The man who killed former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, Tetsuya Yamagami, vented his anger against the political leader because Abe participated in a Unified Church-related event last September. Abe was not a member of the church but his own family – his father and grandfather – and other leaders of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) have connections with it. Church volunteers campaigned for Abe and others in the LDP in the elections.

The connection has hurt the popularity ratings of Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. According to a weekend survey done by Mainichi Shumbin daily, Kishida’s ratings fell from 52 per cent to 36 per cent. And 87 per cent of those surveyed also felt that the connection between the LDP and the Unified Church was a problem, ranging between “extreme problem” to “somewhat of a problem.” Kishida reshuffled his cabinet dropping members with connections with the church but that did not seem to please the people either.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said in a press conference, “Regarding the issues related to the Unified Church, we should pay enough attention to relationships with organisations that are socially criticized, so people won’t have concerns.” People are also dissatisfied with Kishida’s handling of Covid-19. The prime minister is stuck by the virus and the cabinet secretary said that Kishida will be working from home till August 30.

The LDP-Unified Church link is intriguing because the church is a South Korean organization and it is a stern critic of the Japanese control of Korea from 1910 to 1945. But it seems to be the case that its anti-communist stance is what gave it a footing in Japan.

Many Japanese youngsters joined the church in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War and playing upon the guilt complex of the young Japanese over the excesses committed by Japan in Korea, most Japanese donated hugely to the church. Abe’s assassin’s mother is supposed to have donated $700,000 that bankrupted the family and that was the trigger for the assassin. But she has disowned him and she said that she continues to be with the United Church. Apparently, the original target was the widow of the founder of the Unified Church. The LDP leaders have suddenly come to realise that the Unified Church connection is a troubling one and it is necessary to cut its ties, however, tenuous. The church group seems to be unpopular because of its implicit political agenda, and not many have spoken about this. It was seen as merely a maverick religious movement, which attracted younger people with its spectacle of mass weddings.

The LDP leaders are neither members nor believers in the credo of the Unified Church but that it should have made its way into Japanese politics raises more questions than can be answered.

The LDP despite the Liberal in the name of the party has been far from liberal. It has been a conservative, centrist party which moved with the times, especially after the Second World War. But there should have been implicit links at the highest level in the LDP. Japan has been a complex society, and its politics have been quite puzzling. Despite its enormous economic and technological successes, it seems to remain caught in a time-warp at the social level.

The fatal attack on Abe by a man angry with the Unified Church is bizarre on the face of it. But sooner or later, the LDP may have to come clean about the party’s links with the Unified Church, and why in the first place a need was felt to connect with the church group which is not even Japanese in origin.