Church backing for ruling party candidate traced back to 2013

The Asahi Shimbun, Japan/September 21, 2024

By Nobuya Sawa and Yosuke Takashima

A document has surfaced that shows beyond all doubt that a candidate from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party in the 2013 Upper House election received backing from the scandal-plagued Unification Church for his campaign and the party knew about it.

The LDP member, Tsuneo Kitamura, also won re-election to the upper chamber in 2019 on the back of support provided by the organization formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.

The first instance occurred when Shinzo Abe was prime minister. Abe met with the church president and leaders of church-affiliated groups in the presidential reception room at the LDP headquarters in Tokyo.

The in-house document states that the candidate, Kitamura, received backing from a church group and that the matter was duly reported to LDP headquarters.

Kitamura made a similar declaration to the LDP headquarters in the 2019 Upper House election, in which he was re-elected.

The latest revelation suggests that the church’s electoral support for the LDP was more widespread than initially thought.

Abe, according to sources, met with Eiji Tokuno, the church president on June 30, 2013, four days before the Upper House election’s campaign kicked off.

Hirokazu Ota, then chair of the International Federation for Victory over Communism, a conservative political organization that also has ties to the church, was also present.

On the LDP side, Koichi Hagiuda, a former economy minister who was then a special assistant to Abe, and Nobuo Kishi, a former defense minister who is Abe’s brother, attended.

Kitamura was absent.

Several sources told The Asahi Shimbun the purpose of the meeting was to confirm that the church would use its nationwide network to support Kitamura in the proportional representation part of the Upper House election.

The Asahi Shimbun obtained a document titled “List of support groups and corporations for candidates for proportional representation,” which was prepared by the LDP’s election campaign headquarters for the 2013 Upper House election.

It is a list of the names of supporting organizations and businesses that each candidate submitted to the party.

According to the document, which is dated June 2013, Kitamura reported dozens of groups and companies as his support organizations.

Among them was the Federation for World Peace, a group affiliated with the church. The group’s representative was listed as Hirokazu Ota.

It is believed that support for Kitamura by the church was decided before the meeting.

A source said the meeting “was meant to be an occasion for Abe, the LDP president, to directly request support from the head of the church.”

Kitamura was first elected to the Upper House in the 2013 election.

In the materials prepared by the LDP Election Strategy Headquarters for the 2019 Upper House election, Kitamura listed about 100 organizations and companies as his supporting organizations, one of which was the Federation for World Peace.

The representative was listed as Tokuno.

But it is possible that his name was mistakenly listed by Kitamura because the representative of the Federation for World Peace at the time was not Tokuno.

As for the 2016 Upper House election, Yoshifumi Miyajima, a former LDP Upper House member who ran in the proportional district, admitted in a 2022 interview with The Asahi Shimbun that he had received support from the church.

The church’s nationwide organizational votes are particularly powerful in the proportional district for the Upper House election, according to LDP insiders.

Kitamura once headed The Sankei Shimbun newspaper’s Political News Department.

During his second term in 2021, he ran for a supplementary election for the Yamaguchi prefectural district of the Upper House and won.

In August 2022, his relationship with the church was revealed, and he released a statement that he had benefited from volunteer support provided by the International Federation for Victory over Communism.

Asked about the fact he had informed the LDP of the campaign support he received from the church in elections, he responded to an Asahi request for an interview earlier this month, “As I answered at my news conferences and other occasions.”

The Asahi Shimbun asked the LDP secretary-general’s office about Kitamura’s record of reporting such matters to the party. The office said in a written reply, “The party’s internal administrative procedures and other things are not disclosed.”