The same bullet that killed Abe Shinzo could end up wounding the Moon sect, for which the former Japanese prime minister so watched over his life, as before his father and grandfather. Under popular pressure, Tokyo has been investigating possible irregularities in its accounts since November – tiptoeing around its political connections – and even threatens its dissolution.
That deplorable assassination had the virtue of focusing on the Unification Church (its formal name). The murderer, a 41-year-old man, accused this cult of having ruined his family, by depriving his mother –widow– of the equivalent of 700,000 euros in “donations”, until he lost his house and precipitated the suicide of his wife. brother.
Abe's maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, a war criminal in Manchuria and later rehabilitated as prime minister, promoted the installation in the country of this staunchly anti-communist sect, founded by the Korean messiah Sun Myung Moon, better known as Reverend Moon.
According to papers declassified by Washington, Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and Moon's church would have in common that they received abundant funds to turn South Korea and Japan into their strongholds in Asia during the cold war.
In fact, for seventy years, the Japanese have been born, live and die with the Liberal Democratic Party at the helm of the state, with only two brief interruptions. Although the condemnation of the murder was unanimous, many citizens were against the expensive state funeral that, two months later – and with the presence of the Indian Narendra Modi or the American Kamala Harris – offered by his co-religionist Fumio Kishida, who already then He held the head of government.
Soon after, former US President Donald Trump and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo sent adulation messages to the Reverend Moon in Seoul, on the 10th anniversary of his death.
However, in Japan, each new revelation increased popular outrage and called into question the continuity of Kishida's right-wing government. An internal investigation by his Liberal Democrat Party revealed that 179 of its 379 MPs acknowledged "contacts" with the Moon sect. Among them would be the president of the Lower House and a brother of Abe, relocated after losing the Defense portfolio. Also a dozen long deputies from the center-left and many others from the center-right.
The dismantling of the Moon sect, judging by the strength of its sponsors, has little prospect of becoming a reality. In any case, he would not go beyond Japan and, even so, a name change could be enough for him to continue operating. Likewise, the collective weddings of hundreds of her followers will continue to whiten her image.
For his part, the assassin Tetsuya Yamagami, in psychiatric care, will not be tried before next year. His homemade pistol killed Abe Shinzo during a rally with a single bullet. The second.
The paradox is that two of the late Reverend Moon's 16 children have a more genuine relationship with guns. One as an American gun manufacturer and the other as the guru of a new American church whose pastors carry the Bible in one hand and an assault rifle in the other.
