Photo/Illutration A building in Tokyo’s Shibuya Ward houses the offices of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, formerly known as the Unification Church. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

If a dog walks, it will hit a stick, as a Japanese proverb goes, meaning bad things may happen unexpectedly. 

It was common for university students in the 1980s to be accosted on campus by members of the Collegiate Association for the Research of Principles, a student organization affiliated with the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, more broadly known as the Unification Church.

I once accepted their canvassing and went to an apartment where they were based.

As I recall, I was told about their unique worldview involving Satan or something, although I remember few details of their accounts.

I had enough composure to take their proselytizing with a grain of salt because I had read a condemnatory magazine article about the group. But I have no idea how things might have turned out if I had not had that preliminary knowledge.

Issues regarding the Unification Church gained broad recognition from around that time through the 1990s, including its so-called “spiritual sales” tactics, which are about intimidating or scaring followers and others into buying expensive items, and its mass wedding ceremonies.

The group’s motivation for seeking to rename itself to avert the unsavory reputation it had gained is easily understandable.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs stopped the church from such an attempt in 1997 on the grounds that a renaming would allow the group to conceal its identity, according to the accounts a senior agency official from the time recently gave.

It has yet to be seen what judgments Cabinet members and bureaucrats made when the church finally gained approval in 2015 to rename itself the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification. The name change, at any rate, clearly came at a cost.

Some of the Upper House members who came to the Diet building to attend a session on Aug. 3 for the first time after they were elected to the chamber in July were asked about their ties to the religious group, with TV microphones thrust before them.

“I didn’t think it was previously the Unification Church,” one of them said. “I had been told the religious group places great value on the family.”

It remains anybody’s guess if he fell completely for the trick of the new name or if he is just pretending to have.

Politicians crave votes and election campaign workers. The church craved endorsements from politicians, which served as credentials. Perhaps the interests of both parties coincided, at the cost of the religious group continuing to victimize people.

Despite the serious nature of the problem, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has not even shown the slightest sign of opening fact-finding efforts on the issue.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 5

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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