Photo/Illutration Hiroyuki Hosoda, left, Lower House speaker, attends a meeting with members of the Lower House’s Steering Committee at the speaker’s official residence on Jan. 24. (Takuya Isayama)

Lower House Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda on Jan. 24 denied allocating votes of Unification Church followers for the faction he previously headed in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in national election, despite reported ties between the two. 

"There was no such thing," he said, according to Lower House lawmakers.

Hosoda met for about an hour in a closed-door session with Shunichi Yamaguchi, the chairman of the lower chamber’s Steering Committee.

In addition, representatives of the ruling coalition and four opposition parties, including the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and Nippon Ishin, were present.

The speaker responded to questions that were submitted by the parties in advance.

Hosoda headed the Abe faction, the largest in the LDP, from 2014 to 2021, before he became the Lower House speaker in 2021. The Abe faction is thought to have the deepest connections with the church among all the LDP factions.

The questions included whether policy measures were influenced at the request of the church, now called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and whether he coordinated allotting followers’ votes to boost the chances of LDP candidates.

Another question was about his remarks in a video of a gathering of a Unification Church-linked group where Hak Ja Han, president of the church, attended in Japan in 2019.

In the video, which was posted on social media, Hosoda said, “I will immediately report to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe about the contents of this gathering.”

The video had been viewable at a website run by the church for some time before it was taken down.

On his comment in the video, Hosoda said, “I said something like that as paying lip service. But I did not report (to Abe) afterward.”

Reporters were allowed to attend only the first 90 seconds of the Jan. 24 session.

Prior to the meeting, Hosoda admitted through prepared statements that he had attended eight meetings of church-related groups and sent congratulatory messages to three gatherings of such groups.

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