I’m not sure if Kumamoto is unusual, but it seems to have at least its share of nuts and kooks. The most famous case is Asahara Shoko, whose cult committed Japan’s most infamous domestic terrorism attacks. Then there was the case of the “13-year-old girl [who] was suffocated by her father and a monk who were trying to expel an ’evil spirit’”:
That one struck quite close to home for me. The family’s home was quite near ours and I had met the little girl in happier times.
Now this. :(
– Kirk
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The LDP branch received the donation from a woman who heads a religious corporation based in Kumamoto Prefecture on Oct. 17, 2017, according to a 2017 political funding report of the LDP’s branch in the Tokyo No. 11 constituency released by the metropolitan election administration commission on Nov. 21.
The Nagoya District Court ordered the religious body and its head in April 2012 to pay approximately 6.1 million yen in compensation to a woman for having the plaintiff pay a massive amount of money to the organization by telling her that she was possessed by the spirit of a miscarried or aborted fetus and fueling her concerns. The ruling pointed out that the practice was antisocial and illegal."
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https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20181122/p2a/00m/0na/011000c
