The Unification Church Case in Japan: A Doctor Who Survived Deprogramming Tells His Story
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A medical professional was abducted and confined by his parents and deprogrammers. As usual, anti-cult lawyers were behind the confinement.
June 23, 2025
*A paper presented at the side event “The Eradication and Dissolution of a Religious Community of 600,000 Followers: The Case of the Unification Church in Japan,” 59th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Geneva, June 16, 2025.
My name is Hirohisa Koide. I am working as a medical doctor in Tokyo. I am a believer of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (formerly called the Unification Church) and a survivor of deprogramming. In Japan, the abduction and confinement of members of the Family Federation were supported not only by money-oriented or anti-religious activists but also by mainstream Christian pastors.
Many parents may struggle to understand their children’s words and actions when they join a new religion. Worried parents visited Christian churches seeking advice on how to deal with their adult children. The pastors of these Christian churches were generally honest and straightforward, and the atmosphere was peaceful. However, the pastors who engaged in the forceful “rescue” of believers had become extremely radical under the influence of left-wing activists. So, some churches became places where the terrible act of abduction and confinement was recommended.
Without the loving atmosphere of the Christian churches, worried parents would not have been so easily convinced to resort to abduction and confinement for their children.
Two major Christian denominations, the United Church of Christ in Japan and the Japan Alliance Church, provided firm foundations for anti-Family Federation groups.
Now, I am going to share my own experience of abduction and confinement. I developed my faith in the Family Federation as a medical student. In 1990, I began working as a physician at Isshin Hospital in Tokyo. The hospital had been created by a female doctor who was a member of the Family Federation, and many doctors who were believers gathered there. I was delighted to work in that hospital.
However, the mass media spread much negative information against the Family Federation throughout Japan. My parents got a lot of this information from my friends and teachers at my medical school. And some of them introduced my parents to an anti-Family Federation group. Its leader was Takashi Miyamura, a professional deprogrammer.
The group’s meetings were held at Shinjuku West Church. At those meetings, parents were taught how to prepare for confinement, ask relatives for cooperation, and even get mentally in shape during confinement.
These meetings especially influenced my mother. So, she decided to lock me up and compel me to give up my faith. Due to her influence, my father, brother, sister, and others joined the plan to confine me.
On June 13, 1992, when I went to my parents’ house, some fifteen relatives surrounded me. I was thrown into a car and carried to the apartment. In front of the building, about ten former believers who had become hostile to the Family Federations were waiting. The windows in that room were fitted with metal bars so they could not be opened, and the view outside was also blocked.
The entrance door was locked with a chain, and a man was sitting there 24 hours a day. The room felt like it was on the fifth floor or higher. About seven relatives stayed there with me.
I was concerned about the adverse effects on my patients’ physical and mental health. For several days, I pleaded with everyone to let me contact the hospital. Parents and relatives allowed me to record information about my patients and send it to the hospital. However, Miyamura, the real leader of this action, rejected my request.
Then, my family demanded that I explain the teachings and activities of the Family Federation. I continued to cry out for them to stop the violent religious persecution that disregarded fundamental human rights.
To my surprise, Hirata Hiroshi, a lawyer close to Miyamura, came to the room. He assured everyone that the situation was not illegal. My relatives accepted the lawyer’s words. I was forced to read the New and Old Testaments and a book that criticized the doctrines of the Family Federation. Disgruntled former believers and Miyamura came to the room to “persuade” me at night.
Miyamura thought violence was necessary to change a believer’s mind. So, I was beaten up quite a bit by both my father and my brother. A bruise around my eye from my father’s knee kick would not go away for over a week.
My colleagues at the hospital located the place where I was confined. The hospital’s president requested habeas corpus (a claim for release from illegal confinement) from the Tokyo High Court. An order was issued for my parents to appear before the High Court. The notice was sent to the apartment. Miyamura ignored the notice and instructed my relatives to move with me to another place.
We all moved to Niigata City at midnight, more than 250 kilometers from Tokyo. As soon as we arrived, Yasutomo Matsunaga, the pastor of Niitsu Evangelical Christian Church, visited us.
He cooperated with Miyamura and used the same methods: locking believers up, using biblical language, confusing them, and making them give up their faith. However, their beliefs were quite different. Miyamura had no Christian faith, while Matsunaga was a Calvinist.
The confinement and “persuasion” continued for over ten months. During that time, my parents could hardly ever leave the room. Furthermore, my father called Miyamura almost every night to report our situation. The deprogrammer blamed my father and told him, “Because of your bad attitude, your son cannot abandon his strange religion.”
One night, my father said to me, “If I let you go, and the activities of the anti-Family Federation group become public, they would not be able to continue their operations. I cannot let you out alive. I will kill you, and then I will die too.” Shouting that, he grabbed me by the neck and pushed me down.
I realized that he was mentally exhausted. I had no choice but to lie and say that I had renounced my faith. My father had been trained in the Japanese army when he was young. And he used to say, “Through the training, I am prepared to die for the purpose.”
For fear of being killed by my father, I was forced to act as an anti-Family Federation activist. This was the beginning of further mental suffering. The pain lasted for one year.
On Miyamura’s orders, I was moved to a mountain villa. I was interviewed by a journalist, Yoshifu Arita, and a reporter from the popular weekly magazine “Bunshun.” The article was used to criticize the Family Federation. Arita is currently a member of the Japanese Diet.
Then, I was forced to appear on a TV program called “Special Report” by TBS (Tokyo Broadcasting System). I was taken from the room to the largest riverbank in Niigata and filmed by a TV camera. My father and several hostile former believers surrounded me.
When filming, it seemed that Miyamura, the deprogrammer, was the leading person there.
When my comments did not match his thoughts, he immediately interrupted me. He then said that the Family Federation was a group of crazy people who lacked human love. The anti-Family Federation media used part of my remarks.
After exposing myself to such an extent, I could leave my apartment and walk to Matsunaga’s church under my father’s supervision. About ten people attended the church who were in the same position as I, forced to give up their faith.
Only one month after I started attending the church, accompanied by my parents, I was taken to meet, together with Miyamura, two lawyers, Hiroshi Yamaguchi and Masaki Kito. They had offered vitriolic criticism of the Family Federation on TV.
I had to speak following the instructions of my father and Miyamura. The lawyers knew I was not free. Kito said, “I think it’s time to let you go, don’t you agree? But I’ll have to let Miyamura make that decision.”
I could not tell them about my fundamental human rights. I was forced to sign a legal contract to sue the Family Federation and the hospital.
I was not the only one in such a situation. At Matsunaga’s church, all Family Federation believers who had just been released from confinement were encouraged to meet with these lawyers.
I understood that a group of lawyers used people for political purposes. These former believers had been damaged by being confined by their parents and still felt the fear of being locked up again. Therefore, they had no choice but to file a lawsuit through these lawyers.
As soon as I filed the lawsuit, I was forced to engage in even more traumatic behavior. I was compelled to go to the apartments where believers were confined, and I had to talk with them. I still regret my visits to the rooms of these innocent believers. They were suffering.
Matsunaga’s church held consultations and seminars for parents of believers every weekend.
The pastor and former believers convinced them that the only way to help the members was to confine them. They also explained the steps to lock them in, emphasizing that only parents and siblings could do it. By recommending confinement, I had become a core member of the group. I felt like a living dead.
I started working as an assistant physician in a hospital near the church. I enjoyed helping others. After two months of work at this hospital, I had some money in my bank account. I was able to leave the group and run away to Tokyo.
I knew that my parents would be shocked. I could not tell them where I was for the next two years. I thought they were still interacting with Miyamura’s group and might imprison me again.
Following Miyamura’s advice, my father borrowed twenty thousand dollars and gave it to Matsunaga’s church to build a new building.
Subsequently, I wrote about this two-year experience in a book that made the anti-Family Federation activities public. Thus, the book protected me, so I could safely communicate with my parents and siblings.
My mother had Alzheimer’s disease. She forgot all her resentments toward the Family Federation. I finally began to feel her original warm love for me. As for my father, he said he had spent two hundred thousand dollars on my ultimately unsuccessful deprogramming.
Source: bitterwinter.org
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