Kirk here with another report on how deeply the Unification Church managed to integrate itself into the Kumamoto’s public life. Today’s topic is the Peace Road initiative. First of all, what’s this “peace road” thing about, anyway? In English, the Moonies have explained it for us on the UPF (Universal Peace Federation) website:
“The Peace Road and the World Peace Road Foundation are global goodwill projects of the Universal Peace Federation. The project dates back to 1981, when the late Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon proposed an international highway that will physically connect all people of the world.”
Further down on the page, we find the following explanation:
“The vision of the Peace Road Initiative goes beyond the materialistic desire for the economic and political benefits of an international road, and champions the spiritual dimension, which aims to tear down the walls that have historically divided us – racism and cultural differences, prejudice and fear – and bring humankind together as one family under God.”
Still further down on the page, we can read about how this idea of unifying humankind under God is connected to the Japan-Korea tunnel project:
—- start quote —- 1981: UPF founders Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon and Rev. Dr. Hak Ja Han Moon suggested the construction of a highway between Korea and Japan, two former enemy nations, at an international science conference in Seoul. 2005: At the UPF Inauguration, the founders began advocating for the building of a “Peace Tunnel” across the Bering Strait, to connect North America and Asia. Rev. Sun Myung Moon made the following statement: “This tunnel can help make the world a single community at last…Think of how much money the world is wasting on war. The time has come for nations to work together, pool their resources and, as the prophet Isaiah taught, beat our swords into plowshares and pruning hooks.” —- end quote —-
https://www.upf.org/programs/peaceroad
Amazingly, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kumamoto City, the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun (Kumanich), RKK (Radio and TV network), and other notables supported Peace Road projects in Kumamoto until the house of cards came tumbling down with murder of Shinzo Abe.
The image I’m attaching to this post is from the following tweat:
https://twitter.com/HON5437/status/1551789258800656384
It lists the prefecture and the city and all of the other entities that blithely sponsored the Moonie project.
Now, the English page I quote above spells out the connection between Sun Myung Moon’s organization and the project quite clearly but one might wonder if this wasn’t harder to find out about if one only searched in Japanese. Not so. Here’s a URL put out by “Peace Road in Japan” that spells it all out in Japanese:
https://www.peaceroad.jp/history
And here’s the address of an Asahi Shimbun article about the recent discovery of the issue:
https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASQ8271VMQ82TIPE00N.html
I think that two things are worth noting. First that it was members of the Communist Party in the prefectural assembly that formally asked the prefecture to withdraw its support. I think that this may be important because the Communitist Party is the traditional enemy of the Moonies while the LDP has been in bed with them. So, the Communist Party making the first move fits with that.
Second, the prefecture (and presumably everyone else who sponsored this event) claimed not to have “noticed” the Moonie connection （“気づかなかった”）. To be fair, I hadn’t noticed either. Then again, I hadn’t been asked to come on board as a sponsor. On the other hand, some people DID come to my house a long time ago asking me to contribute to some project that seemed worthwhile on the surface. As I wrote over a month ago, that prompted me to Google the group and doing so soon let me know that they were Moonies:
So, why no due diligence? Not sure.
But the problem of our paper of record, the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun (Kumanichi), sticking its head in the sand is ongoing in that, at this writing, it has not yet reported the connection between the tunnel project and the Peace Road cycling event or made a full assessment of its Moonie-related culpability. In other words, it seems to be trying to let President Nakayama of Sojo University be the fall guy for the tunnel embarrassment and avoid connecting the dots in regard to how it, as our local watchdog of democracy, became a lapdog of the Moonies.
One final point: The idea that “all these respectable organizations are on board so it must be OK” is exactly the problem. I think we can assume that coming on board with Moonie projects lended respectability to the organization and further enabled recruitment and the sort of financial abuse that ultimately led to Abe’s murder.