 Hello everyone. Welcome to Looking to the East. I'm your host Steve Zuercher. Thank you for joining us today. Those of you that follow my program, you may recall that we talked about the assassination of the former Prime Minister Abe a couple weeks ago. And I wanted to cover that topic once again with a very special guest that we have with us today. And his name is Michael Penn. He's been on my show before to talk about other topics. He's a president of Shin Getsu News Agency in Japan. Michael, thank you so much for joining us today. Really appreciate you spending some time with us to talk about what's going on in Japan regarding this assassination, and in particular some of the research that you've done on this topic. So the first thing I'd like to ask you Michael, I'm sorry to interrupt. It's great to be with you Steve again I always enjoy talking to you. Thank you so much. Yeah, we need to get together when I'm up in Tokyo next time have some coffee and chat. So, the first thing I'd like to ask you I'm in Hawaii right now I mean I've got the aloha shirt to prove my bona fides there. I'm not in the country, getting the day to day news on the repercussions of the assassination of a bit. Obviously when he was killed. It was international news whenever I get a text from my mother about something going on Japan I knew I know it's huge. So she sent me a note just after he was killed. But how is the country responding in Japan right now. Is it fading from view somewhat or is it still topic a or, you know, in the top list of things that Japanese people are discussing or you read about in the Japanese media. I would say that it's definitely fading it's been a few weeks now. So, I think that if you go out to the general public and you, you know, listen to the conversations out there. Very few people are talking about Shinzo Abe at this point, because you know it's, it's not the sort of issue that really has a lot of implications to go far beyond what already happened. And Japanese don't usually talk so much so deeply or so often about sort of what you might call inside the beltway in the US context here in Japan we call it, they got to show a lot of disney, sort of discussions about Japanese politics it's it's big in the Japanese political world still. It has ramifications that are that are still coming out there. But I think in the greater society. Most people have already moved on. And that's a little bit surprising to me, because it was such a dramatic news story on two levels of course an assassination is so unusual in Japan but then, in addition, it was obvious, who was my mind the most important political figure in the country, even though he was not actively the Prime Minister. Well just to stop you there. I would say I would agree with you that in my view he was the second most powerful man in Japan at the time of his death. You put the Prime Minister first. Okay. Yeah, maybe I was thinking that Abbe was still pulling the strings in the background, and because he was trying to, he was trying to but he was not succeeding 100%. Okay, the Kushida is was even when Abbe was alive was kind of emerging from. Correct in the shadow of Abbe and his influence because he was Prime Minister for so long previously. Interesting. Okay, so that being the case. What caught my eye actually you published an article, a day or so after the assassination which I thought was fascinating. And before we went live on air you actually we were talking about it you actually broke the story in terms of the connection between the Abbe family and the Prime Minister, former Prime Minister himself and the Mooney church. So maybe you can talk about that and I think I'm familiar with the Mooneys but when I talked to my family and my friends maybe they're not so familiar with it I mean they were Mooneys were big maybe what in the 80s or the 90s and maybe they faded somewhat. So, perhaps Michael you can talk about what you discovered in Japan and the article that you publish which I thought was so interesting and also maybe tell the audience who the Mooneys are. Right. Okay, so, so yes, the word Mooneys, as you say, became very well known and sort of part of the US political debate maybe in the early 80s I think was sort of maybe the high point for that. But I'm going to call them the Unification Church, which is closer to their formal name. And that's also what they're described of in Japan the Toi Tsukyokai which is a direct translation of Unification Church. And so, yes, they were a group which emerged shortly after the Korean War in South Korea with essentially a take on Christianity, sort of, you know, one of these groups that sort of take Christianity as a basis but then kind of had their own sort of special characteristics to it. And they were particularly notable for being very, very anti communist. And this is kind of what where the story begins with Japan. Shinzo Abe has a maternal grandfather, his name is Nabusuke Kishi, and Kishi was also Prime Minister from 1957 1960. During, he was a member of Hideki Tojo's cabinet during World War II, and was basically imprisoned as a class A war criminal. But essentially he made a deal with the US government after the war, and he became and he is the person who pushed through the US Japan Alliance in 1960. And he basically moved from being a class A war criminal to the US's best ally and in Japan. And this is this is the grandfather of Shinzo Abe. And so, after Kishi had lost his premiership in 1960 after massive protests that biggest in Japanese history in fact, in the sort of mid the late 60s, he was introduced to Mr Moon, who was the head of the Unification Church, and they seem to sort of have bonded over their shared anti communism both of them were very very sort of hard right anti communist sorts of people. And we don't know exactly it's still research is still going to need to kind of dig out exactly what the connection was. It was believed by some people, including the person who killed Shinzo Abe, that Kishi actually invited the Unification Church to come to Japan, whether or not that's true. We'll have to find out we do know that the church's headquarters was built on land that had been owned by Kishi. So the exact connection still needs to be figured out. So what is pretty clear is that is that the connection between Kishi and Moon continued not only until the end of Kishi's life but into the following generations. So, Shinzo Abe's father was a man named Shintaro Abe, and he would he rose to the level of Foreign Minister of Japan, and he probably would have been Prime Minister had he not died a little bit younger than than other people. And he also had a connection where the Unification Church was providing political support to him, and sort of more or less off the radar. We get glimpses here and there, that there was a deal sort of an informal or formal we don't know between the Unification Church and the Japanese ruling party, or at least parts of the Japanese ruling party, which was originally facilitated by Abe's family apparently. And the deal was that the Unification Church members provided election support that could be like putting staff members on to campaigns to go out and canvass the public. So that was voting for ruling party candidates. And in return, the part of the deal was is that the Unification Church could then sort of go to Japanese private families and ask for major donations to the church, and do basically their activities to be molested by investigations or police, or other concerns so that appears to be the overall deal that was made. It probably was breaking down in recent decades probably this century, that connection was considerably weaker. Although if I can interrupt Michael you didn't, you didn't note in your article that Abe, as a fall of last year, did a video endorsing the Unification Church so it's a weekend but it was still there. So what was actually going to be our next point is that in, I think it was September of October of last year, Abe did join an event, Donald Trump, the former US president was also at that event. And yes, they gave video messages basically endorsing the Unification Church you can, you can find these things on YouTube by the way. So it isn't, it isn't a big secret. They both spoke and Trump spoke and they both somewhat endorsed the Unification Church and what a wonderful organization is and stuff like that. Basically they added their prestige to the prestige of the of the current church so, and in fact, there was a group in Japan, which a group of lawyers who are very much against the way that sort of the Unification Church took massive donations from Japanese families. Including the family of the man who ended up killing Shinzo Abe, and they criticized Abe at the time last year. So, this was off the radar of almost every political analyst or, you know, it was, it was kind of a smaller side issue, but it ended up being the issue that took Shinzo Abe's life. And then you noted also in your investigation. And I recommend any viewers who want to find out more about this and find this interesting because there is a parallel, as Michael just pointed out to American politics and Unification Party and apparently the Trump, Republican Party to go to the Shin gets to use agency website and you'll find this article along with other very interesting articles that analyze what's going on in Japan. So one thing you did mention in that article is that back in the 1980s, the amount of revenue that was being generated by the moonies. I just have to call it that I know you're calling them the polite name Michael but I can't get that out of my mind because that's how I learned about them. They come in San Francisco at Aquatic Park and try and convert me. That's the reference that I have. But anyway, you mentioned that the revenue that was being generated out of Japan and again, the Unification Church Moonies are is a Korean organization and they did have an American operation, but 80% of the revenues were coming from Japan back in the 1980s I guess during their heyday. We do have a data point that says that that 80% of all of their global money at one point was coming from Japan basically that means you know getting Japanese families and Japanese believers to donate large sums of money. We don't, you know, this is one of the things that I'm hoping that future journalists and future researchers probably, you know, university level book writing people eventually get into and to really figure out because it's going to, it'll be a massive research project for whoever takes it on, but what we, the outline of what we kind of have is that how did this South Korean organization turn into a global organization. Well this, that Japan was a key part of that, the money that the Unification Church gained from sort of their Japan following was what fueled financially the expansion of the Unification Church globally, and all that stuff we talk about in the early 80s. And you in the US, that probably wouldn't have happened without the Japanese money. So let's bring this back into focus then in terms of the assassination so you mentioned it that the individual who killed Ave. Two and a half weeks ago was very upset with the Unification Church because his mother donated. Like the yet is so weak now if we put it into dollar terms, like maybe $800,000 or something in that range anyway a lot of money. She basically bankrupted her family in order to give money to the church. And, you know I don't want to get into this too much but many of these new religions of course they have a very strong revenue generation process and certainly the Unification Church fell into that category. He, he was upset that his family was bankrupted and he couldn't go to college as you pointed out because there were no funds he was apparently pretty smart kid and was eligible to go to school but there was no money to pay for it so he developed a resentment. This is now over 20 years ago. Regarding this church which he felt exploited his mother. Is that correct Michael did I make characterizing that correctly. You put it very eloquently that's exactly right. Okay. All right so he's being investigated right now of course and I read this morning that they're they're evaluating his psychological state. Although I, what we just talked about, I think it's pretty clear if it isn't true, you could understand is antipathy to the Unification Church. I think it was interesting. Also Michael in your analysis was that he actually wanted to assassinate the leaders of the Unification Church, either the, the world leaders, the Korean family the moon family I guess which still runs the church I don't know if it's the Korean family or the Japanese leaders, and he couldn't get access to them, but he could get access to the Prime Minister which is just amazing the security for the church is better than the security for the former Prime Minister and one of the most important political people. What is your comments about that I mean, how can their security lapse of that level. During Japanese political campaigns there's usually like a two week period before every major national election, where it's, it's expected and common that most are all Japanese politicians go out onto the streets and, and personally give to two public passing by and, and your major train stations and major squares. And this is, you know, this is just standard Japanese politics there. They're expected to come out and to engage directly with the public during that time. And of course the Unification Church does not have any such practice. So, I think that the, you know, and Japan, you know, a couple of points that are worth making is last year. There was a total of one person killed in Japan with a gun, all of last year is 120 people 120 million people right. So this is not the United States where 10s of thousands of people are being killed every year by gun violence. And the weapon used by the man was not even a gun that was bought it was something he constructed himself quite carefully I mean, you know it's clear that he was actually is quite a smart kid, in the sense that he has many many skills he was able to build his own gun. He did a lot of research about obey which was not common knowledge and, and most of the research he did seems to have been accurate. So, you know, so basically, he had to build his own gun, test fired it went through several models and prepared for a long time. Originally, yes, he wanted to go, he wanted to kill the leader of the Unification Church when she visited Japan. I think it was last year. He wasn't able to get access to the venue. And so he later settled on, well he said okay if I want to get revenge against the church, the way that to do it is to kill Abbe. This history that you mentioned in the article. He figured out the history, and he seems to have also calculated that by killing Abbe he would bring attention on the Unification Church and thus get his revenge in that way. Well, he's right. Because, as I mentioned, I wanted to talk with you about this as well. I think prior to the Abbe assassination, the general public including myself. I had no idea that there was this connection between Abbe and the Unification Church. But now we do know that, well you know even Japan political specialist this wasn't on our radar at all. Wow. Okay. It certainly is now. And the opposition party such as it is in Japan. For those of you that do follow Japanese politics at all. Basically, the Jiminto or the Liberal Democratic Party has pretty consistently been in power since World War two and the recent election, which is just a couple days after the assassination. They've learned their majority holdings in the upper house and they have that in the lower house as well the diet it's called actually. So that's, that's the political side of this but. So the opposition party is going to begin to take a look at this and Michael is this case unusual or are there because there are other new religions in Japan. The Unification Church there's some local ones to that have been developed in Japan, and they tend to my impression is correct me if I'm wrong they tend to be politically very conservative maybe not as quite so bad or right wing as the Unification Church, but are there will there be other churches that are discovered that are actively involved in the political process and donating to the Jiminto or perhaps supporting them in a way. So both of your questions first the one about the opposition parties, and then the one about the other other religions that are involved in Japanese politics. So yes, the opposition parties are not unified. So the main opposition party is called the constitutional democratic Democratic Party of Japan, and they're kind of center left. I do say that they're going to make some kind of investigation, but frankly, the state of the party is not very unified right now. And in my view they're, they're, they're pretty useless, frankly speaking. But the one to keep a, where maybe we should keep a little more eye on is the Japan Communist Party. Now I know people hear the word communist and they start thinking about Soviet Union and red shine and all the rest. Japan Communist Party is a very very different sort of organization. It's basically a social democrat sort of party but has a 100 year tradition of sort of fighting for a more liberal society. And this party though is has a national network. They have a newspaper called Akahata red flag, which has almost a million subscribers. And when when they go on an investigation, they can be a little more serious because they have from time to time broken a lot of stories bring brought things to public light that the normal media that has has missed. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't say poo poo the Japan Communist Party investigation. I would take less seriously the one by the mainstream constitutional democratic part of Japan, moving to religions. Yes, there are other. So according to the Japanese Constitution, there is a separation between religion and politics in Japan. I think that's true in the United States Michael, but I haven't checked recently. That's true. Well, you know, as people may know, I mean the Japanese Constitution was written by the staff of General MacArthur. And the staff who wrote the Constitution actually were were new dealers they were kind of very liberal minded followers of Franklin Roosevelt. And even though MacArthur was sort of a conservative figure, his staff members who wrote the Constitution were very sort of liberal and progressive people of 1940s. And so. So even though there is this ban on or there is not there is supposed to be a separation between religion and politics. It's like anywhere else. You know, there is religious influence and politics. The biggest case of this is the Komeito Party, which is part of the ruling coalition to get that so that's the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito have been the ruling coalition of Japan for the past couple decades. And so they come from a Buddhist sect called Soka Gakkai. And they are, you know, essentially a religious party that has the most power of all of them. There are a number of others who run candidates. You know, there's some really weird ones like the Happiness Realization Party. They'll like march through town and do like pro Donald Trump rallies and things like this. And there are a number of others. Most of them are not taken very seriously by the Japanese public. You know, Japan is, you know, while there is Shinto and Buddhism and things like that, religion for most Japanese sort of lays very gently on their, their thinking and their society that they're not, they're not in the mainstream a very religiously minded people they're very secular. Right. Yeah, that was one of my major impressions when I came to Japan the first time. I went to high school in Texas and there were a lot of born again Christian types in my high school, you know, and they were authorizing and trying to recruit me. And so I was kind of used to that and then I went to Japan and nobody talks about religion in Japan. I was, wow, this is quite different. I've seen statistics where the number of people who claim to be atheists are basically a religious in Japan is over half, maybe even higher. But the mainstream is very sort of not anti religious but just as you say a religious they're just, it just isn't something that they think about or it's a great concern to them. But in corners here and there, you will find some Japanese who are very serious about their religion. There's a pretty strong a Christian contingent as well you know sort of more mainstream Christian my father in law they're Christian. Yeah, so you will find that and they have their place. But, you know, but the mainstream Japanese society, essentially, religion just isn't a big issue here. Yeah, so we'll have to see how these investigations go forward and that the Communist Party makes an impact. I'm wondering how the Japanese people will respond to that to know that these these fringe parties have had an impact on political strategy and structure over the well slowly you know even now the the the story of the Unification Church to some degree is being reported so at the time that I reported it several days after the assassination, the Japanese media was sort of we're just not talking about it. They knew it was they knew who it was we knew they knew who it was and the information was all out there, but the Japanese mainstream media just steadfastly refused to report it but once I reported it and once other international news organization started to report it a little bit, then finally it kind of came back to Japanese me I long identified this as the boomerang effect, where Japanese mass media will not cover many sort of taboo topics until it's first reported internationally, and then they can quote the reports to kind of make it safe for them to report it back in Japan. And so that was that happened I think in this case as well. So now, if you're talking about today. I think most Japanese are pretty well aware that of the motive of the man who who killed the Chienzo Abe and the connections of the Unification Church. That said, the exact connections between the ruling party and the Unification Church from the 1960s up until today. That research really still needs to be done. What you think may fall to academics or perhaps the investigative journalists may take a look at it. Newspaper or any of the dominant media sources in Japan taking. They're not really great at investigative journalism on kind of a long on a sort of a wide canvas, but that way, I think it'll eventually be a book length treatment by some scholar in the university somewhere who will really track it down and to give us the picture. All right, Michael. Well, I'm we're unfortunately running out of time, but I did want to get your opinion about the ramifications for Japanese politics. So as you stated, Abe was the second most influential person in Japanese politics at the time of this assassination. And he was the head of the largest faction. The dominant party, as we mentioned, has been in power pretty much consistently since the 1955. Yeah, yeah, but they're broken into different groups. So Abe was the leader of one of the more conservative or right wing groups, which is now leaderless. So how do you see this obviously having the number two guy suddenly in this dramatic way be removed from the political balance of power that exists within Japan. Gonna have a profound impact on on the future of Japan politics, I would think. Yeah. Okay, so in the very basic outline since we have a very short time here. So, Kishida basically comes from the current Prime Minister from your Kishida comes from the more liberal part of the party. He's more of a centrist, whereas Abe was more of the far right wing of the party, even though they work together fairly well as individuals. Kishida came to power at the end of last year. He was basically probably envisioned by Abe as being a puppet and in a very weak position that Abe and his faction could control. However, things went unexpectedly well for Kishida. Well, a politician who was expected to be kind of controlling the party ended up losing his election was an obey ally, and this kind of gave some space to Kishida to, to get more of his own independence and bring in more of his own people. And then, you know, she did well in the general elections which also boosted his status. And so most up in this year up until always assassination. You know, basically, you know, it was Kishida driving the car, but Abe was like jumping forward and trying to take control of the wheel, and basically trying to steer the country in his preferred direction, rather than in the Prime Minister's preferred direction. So, with Abe basically suddenly assassinated. And then his, his faction basically now with no effective leader and possibly going to break up into multiple factions in less one possibility but in any case it's a lot weaker. For the point of view of the Prime Minister, suddenly he's actually in control of the nation, especially when you when you add the fact that he just won the upper house elections as well in a convincing faction. So, basically, up until obvious assassination there were two men sort of fighting for control of the government's policies. Now one of those men is gone. He's really in charge. He still has to basically throw a lot of red meat to the hard right, because they're a powerful group within the ruling party, but he is in the driver's seat for the first time since he became Prime Minister. Wow. So, Michael, it sounds, you know, we've lived in Japan for a long time as I have and generally my expectations about leadership or change out of the Japanese government is, it's not zero it's very close. It sounds like maybe from your perspective, the possibility for some progressive change in Japan, it could happen. I wouldn't go so far as a progressive change. I would say that Japan right now is firmly under the control of a very sane, moderate reasonable person. I see. All right. Michael, the time has flown by and we could talk about this I think for easily hours. I want to thank you again and then remind the viewers that if you do want to find out more information about this connection between religion and Japanese politics which mirrors, of course, American politics as well since Trump has also endorsed the unification church recently to go to Michael's website that you get to use agency website and you can see the articles that are listed there. Any other sources you want to recommend Michael or any other way to find out more about your work or your your agency's work. Well, I think the web page is place to go also I should say where we're really the most active is on Twitter. So at Sheen gets a news that's where we do sort of our daily reporting. The website is used more for features several times a week, but I must say that, you know, the Japanese media is almost as a block including the English language media, basically, right of center. And so we're basically the only sort of left of center media in English you're going to find, basically, more or less. All right. All right Michael thank you so much really enjoyed talking with you again and look forward to meeting you when we can run the bill up in Tokyo next time. My viewers will be on the air again in a couple of weeks and I'm going to cover this interesting immigration program that the Japanese government has set up in collaboration with a foundation affiliated with the International Christian University to bring Ukrainian students into the country we're going to have two Ukrainian students on consigate a campus where I'm a professor starting next month is very, very interesting. This is unprecedented, because generally the Japanese government's approach to refugees is not very positive but when it's come to the Ukrainians. Japan has opened up their doors, much more wider than they ever have before so I'll be interviewing the person who spearheaded this program. Again, thank you so much Michael. Thank you very much. This is looking to the east. I'm Steve Zerker. I'll see you in a couple of weeks.