Photo/Illutration Prime Minister Fumio Kishida takes questions online from reporters on Aug. 24. (Koichi Ueda)

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida on Aug. 24 again denied having any relations with the Unification Church after a weekly magazine reported that one of his key supporters did.

“As I have said before, to the best of my knowledge, I myself do not have a connection to the former Unification Church,” Kishida, who has tested positive for COVID-19, told reporters in an online news conference.

An online article the Shukan Bunshun published the previous day said Mineo Nakayama, president of Sojo University in Kumamoto, used to head an organization that promoted a “Japan-Korean undersea tunnel” project with ties to the Unification Church.

Nakayama currently chairs Kishida’s support group in Kumamoto Prefecture.

Kishida said Nakayama was unaware that the organization was involved with the Unification Church, now formally known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

“I heard that (Nakayama) already quit (the organization),” Kishida said.

The magazine also reported that Kishida contributed an article to a newsletter published by an educational group that is also related to the church.

Kishida said he submitted the article because the chair of the educational group was his supporter.

“The chairperson has declared that the (educational group) is not related to the former Unification Church,” Kishida said.

In addition, Shukan Bunshun reported that politicians and others based in Kishida’s constituency of Hiroshima Prefecture have connections to the Unification Church.

Kishida said about the report, “I am not in a position to know their every activity.”

He said the magazine’s report about other people in the prefecture “was something I don’t know anything about.”

Lawmakers of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party have been distancing themselves from the Unification Church ever since its donation-collection activities came under scrutiny again following the shooting death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in July.

Kishida said he will step up LDP efforts to establish an effective system to review members’ ties with the group.

But he declined to provide details of the enhanced efforts.

Nakayama held a news conference at the university on Aug. 24 and said he had no idea that the tunnel-project organization was related to the church.

He said he took the chairman’s post at the organization in 2011, when it was established, because he was asked to do so by a former Kumamoto city assembly member.

Nakayama on Aug. 23 submitted his resignation from the position after reading the magazine’s report, he said.

He has been chairman of Kumamoto Kishida-kai, a group that supports the prime minister, since its inception in 2020.

The group solicited votes for Kishida from local LDP members when he ran in and won the party’s presidential election in September 2021.

Kishida received 6,109 votes in Kumamoto Prefecture, the most of any candidate, in the election.

Nakayama said he did not ask people related to the tunnel project to help Kishida in the presidential race.

“I understand that the former Unification Church had no influence in garnering votes,” Nakayama said.

He also said the magazine report gives the impression that Kishida has ties to the church.

“I feel sorry for that,” Nakayama said.

The project to build a more than 200-kilometer-long undersea tunnel connecting northern Kyushu and southern South Korea was proposed by Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, in 1981.

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