind of club of party supporters on the Internet – to eliminate and hide negative information about the party while promoting positive information.
It was a whole narrative campaign,” she adds.
In this reputational action, the experience of the Unification Church and part of its polarizing strategy weighed.
“At the head of this operation was a LDP politician very close to Abe,” Ichihara details.
In 2012, Abe won the election, which was held the year after the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Although some people had denounced the Unification Church;
The sect managed to impose an effective cloak of silence until Abe's assassination.
“Somehow, [his death] put the focus on this serious issue,” summarizes Aiko, 47, who prefers not to detail his name.
She distills a widespread opinion in Japanese society that censures the use of violence, while empathizing with the family destroyed by sectarianism.
After the attack, complaints similar to those of the Yamagami surfaced.
The Government had to take measures.
Thus, he withdrew the group's church status, with the aim of banning it ―something that has not yet happened―;
established a series of compensations for those affected by their subjugating and abusive practices;
and last month it froze the group's funds to prevent them from being mobilized outside of Japan, to prevent them from evading payment of established compensation.
Along the way, “Abe's reputation, as well as his legacy – until now respected and valued – have suffered,” says political expert Shimazono: “It is a problem [for the LDP], which is going to be destabilized.” .
This destabilization has only worsened after a series of diversions of public funds by members of the conservative party were discovered.
Many cases were concentrated in the Abe faction, although others have also been implicated - four of the party's six factions have dissolved, including Abe's and the one led by Kishida himself - and investigations continue.
Among those arrested for this corruption case, Hirozaku Matsuno, former government spokesperson, who served as second in the LDP, and as Kishida's right-hand man.
Another blow for the prime minister, who defended his colleague until the last moment.
There is still the autumn general election of 2025, but the waters in the LDP are only stirring.
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