Incredibly, they claim that the harsh measures against “cults” introduced after the Abe assassination are not enough.
February 28, 2025
On February 25, 2024, the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, which has been involved for many years in anti-cult campaigns, in cooperation with the National Unification Church Victims Defense Group and the Japan Political Federation of Bar Associations, organized an event at the Japanese Parliament (Diet) aimed at supporting a series of measures against “cults.”
The materials distributed included three proposals: one for strengthening the legal system of relief for the “victims” of cults, making sure that if a religious corporation is dissolved its assets will go to the present and future “victims,” one for a “new legal framework to prevent the infringement of decision-making freedom,” and one for the “establishment of a cross-ministry organization” combating “cults.” In this article, I discuss only the latter proposal (hereinafter “the proposal” or “the document”).
The proposal notes that after the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by a man who wanted to punish him for his cooperation with the Unification Church (now called Family Federation for World Peace and Unification but still often referred to with the old name). the Japanese government filed an action for dissolving the Unification Church as a religious organization and passed new laws and guidelines on donations to religious organizations and religious education of children.
While widely criticized by international experts, including four United Nations Special Rapporteurs, for severely limiting freedom of religion or belief in Japan, even these measures according to the proposal are not enough. The document insists there is a broader “cult problem” and points as a model to the “French anti-cult law,” referencing in a footnote the About-Picard law of 2001. Written in 2023, the proposal does not consider the amendments to the About-Picard law introduced in 2024 (which in fact made it even worse). However, the proposal already includes a reference to extend measures against “cults” beyond religious groups, to “organizations that conduct political, economic, and educational seminars, psychotherapy, medical treatment, and counseling activities,” which is consistent with the recent expansion of the notion of “cultic deviances” (dérives sectaires) in France.
The document relies on discredited theories that “cults” create “mental dependency” and “mind control” (i.e., “brainwashing”). It is claimed that “not only do people suffer property damage under mind control, but they also have their professional careers interrupted, miss opportunities to receive appropriate medical care, are forced into marriages arranged by the group, and are forced to endure domestic violence in their married lives.”
“Mind control,” it is added, is a dominant factor in the life of second-generation believers born and raised in the “cults.” “Second generation religious believers are forced to believe from birth or early childhood, and are forced to endure indescribable experiences such as mental and, in some cases, economic and physical abuse (instillation of excessive fear and guilt, not being allowed to have friends or lovers or to interact with people outside the group or with society, forced to engage in missionary activities, poverty, deprivation of opportunities to attend school or work, physical violence such as corporal punishment, etc.).”
The usual hypocrisy is invoked by claiming that the proposal is not against religious liberty as it does not ask to repress movement for their teachings but for the “damage” they allegedly inflict on their “victims.” But in fact spreading the teachings themselves, both to outsiders and to the devotees’ own children, is considered as a form of “damage,” which shows that in reality the teachings are directly targeted by the proposal.
The document notes that the proposal of establishing an official “Cult Research Center” was already advanced in the past since the 1990s but “this was not realized and the damage has become apparent once again.” While in fact anti-cult groups are very active in Japan and dominated the debates in the media after the Abe assassination, the document claims that “Japan lacks organizations that can tackle this problem continuously and comprehensively.” The text admits that there are private anti-cult organizations such as the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales and the Japan Society for Cult Prevention and Recovery, but it laments that they “are supported by the unpaid volunteer activities of their members, and their manpower is limited and their permanence is not guaranteed… It is clear that there is a need for the nation to continually address this issue, rather than leaving it solely to private organizations.”
The government, the document claims, has implemented measures based on notions of consumer protections but “cult damage continues to cause severe damage to society in various ways, and is not limited to consumer damage.”
The document proposes that the government should conduct “public relations efforts specifically aimed at raising awareness and preventing cult damage. It is particularly important to raise awareness and prevent the damage caused by cults among young people, and although the number of universities working on measures against the cult problem is increasing, this is still insufficient.” Rather, the government should “consider measures to present cult damage through compulsory education and other educational opportunities, public broadcasting, etc., and to build resistance among the general public, especially young people, to solicitations that lead to cult damage.” How this can be done without severely limiting religious liberty, which includes freedom to proselytize and convert others, is not clarified.
The text askes for “support of victims,” both these who have left the “cults” and these who remain in them. The “support” that can be offered to the latter is vaguely described. One can even suspect that the document is implicitly aimed at legalizing deprogramming, although this is not explicitly stated.
In conclusion, the document asks the government to establish an inter-ministerial anti-cult agency similar to the French MIVILUDES, and to use it also to channel “financial support” to private anti-cult organizations. The late proposal is somewhat ironical, as it comes while in France there are widespread controversies and investigations on how taxpayers’ money may have been mismanaged for anti-cult and anti-extremism campaigns, including by funding events that never happened.
Of course, the problem of the Japanese document is the same that has plagued the MIVILUDES and lead to international criticism against the French agency: the vagueness of the definition of a “cult,” which France has tried to elude by switching from “secte” (cult) to “dérives sectaires” (cultic deviances). The document claims that in France is regarded as a “cult” a group that creates “psychological or physical dependence” among its victims. Apart from problems of interpretation of the French law itself, the physical confinement of “victims” is rare among religious movements—although common in deprogramming—while the “psychological dependence” is not easier to define than the notion of “cult.” It rests on the theory of brainwashing, dismissed as pseudoscientific by both scholars and courts of law in most democratic countries since the past century.
Ultimately, the argument becomes circular. We know that a group uses “brainwashing” because it is a “cult.” And we know that the group is a “cult” because it uses “brainwashing.” There is no clear line of demarcation between the “psychological dependence” created by groups labelled as “cults” and by mainline religions, psychologists, political organizations, and even anti-cult groups. It is alleged that in “cults” parents create “psychological dependence” among their children, the second-generation members. But in fact the family in itself, whatever its beliefs, creates some sort of “psychological dependence” of children towards their parents, and even of spouses towards each other.
The system the proposal wants to create in Japan is based on the typical anti-cult logic that is already at work in France: the groups that create “psychological dependence” and use “brainwashing” are those labeled as “cults.” And “cults” are the groups labeled as such, for whatever reason, by the private anti-cult organization that have their own cultural and political agendas. The proposal asks the government to accept the theories and black lists of these organizations as gospel, spread them through a state-sponsored propaganda that will fuel discrimination, and support the anti-cult movements with the Japanese taxpayers’ money.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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