A ruling by a Japanese court confirms that viewing with suspicion large donations to religious organizations make hundreds of groups potential targets.by Massimo IntrovigneThe “Great Peace Tower,” a memorial for victims of all wars, erected in 1970 by PL Kyodan in Tondabayashi City, Osaka Prefecture. Credits.In July 2022, former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Japan by a man who claimed he wanted to punish him for his friendship with the Unification Church (now called Family Federation for World Peace and Unification). The assassin claimed that he hated the Unification Church because his mother, a member, went bankrupt in 2002, twenty years before the crime, allegedly for her excessive donations to the religious group.Fueled by organized anti-cult movements and lawyers, a national social panic and witch hunt about the Unification Church and “cults” followed, one of whose fruits were new laws and regulations allowing those who had made donations “beyond what is socially acceptable” to religious organizations, or their relatives, to recover them, ever after decades. The law was premised on the theory that religious movements use “brainwashing” to persuade their followers to donate. The theory of brainwashing has been rejected as pseudo-scientific by scholars and courts of law in most democratic countries since the past century.Not many religious groups in Japan criticized openly the new laws, believing they were intended mostly to “punish” the Unification Church. We at “Bitter Winter” consistently warned that the law was dangerous for all religions, considering that notions such as “confusion” and “fear” allegedly created in the donor by the organizations soliciting the donation remained vague and undefined, thus open to malicious interpretation by greedy lawyers and anti-cultists aimed at destroying religious groups they do not like. Laws cannot be retroactive, but their existence creates a climate favorable to decisions regarding any significant donation to a religious group with suspicion, with possible negative decisions also in cases when the new law is not directly enforced.On February 14, Japanese media reported that the Kochi District Court found in favor of a woman and second-generation member of Perfect Liberty Kyodan whose lawyers, clearly inspired by the Unification Church cases, had asked the religious group for the return of 9.86 million yen (Euro 62,900) of donations plus damages, for a total of 11 million yen (Euro 70,170). The judge ruled that the woman had been the victim of “anti-social” solicitations of donations, particularly because she was in a weak mental state and under the delusion of being stalked, donated “beyond what is socially acceptable,” and the donation “created financial hardship and disrupted her household finances.” As reported by the media, the ruling does not mention the new law of 2023 but appears to follow the criteria of a Supreme Court decision of 2024 against the Unification Church. The decision seems to violate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), as it imposes limitations on religious liberty based on notions of “social acceptability.” As attorney Patricia Duval demonstrated in her study of the Unification Church case, these are not part of the criteria justifying limitations of freedom of religion or belief under the ICCPR. It also asks religious organizations to ascertain whether a donation would “disrupt the household finances” of the donor before accepting the donation. However, this would require an investigation of the donor’s financial situation that a religious organization cannot conduct without violating privacy laws. In practice, what these decisions create is a prohibition against large donations in general.From left to right, Tokuharu Miki (1871–1938), Tokuchika Miki (1900–1983), and Takahito Miki (1957–2020). Source: PL Kyodan.I happen to have been among the first non-Japanese scholars to visit Perfect Liberty (PL) Kyodan, both in Japan and in Brazil, where it has a sizeable presence, in the 1980s, publishing an entry on it in my encyclopedic book in Italian “Le nuove religioni” (The New Religions) in 1989. PL Kyodan is the descendant of a long tradition of “mountain sects” and its origins can be traced back to the establishment of Tokumitsu-kyo, a sub-sect of the Shinto group Mitake-kyo, by Osaka merchant Tokumitsu Kanada in 1912. One of Kanada’s main followers was a Zen priest called Tokuharu Miki, who changed the name of the movement in 1931 in Hito-no-Michi and presided over its grow to roughly one million member. He died in 1938 and was succeeded by his son Tokuchika Miki. As happened to other religious movements that did not support the militaristic regime during the war years, Hito-no-Michi was dissolved and Tokuchika Miki was arrested. He was released in 1946 and reorganized the movement with the new name PL Kyodan. When after his death he was succeeded in 1983 by his adopted son Takahito Miki (who died in 2020), the group had some three million members, with a substantial expansion in Latin America and a presence in the United States, Canada, and elsewhere.PL Kyodan is known for its idea that “Life is Art” and all forms of genuine human self-expression create happiness through beauty. This includes sport, and PL Kyodan became also well-known for the excellency of the baseball team of its Osaka High School PL Gakuen, although the baseball program was discontinued in 2016.Donations in PL Kyodan needs to be understood through its central teachings. Creative and artistic self-expression, which also corresponds to the divine plan, requires that humans act in their daily lives with full attention and responsibility. Unfortunately, this does not always happen. In this case, humans receive from the divine world “warnings” (mishirase) through incidents, illnesses, and misfortunes. These warnings may be severe but are ultimately beneficial, as they allow humans to put their lives back in their right course. Devotees are counseled to search for the root reason of their misfortunes by seeking a “divine instruction” (mioshie), normally by writing to PL Kyodan’s headquarters. When I investigated PL Kyodan in the 1980s, I was told several stories of devotees who solved their problems by simply sending a request of “mioshie,” before even receiving an answer.However, the request should be accompanied by a prayer (oyashikiri) in front of a sacred object (omitama) and by a monetary offering (hosho) testifying the devotee’s sincerity (makoto). Offerings in specially consecrated envelopes are thus a crucial part of PL Kyodan’s path. Interfering with these donations is an egregious violation of freedom of religion or belief. It proves that, after the campaign against the Unification Church, no religion is safe in Japan. Now, they came for PL Kyodan. Who would be next?The post Japan: Then They Came for Perfect Liberty Kyodan first appeared on Bitter Winter.