When Public Narrative Becomes State Action

How Japan’s public narrative after Abe’s assassination shaped the path from controversy to the dissolution of a minority faith

See part 2 of this two-part series: Media-Driven Hostility, Conformity, State Power

The dissolution of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (FFWPU), formerly known as the Unification Church, in Japan did not begin in a courtroom. It began in the extraordinary public and political reaction that followed the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (安倍晋三) on 8^th July 2022. In the months that followed, allegations surrounding the Family Federation were repeated with increasing intensity, often blurring the distinction between individual grievances, controversial religious practices, political associations, and evidence sufficient to justify the dissolution of a religious corporation.

See also Apartment Turned Prison: 12 Years to Break Faith

See also Escaped from 1st Confinement, But Abducted Again

See also Inside the Room Where They Tried to Break Faith

See also Trapped: 13 Breaking Faith of 1 in Locked Room

See also Lawsuit Challenges Exposure of Religious Faith

In the first part of his two-part series for Bitter Winter, Dr. Massimo Introvigne examines on 15^th September this process through a conversation between literary critic Eitaro Ogawa (小川榮太郎) and Tsutomu Nishioka (西岡 力), a scholar of Korean affairs and long-time public commentator on Japanese political and historical questions. Their discussion raises a fundamental question: What happens to religious freedom when a highly charged public narrative becomes so dominant that few institutions are willing to question its underlying assumptions?

The question is particularly important because the Japanese government’s eventual dissolution action was extraordinary in its consequences. A religious corporation was ordered to cease operating as a religious corporation not because its doctrines had been declared false or because its members had been found collectively responsible for crimes, but on the basis of alleged violations involving civil-law torts. The case therefore raises issues extending far beyond the Family Federation itself. It concerns the threshold at which allegations against a religious organization can legitimately become grounds for state dissolution.

Introvigne’s article begins with an episode recalled by Nishioka that captures what he regards as the problem. Before the Ministry of Education (MEXT) sought dissolution, it consulted a panel of religious experts, including representatives of Christian denominations. Nishioka had expected that at least one religious leader would raise a fundamental question about the limits of state power over a religious community. Instead, he recalls, no such objection was raised.

For Nishioka, this silence is significant. Religious freedom is not protected merely by constitutional language or legislation. It also depends upon people within religious communities being prepared to defend the principle when an unpopular faith becomes the target of public hostility. Once religious leaders themselves accept the prevailing assumptions about a disfavored group, the institutional safeguards surrounding religious liberty can become remarkably fragile.

The conversation between Ogawa and Nishioka places this episode within a broader discussion about the relationship between media narratives, political pressure, and factual evidence. Both men recall earlier controversies in which claims widely accepted in public discourse were subsequently challenged by documentary research. Their discussion of the so-called comfort women controversy is particularly relevant to their larger argument: allegations can acquire extraordinary influence through repetition even when important elements of the underlying evidence remain disputed or are later shown to be inaccurate.

This background also helps explain their interpretation of the events following Abe’s death.

The assassination created an intensely emotional atmosphere in Japan. The perpetrator, Tetsuya Yamagami (山上徹也), had reportedly expressed resentment toward the Family Federation because of his mother’s substantial donations to the religious organization. Abe’s previous political association with organizations connected with the Family Federation then became a major focus of public reporting and political discussion.

According to Nishioka, however, the subsequent narrative contained a fundamental distortion. His argument is not that excessive or damaging donations should never be investigated. Rather, he questions the assumption that a donation that appears irrational or excessive to an outsider is therefore necessarily involuntary. He points out that religious believers routinely make decisions that outsiders may regard as extraordinary precisely because religious conviction involves commitments that transcend ordinary material calculations.

His Christian example is deliberately provocative. A Christian may believe in the virgin birth, the resurrection, or miracles that cannot be demonstrated according to ordinary empirical standards. Such beliefs may appear unreasonable to someone outside the faith. Yet the freedom to hold religious beliefs cannot logically depend upon those beliefs first satisfying the standards of the religious or cultural majority.

The same principle applies, Nishioka argues, to religious donations. If a person voluntarily gives money to a religious organization because of sincerely held beliefs, the fact that another person regards the donation as irrational does not by itself establish that the donor lacked freedom of choice. The crucial questions are therefore factual ones: Was coercion used? Was deception involved? Was a particular transaction unlawful? And what evidence establishes that conclusion?

These questions became increasingly important after Abe’s death, yet public discussion often moved in a different direction. The personal actions of individual donors, the Family Federation‘s teachings and fundraising practices, its political connections, and the conduct of particular former members or representatives increasingly became intertwined in public discourse. The danger, from the perspective presented by Introvigne and his interlocutors, is that such a process can transform legitimate scrutiny of particular conduct into a generalized judgment about an entire religious organization.

The result was a striking reversal of the normal presumption surrounding religious liberty. Instead of asking whether the state had demonstrated grounds sufficiently serious to justify dissolving a religious corporation, the public debate increasingly appeared to ask why the faith organization should not be dissolved.

That distinction matters. A religious minority does not need to be popular, conventional, or even widely understood in order to possess freedom of religion. Nor does religious liberty require society to approve of a group’s theology or every action of its members. It requires that restrictions on religious organizations be based on demonstrable legal grounds and proportionate evidence rather than on public hostility, guilt by association, or assumptions that unconventional religious belief is inherently suspect.

Introvigne’s account of the Ogawa-Nishioka dialogue therefore serves as more than a retrospective discussion of the Family Federation case. It is an examination of how a society can move, step by step, from a shocking crime to scrutiny of a controversial religious organization, and from legitimate scrutiny to a state measure with potentially far-reaching implications for religious freedom.

The central issue is not whether every allegation against the Family Federation should be dismissed. It is whether allegations should be tested with the same evidentiary discipline regardless of how unpopular the religious organization has become. For Ogawa and Nishioka, the lesson of the post-Abe period is precisely that the protection of freedom of religion is most consequential when it is extended to a minority whose beliefs and practices many people find difficult to understand or accept.

See part 2 of this two-part series: Media-Driven Hostility, Conformity, State Power

See also Apartment Turned Prison: 12 Years to Break Faith

See also Escaped from 1st Confinement, But Abducted Again

See also Inside the Room Where They Tried to Break Faith

See also Trapped: 13 Breaking Faith of 1 in Locked Room

See also States Weaponizing the Law in War on Faiths

See also Lawsuit Challenges Exposure of Religious Faith

Text: Knut Holdhus, editor

Featured image above: From the conversation between literary critic Eitaro Ogawa (小川榮太郎) and Tsutomu Nishioka (西岡 力), a scholar of Korean affairs and long-time public commentator on Japanese political and historical questions. Photo: Bitter Winter

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