Latest

Related Posts

Abe murder suspect says life destroyed by mother’s religion

The brazen assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a handmade gun shocked a nation unused to high-profile political violence. But there has been another surprise in the weeks since the murder as details have emerged about an alleged assassin who was well-off until his mother’s huge donations to the controversial Unification Church […]

- Advertisement -

The brazen assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe with a handmade gun shocked a nation unused to high-profile political violence.

- Advertisement -

But there has been another surprise in the weeks since the murder as details have emerged about an alleged assassin who was well-off until his mother’s huge donations to the controversial Unification Church left him poor, neglected and filled with rage.

Some Japanese have expressed understanding, even sympathy, for the 41-year-old suspect, especially those of a similar age who may feel pangs of recognition linked to their own suffering during three decades of economic malaise and social turmoil.

There have been suggestions on social media that care packages should be sent to suspect Tetsuya Yamagami’s detention center to cheer him up. And more than 7,000 people have signed a petition requesting prosecutorial leniency for Yamagami, who told police that he killed Abe, one of Japan’s most powerful and divisive politicians, because of his ties to an unnamed religious group widely believed to be the Unification Church. Experts say the case has also illuminated the plight of thousands of other children of church adherents who have faced abuse and neglect.

“If he hadn’t allegedly committed the crime, Mr. Yamagami would deserve much sympathy. There are many others who also suffer” because of their parents’ faith, said Kimiaki Nishida, a Rissho University psychology professor and expert in cult studies.

There also have been serious political implications for Japan’s governing party, which has kept cozy ties with the church despite controversies and a string of legal disputes. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s popularity has plunged since the killing, and he has shuffled his Cabinet to purge members with ties to the religious group. On Thursday, the national police agency chief submitted his resignation to take responsibility over Abe’s assassination.

Yamagami, who is being detained for mental evaluation until late November, has previously expressed on social media a hatred for the Unification Church, which was founded in South Korea in 1954 and has, since the 1980s, faced accusations of devious recruitment practices and brainwashing of adherents into making huge donations.

In a letter seen by The Associated Press and tweets believed to be his, Yamagami said his family and life were destroyed by the church because of his mother’s huge donations. Police confirmed that a draft of Yamagami’s letter was found in a computer confiscated from his one-room apartment.

“After my mother joined the church (in the 1990s), my entire teenage years were gone, with some 100 million yen ($735,000) wasted,” he wrote in the typed letter, which he sent to a blogger in western Japan the day before he allegedly assassinated Abe during a campaign speech on July 8 in Nara, western Japan. “It’s not an exaggeration to say my experience during that time has kept distorting my entire life.” Yamagami was four when his father, an executive of a company founded by the suspect’s grandfather, killed himself. After his mother joined the Unification Church, she began making big donations that bankrupted the family and shattered Yamagami’s hope of going to college. His brother later committed suicide. After a three-year stint in the navy, Yamagami was most recently a factory worker.

Yamagami’s uncle, in media interviews, said Yamagami’s mother donated 60 million yen ($440,000) within months of joining the church. When her father died in the late 1990s, she sold company property worth 40 million yen ($293,000), bankrupting the family in 2002. The uncle said he had to stop giving money for food and school to the Yamagami children because the mother gave it to the church, not her children.

When Yamagami tried to kill himself in 2005, his mother did not return from a trip to South Korea, where the church was founded, his uncle said.

Yamagami’s mother reportedly told prosecutors that she was sorry for troubling the church over her son’s alleged crime. His uncle said she seemed devastated but remained a church follower. The authorities and the local bar association refused to comment. Repeated attempts to contact Yamagami, his mother, his uncle and their lawyers were unsuccessful. Beginning in October 2019, Yamagami, who is widely reported to have tweeted under the name “Silent Hill 333,” wrote about the church, his painful past and political issues.

In December 2019, he tweeted that his grandfather blamed Yamagami’s mother for the family’s troubles and even tried to kill her. ”What’s most hopeless is that my grandfather was right. But I wanted to believe my mother.” Part of the reason Yamagami’s case has struck a chord is because he’s a member of what the Japanese media have called a “lost generation” that’s been stuck with low-paying contract jobs. He graduated from high school in 1999 during “the employment ice age” that followed the implosion of the country’s 1980s bubble economy. Despite being the world’s third largest economy, Japan has faced three decades of economic turmoil and social disparity, and many of those who grew up in these years are unmarried and are stuck with unstable jobs and feelings of isolation and unease.

Some high-profile crimes in recent years, such as mass killings in Tokyo’s Akihabara electronics district in 2008 and a fatal arson attack on Kyoto Animation in 2016, reportedly involved “lost generation” attackers with troubled family and work histories. Yamagami’s case also has shed light on the children of Unification Church adherents. Many are neglected, experts say, and there’s been little help because government and school officials tend to resist interference on religious freedom grounds.

“If our society had paid more attention to the problems over the past few decades, (Yamagami’s) attack could have been prevented,” said Mafumi Usui, a Niigata Seiryo University social psychology professor and cult expert.

More than 55,000 people have joined a petition calling for legal protection for “second generation” followers who say they were forced to join the church.

Abe, in a September 2021 video message, praised the church’s work for peace on the Korean Peninsula and its focus on family values. His video appearance possibly motivated Yamagami, said Nishida, the psychology professor. Yamagami reportedly told police he had planned to kill the church founder’s wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, who has led the church since Moon’s 2012 death, but switched targets because it was unlikely she’d visit Japan during the pandemic. “Though I feel bitter, Abe is not my true enemy. He is only one of the Unification Church’s most influential sympathizers,” Yamagami wrote in his letter. “I’ve already lost the mental space to think about political meanings or the consequences Abe’s death will bring.” The case has drawn attention to ties between the church, which came to Japan in 1964, and the governing Liberal Democratic Party that has almost uninterruptedly ruled post World War II Japan. A governing lawmaker, Shigeharu Aoyama, last month said a party faction leader told him how church votes could help candidates that lack organizational backing. Tomihiro Tanaka, head of the church’s Japan branch, denied “political interference” with any particular party, but said the church has developed closer ties with governing party lawmakers than with others because of their shared anti-communist stance.

Members of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales, which for decades has provided legal assistance for people with financial disputes with the church, say they’ve received 34,000 complaints involving lost money exceeding a total of 120 billion yen ($900 million).

Tanaka accused the lawyers and the media of “persecuting” church followers.

A former adherent in her 40s said at a recent news conference that she and two sisters were forced to join the church when she was in high school after their mother became a follower.

After two failed marriages arranged by the church, she said she awoke from “mind-control” and returned to Japan in 2013. As a second-generation victim “who had my life destroyed by the church, I can understand (Yamagami’s) pain, though what he did was wrong,” she said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Popular Articles

We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. View more
Cookies settings
Accept
Privacy & Cookie policy
Privacy & Cookies policy
Cookie name Active
PRIVACY POLICY
  1. General
  • (1.1.) Eduvast (“Eduvast”, “We”, “Our”, “Us”) is committed to the protection of personal information provided by the users (“You”,“Your”,“User”) to Eduvast. You agree that Your use of Eduvast implies Your consent to the collection, retention and use of Your personal information in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy (“Privacy Policy”).
  • (1.2.) We take the privacy of our Users seriously. We are committed to safeguarding the privacy of Users while providing personalized and valuable service.
  • (1.3.) While We do Our best to protect Your information, particularly with respect to the protection of Your personal data, Eduvast cannot ensure the security of Your data transmitted via the internet, telephone or any other networks.
  • (1.4.) Access to the contents available  is conditional upon Your acceptance of this Privacy Policy which should be read together with the End User License Agreement“EULA”.
  • (1.5.) If You do not agree to any of the provisions of this Privacy Policy or EULA, You should not download, install and use the App. We may revise, alter, add, amend or modify this Privacy Policy at any time by updating this privacy policy. By downloading, installing and/or using this App, You agree to be bound by any such alteration, amendment, addition or modification.
2. Information Collected Non Personal Information
  • (2.1.) We may collect non-personal information about You whenever You access or interact with Our Website or any of the related services. This includes but not limited to browser name, version, server location, device specific information such as the type of device used, users’ operating system and version, your mobile devices unique device ID, third party apps or App or service that referred users to App, language preference, means of connection to App, internet service providers, IP address, technical information, google advertising ID (GAID), IDFA, GAID Opt-out Status, location information, interaction of Your device with the App and applications, details of Your device including without limitation its manufacturer details, height and width of your device screen, model, version, UDID or IMEI Number and other similar information about You(collectively "Traffic Data”). Personal Information
  • (2.2.) 2.2. We may collect personal information that identifies You in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to the information submitted during download and installation of the App or in connection with registration for other activities or features offered through the App. Personally identifiable information collected may include name, mailing address, email address, phone number and demographic information such as gender, nationality, postcode and other personal information including but not limited to date, time or place of birth ("Personal Information"). If You communicate with Us by, for example, e-mail or letter, any information provided in such communication may be collected by Eduvast.
  • (2.3.) Our website may transmit your Personal Information to our internal servers. This Personal Information is immediately deleted once you delete the App, except to the extent it is necessary to store the same under applicable laws. Further, we have implemented commercially reasonable physical, managerial, operational and technical security measures to protect the loss, misuse and alteration and to preserve the security of the Personal Information in our care.Finally, this information is used strictly in line with our business purposes.
  • (2.4.) You understand that once You leave Our servers, use of any information You provide shall be governed by the privacy policy of the operator of the site used by You.
3. Disclosure of Personal Information
    • (3.1.) We do not disclose Your Personal Information to any third parties other than as may be required by us, Eduvast’s affiliates, partners, trusted business networks, in compliance with our Privacy Policy for the purpose of moderating the content of the Website, enhancing Your user experience, providing You localised content and to enable Us and Our partners to provide You with targeted information which may be of benefit to you.
    • (3.2.) To enhance customer experience and to provide focused support, we may share generic aggregated demographic information which may include Your information collected by Us but not linked to any personally identifiable information regarding visitors and users with Our business partners, trusted affiliates and advertisers for the purposes outlined above.
    • (3.3.) At times We are required by law or litigation to disclose personal information about the users. We may also disclose information about the user if We determine that disclosure of information is necessary for national security, law enforcement, or other issues of public importance.
    • (3.4.) We use Our best efforts to use information in aggregate form (so that no individual User is identified) for the following purposes:
(3.4.1) To build up marketing profiles; (3.4.2) To aid strategic development, data collection and business analytics; (3.4.3) To manage our relationship with advertisers and partners; (3.4.4) 3.4.4. To audit usage of Our website i.e. www.www.eduvast.com (3.4.5) 3.4.5. To enhance user experience in relation to the App and Our website (collectively, “Permitted Use”).
  • (3.5.) We reserve the right to disclose Personal Information if required to do so by law or if we believe that it is necessary to do so to protect and defend the rights, property or personal safety of Eduvast, the App, or Users.
4. Cookies
  • (4.1.) Whenever You access the App We may place "cookies" on Your hard drive for record-keeping purposes to enhance Your experience or sometimes to personalize Your experience. Cookies are small text files that are placed on Your device's hard drive by the App You visit. Cookies help Us to identify information relating Your activities and to retain information relating to Your preferences and history on the App.
  • (4.2.) Ad targeting cookies: We and/or Our service providers may use advertising cookies to deliver ads that are more relevant to You and Your interests.
  • (4.3.) You may choose to disable cookies by turning off cookie feature on the web browser. However, by disabling this feature, some parts of the App may not function properly. This may prevent You from taking full advantage of the App.
5. Confidentiality
    • (5.1.) Except as otherwise provided in this Privacy Policy, We will keep Your Personal Information private and will not share it with third parties, unless We believe in good faith that disclosure of Your Personal Information or any other information We collect about You is necessary for Permitted Use or to:
(5.1.1.) Comply with a court order or other legal process; (5.1.2.) Protect the rights, property or safety of Eduvast or another party; (5.1.3.) Enforce the Agreement, including EULA; or (5.1.4.) Respond to claims that any posting or other content violates the rights of third-parties. 6. Security
  • (6.1.) The security of Your Personal Information is important to Us. We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the Personal Information submitted to Us, both during transmission and once We receive it.
  • (6.2.) Although We make best possible efforts to store Personal Information in a secure operating environment which is not open to the public, You should understand that there is no such thing as complete security, and We do not guarantee that there will be no unintended disclosures of Your Personal Information. If We become aware that Your Personal Information has been disclosed in a manner not in accordance with this Privacy Policy, We will use reasonable efforts to notify You of the nature and extent of such disclosure (to the extent We know that information) as soon as reasonably possible and as permitted by law.
7. Updates and Changes to Privacy Policy
  • We reserve the right, at any time, to add to, change, update, or modify this Privacy Policy so please review it frequently. In all cases, use of information We collect is subject to the Privacy Policy in effect at the time such information is collected. You hereby acknowledge and agree that it is Your responsibility to review this Privacy Policy periodically and become aware of the modifications. If You disagree to any of the changes to the Privacy Policy, You shall refrain from using or accessing the App. Your continued use of the App following the posting of the revised Policy shall indicate Your acceptance and acknowledgment of the changes and You will be bound by it.
8. Updates and Changes to Your Personal Information
  • You have a right to correct any errors in Your Personal Information available with Us. You may request Us in writing that We cease to use Your Personal Information.
9. Contact Us
  • You may write to us at [email protected] for any privacy concerns and requests relating to this EULA and Privacy Policy.
Save settings
Cookies settings