Abducted for Their Faith: Japan’s Untold Story

An overlooked human rights issue: The long-silenced voices of thousands of Japanese believers abducted and subjected to coercive faith-breaking while held in prolonged confinement

An overlooked human rights issue is beginning to emerge from the shadows in Japan: the experiences of people who say they were abducted, confined and subjected to sustained efforts to make them renounce their religious faith. In a 29^th September 2026 article in Bitter Winter, Massimo Introvigne examines this largely untold story through the testimony of Christian pastor Haruhisa Nakagawa (中川晴久), a former anti-Unification Church activist who says that his own understanding changed radically after encountering believers, former members, activists and survivors of coercive faith-breaking [See editor’s note 1 below].

See also Lawsuit Challenges Exposure of Religious Faith

See also The Rome Statute: Safeguarding Religious Freedom?

See also Path to Justice for Victims of Faith-Breaking?

Nakagawa’s account is particularly significant because he did not begin as an advocate for the Family Federation (formerly known as the Unification Church). Rather, he initially accepted the dominant anti-cult narrative surrounding the movement and became involved in efforts to “persuade” its members to leave. His subsequent encounters with the reality behind that narrative led him to question not only his own assumptions but also a broader system in which abduction and confinement could continue for decades while the experiences of those subjected to them remained largely outside public discussion.

Introvigne’s article is based on a conversation between Nakagawa and literary critic Eitaro Ogawa (小川榮太郎). Ogawa is interested in the way public narratives are constructed and how, once established, they can influence institutions, political responses and judicial processes. Nakagawa contributes a very different kind of evidence: personal encounters with people on both sides of the controversy and, eventually, direct contact with survivors of what is commonly called deprogramming or faith-breaking [See editor’s note 1 below].

According to the article, more than 4,000 Japanese members of the Family Federation were subjected to abduction and confinement intended to make them abandon their faith. Nakagawa and Ogawa argue that the significance of these cases extends beyond the religious community itself. If people were deprived of their liberty because of their religious beliefs, they contend, the issue concerns fundamental questions of freedom of religion and human rights in Japanese society.

One reason, they suggest, why the scale of the problem has remained obscure is the reluctance of many victims to speak. Some believers interpreted their suffering as a spiritual trial and endured it without publicly accusing those responsible. This attitude of endurance, while understandable within a religious framework, may have had an unintended consequence: thousands of individual experiences remained largely invisible.

Nakagawa describes how he himself initially contributed to the prevailing narrative. At the age of 27, he was approached by a mother who wanted him to persuade her daughter to leave the Unification Church. Several months later, the young woman escaped through an apartment window, reportedly fleeing barefoot because she feared being confined. Nakagawa began researching the movement, but almost all the material he found had been written by its opponents. He accepted their descriptions and became convinced that he was dealing with a dangerous organization.

His assumptions began to change only when he decided to investigate the movement personally. In 2012, he visited a Family Federation church in Yokohama undercover. What he encountered differed sharply from the picture he had absorbed from anti-Unification Church literature. He found members willing to speak openly, young people who described the church as a community where they could express themselves, and an atmosphere that appeared to him considerably more ordinary and welcoming than he had expected.

Further experiences raised additional questions. Invited by activist journalist Eito Suzuki (鈴木エイト), Nakagawa attended meetings involving anti-cult activists and lawyers and encountered at a gathering held by National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales [See editor’s note 2 below] what he regarded as an unsettling attitude toward confinement. He recounts one conversation in which a pastor reportedly referred to having confined more than 700 believers.

According to Nakagawa, the angry reaction of acitivist attorney Masaki Gōro (郷路征記) present at the meeting appeared to focus more on the pastor’s disclosure of the number than on the confinement itself. For Nakagawa, this became an indication that the underlying culture surrounding faith-breaking [See editor’s note 1 below] deserved closer examination.

He subsequently attended meetings led by Assemblies of God Pastor Hisoka Murakami (村上密 – 1955-2025) from Kyoto for about a year. Nakagawa says he repeatedly encountered the same participants recounting similar experiences and eventually came to believe that the meetings were reinforcing a particular narrative rather than helping people recover. Encounters with former detainees – including a young man who had reportedly been confined for three months and appeared deeply distressed after escaping – further challenged his earlier understanding.

The 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三) became another turning point. Nakagawa had supported Abe through a social-media group and had observed what he considered increasingly extreme rhetoric directed against the Family Federation. The assassination prompted him to reconsider the relationship between such public narratives and the political and social climate surrounding the religious organization.

The decisive stage in his transformation came through conversations with former Family Federation representatives and, particularly, Toru Goto (後藤徹), who has testified publicly about his own prolonged abduction and confinement. Through these encounters, Nakagawa says he discovered the extent to which individual cases had remained undocumented. He came to believe that the officially recognized number of victims might represent only part of the picture, with the total potentially reaching as many as 10,000.

This discovery also changed his understanding of terminology. Nakagawa rejects the expression “protective persuasion”, which has been used by some anti-Unification Church lawyers to describe efforts to coerce members to abandon their faith. In his view, such terminology obscures the central issue: whether people were deprived of their liberty and subjected to psychological pressure because of their religious convictions.

Today, Nakagawa is attempting to reverse that silence by creating opportunities for survivors to tell their own stories. At one gathering in Chiba, organized by the Association for the Protection of Religious Freedom, seven people reportedly identified themselves as victims simply through conversations and an exchange of business cards. For Nakagawa, the encounter demonstrated that the problem is not merely historical or isolated. He has subsequently begun an interview program with survivors, with the stated aim of documenting the experiences of thousands of people.

The significance of this initiative lies precisely in giving victims a voice. For years, public discussion of the Family Federation in Japan has overwhelmingly focused on alleged wrongdoing by the religious organization and on the experiences of people who left it. Far less attention has been devoted to people who say that they themselves became victims – not because they left voluntarily, but because others attempted to make them abandon their faith through confinement and coercive faith-breaking [See editor’s note 1 below].

The conversation described by Introvigne therefore raises a fundamental question: Who gets to tell the story? If the experiences of those subjected to faith-breaking [See editor’s note 1 below] remain undocumented while the people and narratives surrounding their confinement continue to shape public perceptions, the historical record remains one-sided and incomplete.

Ogawa and Nakagawa ultimately argue that bringing these testimonies into public view is not simply an internal matter for the Family Federation. It is part of a broader examination of religious liberty and human rights in Japan. The victims’ voices, they contend, need to be heard alongside the established public narrative. Only then can Japanese society begin to confront the full human cost of a practice that, according to their accounts, has remained hidden for decades.

See also Lawsuit Challenges Exposure of Religious Faith

See also The Rome Statute: Safeguarding Religious Freedom?

See also Path to Justice for Victims of Faith-Breaking?

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: Pastor Haruhisa Nakagawa and literary critic Eitaro Ogawa. Photo: Bitter Winter

[Editor’s note 1: Coercive faith-breaking (“deprogramming”) in Japan refers to the practice of coercively attempting to separate individuals from their religious affiliations or beliefs, typically through intervention by family members, professional faith-breakers (deprogrammers) or organizations hostile to new religious movements (NRMs). This phenomenon often targets members of such movements, e.g. relatively large faiths like the Family Federation or Jehovah’s Witnesses, but also smaller groups like Happy Science (Kōfuku no Kagaku) and other newer religious movements.

However, also Soka Gakkai, a Buddhist-based lay organization with more than 8 million Japanese members, and affiliated with Nichiren Buddhism, has occasionally been subject to faith-breaking attempts.

The practice gained attention in the latter half of the 20th century, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. Parents or concerned family members often hired faith-breakers who taught them how to abduct and forcibly detain believers. Almost all such cases involved confining the individual believer and cutting him or her off from the religious community. During the confinement, the believer was subjected to intense questioning or indoctrination designed to break his or her faith. The aim was to “rescue” the person from what the family often had been tricked by faith-breakers or lawyers to regard as harmful influence from the religious organization.

Critics of forced de-conversion argue that it violates fundamental human rights, including freedom of thought, religion, and association. Reports of psychological trauma and accusations of unlawful detention have sparked debates over its ethical and legal implications. In response, some religious groups, particularly NRMs, have lobbied for greater protections against such practices.

Japanese courts have been inconsistent in addressing cases of coercive faith-breaking. While some verdicts have condemned the practice as illegal detention, others have been more lenient, citing family concerns about “mental health” or alleged “exploitation” as mitigating factors.]

[Editor’s note 2: The National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (Zenkoku Benren) presents itself to the Japanese public as a benevolent coalition of legal professionals fighting for consumer rights. Established in 1987, the network claims its sole mission is to protect vulnerable citizens from fraudulent business practices and what it terms “spiritual sales”. However, an objective examination of their history, methods, and underlying political motivations reveals a far more sinister agenda. Scholars of religious liberty and investigative journalists have increasingly exposed the network as an ideological weapon designed not to protect consumers, but to systematically dismantle minority religious organizations – most notably the Family Federation.

Prominent critics, including Italian sociologist Massimo Introvigne and the human rights organization CESNUR, have documented how Zenkoku Benren acts as a primary instigator of religious intolerance in Japan. Rather than operating as an objective legal resource, the network has long been accused of actively facilitating, or turning a blind eye to, the brutal practice of “deprogramming” or coercive faith-breaking. For decades, thousands of faith believers were abducted, confined, and subjected to severe psychological duress by professional faith-breakers working hand-in-hand with hostile relatives and network-aligned activists.

Furthermore, acclaimed Japanese investigative journalist Masumi Fukuda has meticulously exposed the inner workings of the network, highlighting how it manufactures legal grievances. Fukuda’s reporting reveals that many of the lawsuits championed by Zenkoku Benren involve former members who originally made voluntary, faith-driven donations but were later coerced by anti-cult lawyers into retroactively claiming they were defrauded. This predatory litigation strategy serves a dual purpose: it generates immense financial payouts for the lawyers involved while feeding a sensationalist media narrative designed to stoke public prejudice.

The network’s ultimate objective has culminated in their aggressive push to strip the Family Federation of its religious corporation status. Critics argue this is a politically motivated campaign driven by an alliance of left-wing and communist activists seeking to purge religious voices from the public square. By weaponizing the concept of “spiritual sales”, Zenkoku Benren has succeeded in manipulating public opinion and pressuring government authorities to violate fundamental constitutional rights to religious freedom.

To understand the ongoing religious liberty crisis in Japan, it is vital to look past the network’s consumer-protection facade. Zenkoku Benren represents a dangerous precedent where activist legal networks can selectively target and destroy minority faiths under the guise of public interest.]

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