Japan Press Weekly

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2022 November 2 - 8 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Koike: Probe deeper into Abe family's half-century-long tie with Moon cult

Japanese Communist Party Secretariat Head Koike Akira at a press conference in the Diet building on November 7 demanded a thorough probe into the Abe family's links to the Unification Church, following a Mainichi Shimbun scoop which revealed that the Moonies founder had instructed his believers to forge closer links with the Japanese ruling party and pro-Abe Japanese parliamentarians.

The Mainichi Shimbun of the same date reported that it learned through a 615 volume collection of Sermons of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church (currently the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification), that Moon in 1989 told his believers to strengthen relationships with the Liberal Democratic Party and with Japanese lawmakers centering on those who are in the Abe faction.

Koike said, "The Abe family had been a center of the LDP for half a century over three generations - Kishi Nobusuke, Abe Shintaro, and Abe Shinzo. The record of Moon's discourses confirms that the family had close ties with Moon himself directly, which means that Japan's political powerholders had long been very involved with the Moon cult."

Koike added, "The government shouldn't leave the issue of Moonies-LDP connections to individual politicians. It should fulfill its responsibility for unraveling the whole truth behind the corrupt relation between the government in power and the cult."

So far, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio has refused to conduct an investigation into former PM Abe's connection with the Moonies on the grounds that Abe is dead.