Politics Fueled Japan’s Attack on Federation

The political genesis of Japan’s attack on religious minority can be traced to extreme leftwing group with clear links to Communist and pro-China factions

Dr. Massimo Introvigne penned an article published in Bitter Winter, the leading online magazine for human rights and religious freedom, on 21^st October 2025, titled “Attorney Masaki Kito’s NHK Party Accusations Reignite Debate Over Japan’s Anti-Family Federation Campaign”.

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The Italian scholar basically argues that Japan’s campaign against the Family Federation cannot be divorced from its political origins. Hostile activist attorney Masaki Kito’s recent revival of accusations is simply a continuation of an old ideological battle. The controversy, therefore, offers a test case for how democratic societies balance religious liberty, historical truth, and political partisanship – and whether Japan can confront its own history of politically driven “anti-cult” crusades.

Introvigne reports how Japan in recent weeks has seen a renewed flash-point in the debate surrounding the campaign against the religious movement formerly known as the Unification Church – since 2015, called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

Attorney Masaki Kito (紀藤正樹) – known for his activism against new religious movements – publicly accused the small political party called the NHK Party of having close organizational ties with the Family Federation, and in turn implicated the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in continuing such connections.

Kito’s point is that the LDP may claim to have severed its links with the Family Federation in the aftermath of the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzō Abe (安倍晋三), yet its alliance with the NHK Party betrays that promise.

On the other side, the NHK Party and former Diet member Satoshi Hamada (浜田聡) – who has publicly criticized anti‐religious-liberty measures directed at the Family Federation – responded forcefully on social media, denying Kito’s claim and defending their independence. Kito in turn charged Hamada with being “so easily deceived by the Family Federation’s organisational propaganda,” and recalled that, back in the 1980s, some 300 lawyers purportedly from across Japan joined what he called “a bipartisan effort” to defend “victims” of what Kito termed “spiritual sales” by the Family Federation.

Yet Dr. Introvigne highlights a challenge to this commonly accepted narrative. Drawing on investigative work by journalist Masumi Fukuda (福田ますみ), the article argues that the campaign against the Family Federation was not simply a neutral consumer-protection initiative supported across the political spectrum. Rather, it is shown to have had strong political roots in left-wing and pro-China networks. According to Fukuda’s findings, the original “National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales” emerged not as a bipartisan victims’ group but from within the Socialist Party’s Social, Cultural and Legal Center – which had historical links to Communist and pro-China factions.

Indeed, the Church’s support via its own affiliate, the International Federation for Victory Over Communism (IFVOC), for electoral conservative forces and for anti-espionage legislation had drawn the ire of these left-wing networks.

According to the Bitter Winter article, internal documents uncovered by Fukuda include a 1987 piece in the Center’s newsletter in which attorney Hiroshi Yamaguchi (山口広) asserted that money raised through “spiritual sales” by the Unification Church funded IFVOC’s push for a national anti-spy law.

Two weeks later, Yamaguchi, alongside attorneys Kazuo Ito (伊藤和夫) and Yasushi Higashizawa (東澤靖), held a press conference launching the “Lawyers’ Network for Relief of Damages Caused by Spiritual Sales” (a precursor to the later National Network).

Notably, some of these attorneys were affiliated with explicitly left‐wing organisations. Although Yamaguchi told mainstream media that the network simply wanted to “help victims”, in a Socialist-Party newspaper he admitted the goal was to persuade the Ministry of Education (MEXT) to revoke the Family Federation’s religious-corporation status.

Masumi Fukuda’s research concludes that the campaign’s framing as consumer protection was a veneer: the deeper strategic objective was to dismantle the Family Federation because of its anti-Communist stance and its capacity to mobilize electorally for conservative causes. The lawyers’ network also benefitted from lawsuits initiated by de‐programmed former members – some of whom had been subject to forced de-conversion tactics – a factor that further tied the network of lawyers to politically‐driven litigation.

Against this backdrop, Kito’s recent claims – though framed as exposing unethical alliances – are interpreted by Introvigne as perpetuating a sanitized and simplified version of history. By portraying the campaign against the Family Federation as well‐meaning and apolitical, they obscure the ideological and Cold-War-era conflicts that underpinned it. In attacking the NHK Party and Hamada, Kito is seen to be using typical “anti-cult” rhetoric to mask a continuation of left‐wing ideological contestation rather than addressing the broader question of religious freedom, political bias and historical transparency in Japan.

In short, the article argues, the current controversy not only casts doubt on the credibility of Kito’s allegations, but reopens the need for a more honest, historically informed discussion about how strategies against new religious movements in Japan have been influenced by political motives.

See also Dissolution: Members’ Voices Ignored by Courts

See also Japan: Establishing A New Compensation Committee

See also Press Release: Final Submission to Appeal Court

See also Long-Running Donation Claims Settled in Japan

See also The Marxist Transformation of Higher Education

See also Defector: US Campus Culture Reminds Me of NKorea

See also Buddhist head: “Donations as Spiritual Training”

See also Unlikely Alliances in Defense of Mother Han (82)

See also Ideological War: Trump Targets Cultural Marxism

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: Satoshi Hamada speaking on his X channel on 24th October. Screenshot slightly edited by ChatGPT.

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