“No Ties: LDP Gave No Favours to Faith Minority”

Sankei Shimbun: No favours ever granted to Family Federation by Liberal Democratic Party. Claim of “ties” is false.

In the Sankei Shimbun, one of Japan’s top 5 dailies, 29^th September 2024, Kazue Fujiwara (藤原かずえ) spells out an accurate criticism of the constant leftwing allegations of ties between the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Unification Church, now called the Family Federation.

Her article criticizes specifically a large Asahi Shimbun front page report 17^th September, which brought up an 11-year-old photo of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三) meeting with senior officials of the former Unification Church in the president’s reception room in the Liberal Democratic Party’s headquarters. With its article that day the leftwing Asahi Shimbun aimed to show that the “organizational relationship” between Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party and the former Unification Church was “almost proven”. The report and photo were published as the LDP presidential election entered its final stages, and Asahi likely wanted to challenge the LDP, which had declared it had “cut ties”, by saying, “What about this?”

Kazue Fujiwara points out that Asahi unfairly demands proof of something that is impossible to prove (i.e., the non-existence of an organizational relationship), and that such reporting is deemed irresponsible.

Fujiwara believes Asahi is at fault for – without providing sufficient evidence – speculating about and criticizing a deceased individual who can no longer speak for himself.

The Sankei Shimbun writes,

“Firstly, there’s no reason for the LDP to reject a visit from an organization made up of citizens with voting rights who express support for the party. Political parties exist to gather public support in order to realize their policies, and providing information to groups that align with their policies is a normal part of political activities. Voting rights are equally granted to all citizens, and criticizing people for exercising these rights based on their personal affiliations is a violation of basic human rights.”

Fujiwara emphasizes that if there were any issue with Abe meeting Unification Church leaders, it could only be if the Liberal Democratic Party government had offered “undue benefits” to the religious organization as a reward for election campaign support. The question of whether an organizational relationship exists should be based on whether any such benefits were provided.

In fact, far from rewarding the Unification Church, the Abe-led government introduced policies that significantly disadvantaged the religious movement from South Korea. In 2018, the administration amended the Consumer Contract Act, making contracts from spiritual sales activities invalid. National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, an organization hostile to the Unification Church, stated that consultations involving the religious organization drastically declined during Abe’s time as Prime Minister. These facts demonstrate that the LDP has already addressed the issue and shown that it had no organizational relationship to the church.

Asahi Shimbun asks the Liberal Democratic Party to provide evidence that there are no organizational ties between the political party and the Unification Church, but this is an impossible task, often referred to as a “devil’s proof” – a requirement to produce an impossible proof. If the Asahi bases its assertion that there were organizational ties, on this meeting in the presidential reception room, then it is the newspaper’s responsibility to prove that the governing party granted benefits to the religious organization.

In 2017, the Asahi repeatedly demanded the Abe administration provide such a “devil’s proof” in relation to the Moritomo Gakuen (森友学園) and Kake Gakuen (加計学園) political scandals. [Editor’s note: Scandals where it was claimed that government officials had given preferential treatment to school operators with ties to the prime minister].

In her Sankei Shimbun article Kazue Fujiwara claims that the reporting by leftwing Asahi back then caused unnecessary political turmoil in Japan. And now, they again pursue a similar strategy by releasing an 11-year-old photo in order to upset the LDP leadership election. Fujiwara ends her article by stating that this kind of reporting, demanding an impossible “devil’s proof”, is irresponsible indeed and goes against journalistic ethics.

It’s certainly tempting to take Fujiwara’s reasoning a step further. The reason the Asahi Shimbun dedicated almost all of its front page and second page to this 11-year-old story from 2013, boils down to more than irresponsible and unethical reporting. It is clearly political mudslinging. Even when there is no mud to throw, they fabricate some. As Fujiwara pointed out there was “no reason for the LDP to reject a visit from an organization made up of citizens with voting rights who express support for the party.” Shinzo Abe and the LDP did nothing wrong. The Unification Church did nothing wrong.

Just like the Japanese Communist Party, the Asahi has blamed the Unification Church for the killing of Abe all along. By portraying the religious organization as “evil” the large leftwing paper also manages to put the LDP in a bad light as it has had “ties” to the “cult”.

But if the Unification Church has committed no crimes, and the LDP politicians had every right to associate with Unification Church members, then the Asahi Shimbun has very little ammunition to fire with.

But for the Asahi, the campaign where they paint both the Unification Church and the LDP black has to succeed. They have to keep up their allegations. Otherwise, the lies they base their narrative on may be exposed.

Text: Knut Holdhus

Featured image above: Sign at the entrance of the headquarters of the Family Federation of Japan in Shibuya, Tokyo. Photo: FFWPU

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