Supreme Court Justice with Hostile Views

Supreme Court judge in Family Federation special appeal case has ties to anti-cult camp and has been one of their keynote speakers expressing extreme anti-religious viewpoints

In a pointed and alarming article published in the Japanese digital magazine BEST T!MES on 22^nd May 2026, Professor Masaki Nakamasa (仲正 昌樹) argues that Japan’s handling of the dissolution case against the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification – formerly the Unification Church – represents a profound crisis for constitutional government, judicial neutrality, and religious liberty. The article centers on allegations concerning Supreme Court Justice Masami Okino (沖野眞已), a member of the Third Petty Bench of the Japanese Supreme Court, which is currently reviewing the Family Federation’s special appeal against the dissolution order issued by the Tokyo High Court.

See also Believers’ Last Hope for Fair Trial Crushed

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Nakamasa presents the issue not merely as a dispute over a persecuted religious organization, but as a test case for the integrity of the Japanese legal system itself. In his view, the state’s treatment of the Family Federation has moved beyond ordinary legal adjudication into something resembling ideological persecution. He argues that the central danger lies not only in the dissolution order itself, but in the emergence of legal arguments that characterize the very act of propagating religious doctrine as inherently unlawful.

The background to the controversy is the Japanese government’s effort to dissolve the Family Federation, following an extensive wave of persecution after the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三) in 2022. Activist leftwing lawyers from National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales (Zenkoku Benren) have campaigned to have the religious organization dissolved since 1987. Fundamentally, it is because of its clear anti-communist stand.

The network of lawyers and media supporting them have accused the Family Federation by using classical anti-cult concepts like “manipulative fundraising practices”, “mind-control” [See editor’s note 1 below], and “harmful forms of religious influence”. Supporters and defenders of the religious organization, however, argue that the government response has evolved into a politically driven campaign that threatens basic constitutional protections for freedom of religion.

According to Nakamasa, the current phase of the legal battle became especially alarming after revelations concerning Justice Okino. The professor writes,

“According to the motion, she attended the seminar titled ‘34th Japan Federation of Bar Associations Summer Consumer Seminar: Understanding the Reality of Spiritual Sales and Considering Relief and Prevention,’ held in July 2025, as one of the keynote speakers, where she made remarks completely condemning the Unification Church.”

In his article, Nakamasa stresses that the concern is not simply that Justice Okino attended the event. Rather, he argues that her remarks there demonstrated a substantive alignment with activist legal positions hostile to the religious organization. He focuses in particular on statements in which she reportedly argued that evangelism and religious instruction connected to the Family Federation were “fundamentally problematic acts”, extending beyond ordinary solicitation into conduct that could violate an individual’s freedom of religion or even affect the person’s entire psychological autonomy.

For Nakamasa, this formulation is extraordinarily dangerous because it reverses the conventional understanding of religious liberty. In liberal constitutional systems, religious freedom normally includes not only the right to hold beliefs privately but also the right to persuade others, preach publicly, and seek converts. By contrast, the position attributed to Okino implies that successful religious persuasion may itself constitute a form of coercion. Nakamasa interprets this as a theory under which missionary activity becomes inherently suspect whenever critics believe a religion exerts strong psychological influence.

He argues that this line of reasoning effectively collapses the distinction between persuasion and coercion. If communicating doctrine is treated as “mind control” [See editor’s note 1 below], then any intense or transformative religious experience could potentially be reclassified as a legal harm. Nakamasa warns that such a framework could justify state suppression not only of the Family Federation but of many forms of committed religious activity more broadly.

The article also highlights the role of attorney Masaki Gōro (郷路征記), described as a leading anti-Family Federation activist associated with Zenkoku Benren. Nakamasa portrays Gōro as advocating an extreme theory according to which adherence to the religious organization itself amounts to a violation of religious freedom. Nakamasa further criticizes arguments allegedly used to justify coercive faith-breaking [See editor’s note 2 below] practices, pointing out that activist attorney Gōro “argues that kidnapping and confinement intended to force believers to renounce their faith are not illegal.”

Professor Nakamasa adds more about the seminar,

“The coordinator was attorney Akihito Katsumata (勝俣彰仁), a core member of Zenkoku Benren. In substance, it was an anti-Unification Church seminar organized by Zenkoku Benren.”

Nakamasa contends that the overlap between these activist positions and Justice Okino’s seminar remarks creates an appearance of bias incompatible with judicial neutrality. He therefore supports the Family Federation’s motion seeking her recusal from the Supreme Court proceedings.

A major theme running throughout the article is the distinction between legal procedure and political passion. Nakamasa repeatedly argues that courts in a constitutional democracy must preserve impartiality, especially in cases involving unpopular groups. The legitimacy of the judiciary, he suggests, depends precisely on its willingness to uphold procedural fairness even when public opinion strongly favors punishment.

The professor spells it out clearly,

“Is entrusting deliberation in such an important case to a justice aligned with forces hostile to the appellant something a proper nation governed by the rule of law would do? Is the Supreme Court not ashamed of what it is doing? Legal professionals and legal scholars who view trials not merely as power games but as forums for pursuing fairness should be outraged by this situation.”

In this respect, he compares the current atmosphere surrounding the Family Federation to a form of modern-day “inquisition”. Referring to an earlier article he wrote criticizing the Tokyo High Court decision, Nakamasa claims that judges have gone beyond evaluating concrete unlawful acts and have instead begun evaluating the truth, value, and psychological effects of religious doctrine itself. He considers this a dramatic and dangerous expansion of judicial authority into areas protected by constitutional guarantees.

Nakamasa confronts what he sees as flagrant injustice and questions whether the Supreme Court administration knowingly assigned the appeal to a bench including one of the justices most openly hostile to the religious organization. He expresses disbelief that neither the justice herself nor the court bureaucracy recognized the appearance of partiality this situation would create. Professor Nakamasa asks,

“Did they think something like this? ‘The Unification Church side, including its lawyers, are fools and won’t notice anyway. The media are anti–Unification Church, so they won’t object no matter what methods are used to crush it. The public doesn’t think deeply about these matters, so if we say there’s no problem, they’ll easily believe us.’”

He also accuses the Japanese media of functioning as a largely one-sided anti-Family Federation force unwilling to scrutinize procedural abuses if the target is sufficiently unpopular. Public opinion, he suggests, has become emotionally conditioned to accept extraordinary legal measures against the minority faith without reflecting on the wider implications for civil liberties.

Underlying Nakamasa’s argument is a broader philosophical concern about the nature of the rule of law. In his view, a genuine legal order cannot be defined merely by the existence of courts or formal procedures. Rather, it depends on the principled application of universal standards, including equal treatment before the law and meaningful protections for unpopular minorities.

He warns that once a society accepts the idea that certain religious teachings are so dangerous that their dissemination can itself be prohibited, constitutional protections become contingent on political fashion rather than legal principle. At that point, he argues, the state no longer acts as a neutral guarantor of liberty but as an ideological actor deciding which beliefs may legitimately exist in public life.

Whether one agrees with Nakamasa’s conclusions or not, the article represents a forceful intervention in one of the most controversial legal and religious disputes in contemporary Japan. It combines constitutional argument, criticism of judicial ethics, and broader reflections on freedom of belief into a sweeping indictment of what Nakamasa sees as the politicization of the Japanese legal system.

The article therefore functions not only as a defense of the Family Federation’s procedural rights, but also as a warning about the fragility of civil liberties during periods of moral panic and political consensus. For Nakamasa, the central issue is ultimately larger than the fate of a single religious organization: it is whether Japan’s legal institutions remain committed to the liberal constitutional principles they are supposed to uphold.

See also Believers’ Last Hope for Fair Trial Crushed

See also Japan’s Treatment of Faith Headed to The Hague?

See also Was the Appointment of Hostile Judge Deliberate?

See also Flawed Reasoning of a Politician Backing Torts

See also Ruling Leaves Serious Questions on Due Process

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: Masaki Nakamasa – Born in 1963 in Kure City, Hiroshima Prefecture. Received his PhD from the University of Tokyo in 1996. Currently a professor of law at Kanazawa University specializing in the history of political thought and social philosophy. Major works include Postmodern Nihilism (Sakuhinsha) and Beyond Hegel (Kodansha). Photo: Here on 26th March 2026. Photo: Tsuyoshi Toyoda / Sekai Nippo

[Editor’s note 1: In Japan, the “mind-control” myth has been a powerful tool used to stigmatize and suppress new religious movements (NRMs), particularly since the 1980s. The concept suggests that NRMs manipulate or “brainwash” their followers, depriving them of free will and rational thought. This narrative gained traction after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyō sarin gas attack, when public fear of dangerous cults intensified. Although Aum was an extreme and violent exception, the incident cast suspicion on all NRMs, allowing critics, media, and the government to label diverse groups as manipulative or psychologically coercive.

The “mind-control” myth serves multiple social and political functions. It simplifies complex questions of belief, making it easier to portray converts as victims rather than as individuals exercising spiritual agency. This framing justifies legal and social intervention, including the coercive “deprogramming” of believers – sometimes involving confinement or psychological pressure to force renunciation of faith. Lawyers, ex-member groups, and certain media outlets have used the idea of mind control to construct NRMs as threats to family stability and national order, reinforcing social conformity and Japan’s preference for established, non-controversial religions such as Buddhism and Shinto.

In recent years, the myth resurfaced following the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose attacker cited resentment toward the Family Federation. A public outrage largely created by media reignited scrutiny of NRMs, and politicians and journalists revived “mind-control” rhetoric to explain fundraising and recruitment practices. Critics argue that this framing discourages genuine religious tolerance and critical examination of Japan’s restrictive religious climate. Overall, the “mind-control” myth functions less as a scientific or psychological concept and more as a moral panic – a cultural weapon used to delegitimize minority faiths and to reaffirm mainstream social norms about religion, obedience, and the boundaries of acceptable belief.]

[Editor’s note 2: 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.]

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