Son Recounts How Mother Lost Money to Unification Church

JiJi Press, Japan/August 22, 2022

Osaka, Japan --The son of a deceased follower of the religious group known as the Unification Church has recounted how his mother had lost a lot of money on the group.

In a recent interview with Jiji Press, the 55-year-old resident of the western prefecture of Osaka rejected the group’s claims that it has never conducted so-called spiritual sales, in which goods such as vases are sold at exorbitant prices based on claims that they can save the buyers from misfortune.

The group, the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, and its donation-collecting and other practices have drawn public attention since former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot to death last month by a suspect whose mother is a follower.

The Osaka man said that his mother, who died at 81 in 2020, joined the group in 2008 soon after she started to live alone following the deaths of her father and her husband.

When his younger sister visited their mother’s home in 2009, she found a vase the mother was believed to have bought from the group at a high price, the son said. The mother’s bankbook showed that more than 10 million yen had been withdrawn over the course of about one year.

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