The soundbites coalesced into a single narrative: “The Unification Church destroyed a household and the son struck back, assassinating the former prime minister.”
That was the story splattered across Japanese and international media in the wake of the July 2022 assassination of Shinzo Abe, former prime minister of Japan and a friend and ally to the Unification Church (UC). The mother of Tetsuya Yamagami, the man who killed Shinzo Abe, was a member.
Anti-religious elements concocted the lie. The media ran with it, whipping up the hysteria, and truth was buried as inconvenient to sensation.
That clickbait narrative—neatly packaged as a modern morality story—was used to justify an onslaught of press and legal attacks on the UC, ultimately resulting in a court order stripping it of its status as a religion in Japan.
But that narrative was a lie.
After years of distortion, sensationalism and outright falsehoods that misled the public and denied religious rights to hundreds of thousands, the truth has finally emerged—and its significance cannot be overstated.
Through painstaking research—conducting interviews, examining records, tracing the assassin’s family history, reviewing his mother’s involvement with the Church and analyzing his erratic blog posts—investigative reporter Fumihiro Kato has exposed a reality 180 degrees removed from the tabloid fiction, replacing hysteria with documented fact.
The truth doesn’t reduce neatly to a soundbite, but it is what the public deserves. And here it is: Long before the assassin’s mother encountered the Unification Church, the family was already unraveling—under alcoholism, a hot-tempered grandfather, the death of a grandmother and, most devastatingly, an eldest son whose severe illness and volatile behavior turned daily life into a crisis. The father lost his job, drank heavily and eventually took his own life in 1984, leaving the mother pregnant, emotionally shattered and alone to care for the family.
Out of fear and desperation, she turned at that time, not to the Unification Church—as media falsely portrayed—but to the Association of Practical Ethics, a nonreligious community whose members pledge compassion and gratitude. She devoted herself to that group and donated generously to it.
But when her eldest son suffered another serious illness, her distress deepened. Shortly after, she encountered and joined a branch of the Unification Church. A devout parishioner, she made large donations.
The family was never impoverished, as the media falsely claimed in a fabrication central to the “cult exploitation” narrative. In fact, they lived comfortably for years, owned a large home, and the mother was an executive in the family business.
The real crisis was internal.
The eldest son had become violent, severely injuring his mother, threatening suicide and terrorizing the household. Meanwhile, Tetsuya, the younger son, spiraled into depression, likewise became suicidal and eventually left home.
By 1997, the mother’s original congregation had dissolved, and she formally joined a different Unification Church community. The congregation’s leader, upon discovering the extent of the mother’s donations, insisted on organizing refunds—even against the mother’s wishes that the Church retain her contributions. Over time, 50 million yen (approximately $315,000) was returned to the family, demolishing media claims of coercion and financial predation.
According to Tetsuya’s own email exchanges—never reported by the media—he had reconciled himself to his mother’s involvement with the Unification Church. He even confided in a UC minister about his depression and received support. But after his brother, like his father before him, committed suicide, Tetsuya’s downward spiral intensified. He became delusional, ultimately constructing out of whole cloth a horrific, false narrative about his mother’s participation in the Church, as documented in his frenzied social media postings.
Kato’s research uncovered the above factual record of events, once and for all exposing the “cult-destroyed family” narrative as vicious fiction. What actually emerges is not a predatory organization but a church acting like a church: listening, counseling, trying to offer comfort and support to a family wracked by illness, violence and emotional collapse—even going out of their way to ensure the family was provided for.
And for those “crimes,” on March 25, 2025, the Unification Church was dissolved by a stroke of a Tokyo judge’s pen. Six hundred thousand believers—none charged with violence, none convicted of crimes—were thrown out in the spiritual cold because of a lie that the liars never even bothered to cover up, so convinced were they that “the cult did it” line would bypass any scrutiny.
Anti-religious elements concocted the lie. The media ran with it, whipping up the hysteria, and truth was buried as inconvenient to sensation.
A church perished for it.
By abandoning religious freedom in favor of suspicion and hate, Japan has shamed itself.
This dismal affair should be a wake-up call to one and all: When a society allows fear to replace facts, freedom and justice are imperiled.
Are your beliefs next?
