As the Japanese government continued to dig deeper into Tetsuya Yamagami's intention to shoot Shinzo Abe, they learned that the Unification Church might have influenced politics in Japan.
According to the letter sent by Yamagami to an anti-church blogger, Abe was supposedly one of the most influential supporters of the Unification Church. Yamagami also blamed Abe's grandfather, a postwar minister of Japan, for accepting the church into Japan in the 1960s. However, there is no evidence that Abe was a part of the church.
Although most Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers admit to having ties with conservative Shintoism, many appear to be wary regarding admitting their associations with the Unification Church. The reluctance to admit to associations with the Unification Church may be because of the church's history of not paying back money from donators. In addition, the church has been accused of convincing people to buy expensive items using "bad karma" from one's ancestors to get them to pay for them.
After Abe's death, a former chairman of the Unification Church claims that Abe's grandfather had a close relationship with the church's founder Sun Myung Moon.
North Carolina State University's Levi McLaughlin said, "Religious organizations of all kinds have deep and sustained ties with politicians of every stripe, by the way, not just the LDP and Komeito, but even the Communist Party. Much of it is quite benign. But it's a blurry line between what we might call religious and other engagements that are ideologically driven."
Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi had admitted to receiving help from the church's members during elections.
We await further news.
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