Kirk here with more on the influence of Unification Church (the Moonies) in Kumamoto – my “Kumamoon” series.
The other day I posted about the Japanese version of the English-language article I’m introducing today:
This English-language article starts as follows:
— start quote — An organization related to the Unification Church has been behind various pushes from Kumamoto Prefecture for a “family education” law that critics say would allow government interference for the “good of the nation.” Kumamoto is the prefecture with the most assemblies that have passed and submitted such opinion papers to the Diet calling for a law to support family education. — end quote —
So, now it’s in black and white, published in English by a reputable Japanese newspaper. If you read this page regularly, you may be aware that I’ve been writing about the “family education” ordinance for some time and wondering why the media, particularly the local media, was virtually silent on the issue. The Kumanichi is still relatively quiet. I’ll post about that later but I searched their database and could not find any articles that even came close to focusing on this issue as the Asahi paper has done.
One point that I neglected to mention in my previous post about the Japanese article is that there have been some voices of dissent along the way. The following quote is about the objection of a member Ashikita’s legislature to the passage of a resolution calling for the establishment of a national “family education” law:
— start quote — Minutes show that a Japanese Communist Party member raised objections because of the danger that a sense of values convenient to the central government would be forced on families in the name of family support. — end quote —
Conversely, here’s an example of a politician lying through his teeth:
— start quote — The former head of the prefectural board of education said he left the submittal of the requests to local assemblies entirely up to the secretary-general. He added that Kumamoto Pure Forum had absolutely no ties to the Unification Church. — end quote —
OK. This makes me angry. I’m going to out this guy. His name is 田中力男 (TANAKA Rikio). As the quote says, he is the former head of the prefectural board of education. You can see his connections to the not-so “pure” forum here: https://web.archive.org/web/20220816022731mp_/https://pure-22jimdosite.com/会社概要/
This page is from the “WayBack” archive. It’s necessary to point to this because the Moonies have been trying to cover their tracks. There is some interesting stuff on this page about getting rid of “dangerous” books (有害図書撤去) and the “problems” of “LGBT” and same-sex marriage, but I’ll leave those aside for now. Tanaka is quoted as saying that the group had “absolutely no ties to the Unification Church.” Yah, right. His partner is listed on the page as 稲富安信 (Yasunobu Inatomi). I’ll refrain from linking directly to his Facebook page but you can find it easily enough. I’m not “friends” with him but I can read his public comments. Here’s one: “神様やご先祖様に、霊界を尊重する信教の自由が差別され無視され排除されようとする社会にいつの間にか日本社会は変貌してしまいました。” He’s complaining about how the world has suddenly turned against the Moonies and are discriminating against them. His public posts are filled with comments like this. He was the head of the Moonie-related anti-Communist group “国際勝共連合,” as this Tweet from Suzuki Eito, a leading anti-Moonie journalist, illustrates: https://twitter.com/cult_and_fraud/status/973841786446770177
So, even the Asahi seems to be quite timid about challenging the lies of well-connected politicians like Tanaka. Even though I applaud the Asahi’s journalism, the decision not to name Tanaka and Inatomi for actions and comments that should be part of the public record mystifies me. https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14739369
