Head of Japan's Unification Church vows to fight loss of legal protections

By Irene Wang and Rocky Swift

TOKYO (Reuters) - The head of the Unification Church's Japan branch vowed to fight a court order revoking its legal protections, following a scandal over fundraising practices and links to the assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe.

Tomihiro Tanaka, the Japanese president of the group now known as the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, told reporters on Thursday the group had settled all cases of damages levelled against it and the court's order was an attack on religious freedom.

"As a righteous, democratic nation and a nation governed by the rule of law, we will fight to the end for the right decision to be made," Tanaka said at a briefing in Tokyo.

The Tokyo District Court's dissolution order on the Unification Church on Tuesday was widely expected and came at the government's request after an investigation into the church for its alleged practice of seeking excessive donations from parishioners. 

The order revokes the group's tax exemptions and opens it up to greater financial scrutiny and potential lawsuits.

The organisation came under a spotlight after Abe was gunned down in July 2022 by a man angry at the former prime minister's alleged links to the church.

Subsequent revelations that 179 ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lawmakers had dealings with the church triggered a slump in public support, undermining then prime minister Fumio Kishida, who resigned last year.

The church, founded by Sun Myung Moon in Seoul in 1954, has wielded political power and courted controversy in South Korea, Japan, and the United States for decades.

Moon, an anti-communist and self-declared messiah who died at age 92 in 2012, was acquainted with Abe's grandfather, former prime minister Nobusuke Kishi.

The organisation he founded runs the conservative Washington Times newspaper and has traditionally been a supporter of Republican politicians in the U.S.

The Japanese arm of the group has argued that receiving donations is part of its religious activities and that it has ceased misleading recruitment tactics. It claims to have about 100,000 members in Japan.

This marks the third time a Japanese court has acted to dissolve a religious corporation due to legal breaches, according to public broadcaster NHK. The first two involved Aum Shinrikyo, a cult that carried out a fatal sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway 30 years ago, and a temple group involved in fraud, NHK said.

(Reporting by Rocky Swift and Tim Kelly; Editing by Michael Perry)