Deprogramming Abuses: Reasons for Japan’s Silence

In interview Japanese expert scholar and author describes Japan’s unspoken history of deprogramming abuses and why the authorities keep quiet about the worst human rights violations there since World War II

Tokyo, 12th April 2025 – Published as an article in the Japanese newspaper Sekai Nippo. Republished with permission. Translated from Japanese. Original article. 

Abduction and Confinement Are Tacitly Justified

Interview with Religious Scholar Toshihiro Ota (Part 3)

by Tsuyoshi Toyoda (豊田 剛), who conducted the interview

See part 1, part 2 of the interview

Expanding deprogramming network

– Doesn’t the Tokyo District Court’s ruling to issue a dissolution order effectively legitimize violent acts by groups hostile to the Family Federation?

The district court’s decision to issue a dissolution order and its concerns about the Unification Church’s doctrine do not necessarily mean that the anti-Unification Church stance is justified. A major issue is the widespread use of forced de-conversion – known as “deprogramming” – through abduction, confinement, and even torture against Unification Church members.

This is thoroughly discussed in works like

● “Our Unpleasant Neighbor: The Tragedy of a Female Believer ‘Rescued’ from the Unification Church” by Kazuhiro Yonemoto (米本和広), and

● “Religious Persecution in Universities” and “The Dark Side of Japanese Religion – The Struggle Against Forced Renunciation of Faith” by Tadashi Muro (室生忠).

The international NGO “Human Rights Without Frontiers” also investigated this and published a report in 2012 titled “Japan: Abductions and confinement for the purpose of religious de-conversion”.

In Japan, it is said that the first person to carry out deprogramming of Unification Church members was Pastor Satoshi Moriyama (森山諭) of the United Church of Jesus Christ of Japan. Moriyama deemed the Unification Church a heresy and began vehemently refuting it.

From 1966 onward, with the help of family members of believers, he started confining believers in churches and coercing them to renounce their faith.

In 1967, an article titled “The Principle Movement That Makes Parents Cry” appeared in the Asahi Shimbun, which increased parental anxiety and led to a rise in consultations with pastors like Moriyama. This marked the beginning of a network of Christian pastors involved in deprogramming.

In the 1970s, as conflict between the International Federation for Victory over Communism (IFVOC) and leftist groups intensified, left-leaning politicians and intellectuals joined the anti-Unification Church movement.

By the 1980s, “spiritual sales” tactics became a serious problem, leading lawyers and media figures to launch campaigns against the church. Then in the 1990s, following the Aum Shinrikyo incident, public fear of “cult brainwashing and mind control” surged. As a result, theories of mind control were developed, and psychologists and religious scholars began “anti-cult” activities.

From the 1960s to the 1990s, the anti-Unification Church movement absorbed people from various fields while shifting its focus. Behind it all, repeated deprogrammings were carried out as a kind of “secret weapon against cults”. I call this network of relationships the “deprogramming network”.

– The district court adopted testimonies from former members who renounced their faith after being abducted and confined.

I’ve heard that many of the written statements submitted by the Ministry of Education (MEXT) came from people who were forced into donation lawsuits after being deprogrammed. In court cases in the UK involving the Unification Church, testimonies from people who had undergone deprogramming were treated with suspicion, and the courts instead ruled that the government’s actions were breaking the law. There is a significant difference from how Japanese courts have responded, particularly in whether the issue of deprogramming is being directly addressed.

What puzzles me is why Japanese authorities – such as the police and courts – do not treat deprogramming as a crime. In the West, deprogramming movements subsided precisely because they were prosecuted as crimes. Strangely, that did not happen in Japan.

“Private transport services” operated by former police officers

– Why didn’t deprogramming subside in Japan?

I suspect one major reason lies in the “peculiarities of Japan’s psychiatric care system”.

Historically in Japan, there was a custom of confining mentally ill individuals in so-called zashiki-ro (座敷牢 – prison cell in homes) [See editor’s note below]. After World War II, this practice faded, but instead, many psychiatric hospitals were built, and the government pushed policies of institutionalization for mental illness. Japan has a system called “medical protection hospitalization”, which allows for involuntary hospitalization based on the judgment of a psychiatrist and the patient’s family – even if the person refuses. This system was often abused, leading to an enormous number of inpatients.

According to the book “Reportage: The Archipelago of Asylums – Questioning Japanese Psychiatry” by Naoki Kazama (風間直樹) and others, as of 2017, about 280,000 people were hospitalized in psychiatric institutions in Japan, with 340,000 psychiatric beds available – about one-fifth of the global total concentrated in a single country.

A business called “private transport services” developed to forcibly admit people to psychiatric hospitals, often operated by former police officers. Furthermore, not only psychiatric hospitals but also various mental rehabilitation centers, low-cost shelters, and retreat facilities run by so-called “extraction agents” (引き出し屋) [See editor’s note below] reportedly functioned as places of confinement.

In my research into deprogramming of Unification Church members, I came to feel strongly that Japanese society has a kind of “backdoor solution” that involves solving the problem of so-called “disruptive individuals” through abduction and confinement – and that public authorities have supported this approach.

Going forward, we need to not only reexamine the issue of religious deprogramming but also look more broadly at the underlying problems in Japanese society that made it possible – and search for ways to reform them.

In a sense, the “Unification Church issue” is not just about a single religious organization. It could be seen as a convergence point for contradictions in postwar Japan across many sectors – politics, the judiciary, law enforcement, academia, and media. Regrettably, resolving these contradictions will likely take considerable time.

See part 1, part 2 of the interview

Toshihiro Ota (大田俊寛) – Born in 1974. Graduated from the Faculty of Sociology at Hitotsubashi University. Completed doctoral studies in Religious Studies and the History of Religion at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology. Holds a Doctorate in Literature. Currently a part-time lecturer at Saitama University. Specializes in religious studies. Major works include “The Complete History of Monotheism” (Vol. 1 & 2, Kawade Shobo Shinsha), “The Thought of Gnosticism” (Shunjusha), and “The Spiritual History of Aum Shinrikyo” (Shunjusha).

Featured image above: A panel exhibition 19^th March 2025, Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture highlighting damage caused by deprogramming through abduction and confinement. Photo: Yasuhiro Uno (宇野泰弘)

[Editor’s note 1: A zashiki-rō (座敷牢) is a traditional Japanese confinement room used historically for restraining individuals, typically within a private household. Zashiki (座敷) refers to a Japanese-style tatami-matted room. Rō (牢) means a jail or cell.

Historically, these rooms were used for confining family members who were mentally ill, violent, or otherwise considered disruptive or dangerous to the household or community. The practice was more common in the Edo (1603–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods, before modern mental health care systems were established.

A Zashiki-rō was typically equipped with sturdy sliding doors reinforced with bars or locks, ensuring the person inside could not escape. It was located within a family home or a secluded part of the property, ensuring privacy. The confined individual was often left alone in this small, sparse room with minimal furnishings, and their basic needs were provided through a small opening or at designated times.

The term “zashiki-rō” today is often used metaphorically to describe situations of coercive confinement or control, as it evokes the idea of being trapped in a restrictive, oppressive environment. Such imagery is sometimes applied to cases of forcible detainment or isolation, like in the more than 4,300 instances of members of the Family Federation being abducted and confined.]

[Editor’s note 2: 引き出し屋  (hikidashi-ya) literally means “extraction specialists”; often refers to individuals or groups that forcibly remove people (often from new religious movements, what the same “specialists” call “cults”.)]

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