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Unification Church President Tanaka's "excuse press conference" contains serious lies, as pointed out by the press conference's lawyers and the National Consumer Affairs Center
2022/8/13 13:52 (JST)8/13 14:59 (JST)updated
Nikkan Gendai Co.
Amid the growing concern over high donations to the former Unification Church (now the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification), the government has decided to set up a study group later this month on how to deal with damage caused by "Spiritual Sales. Troubles over donations have become more mainstream.
At a press conference held at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of Japan on August 10, Tomihiro Tanaka, 66, president of the Unification Church of Japan, stated, "Our organization has never conducted so-called Spiritual Commercial Sales in the past or at present".
Hiroshi Yamaguchi, a lawyer representing the National Association of Lawyers Against Spirational Business (Zenkoku Ben-Ren), said, "I wondered what he was talking about when he said that he does not engage in Spiritual sales".
"The organization is taking the lead and being proactive. The press conference was full of lies anyway."Mr Yamaguchi said.
They said they were responding to requests for refunds on a case-by-case basis, but rather they had members draw up a written agreement (to avoid being sued) and only returned a portion of the money, leaving the rest to be kind of ingored.
President Tanaka emphasized, "Since 2014, we have been asking the Consumer Center to contact us if they have received any kind of consultation regarding our organization, but since that year, which is on record, we have not received a single call from the Consumer Center saying that they have received any consultation," stressing that there has been "no trouble".
However, the fact that "we had been trying to have the consumer center contact us" was itself a false explanation.
"I was surprised when I saw the press conference. Mr. Tanaka said that they were supposed to have our Consumer Center contact them, but there is no such fact in the first place," said the Public Relations Division of the National Consumer Affairs Center, an independent administrative agency that supports consumer centers nationwide.
Yasuo Kawai, the secretary general of the Zenkoku Ben-Ren, said "It is stupid to say this about Spiritual Sales, but ..." and continued.
"I know they want to say that it is not something we did as a corporation but something our followers did, but there have been illegal verdicts all over the country regarding Spiritual Sales Cases. It is a historical fact that it was found to be organized."
Teaching "Dedicate All Your Assets
At the press conference, President Tanaka also referred to donations. He explained, "We have made every effort to ensure that donations are not high in relation to assets, and this has been the case up to the present". The Unification Church teaches that "all assets should be given away." For the Unification Church, believers with assets are the most valuable members. There are various types of donations, such as "obligation," "blessing," "ancestor forgiveness," "patriotism," and "holy books.
Donations in the hundreds of millions are not uncommon. In fact, they are relatively large. The earliest step the Unification Church takes is to ascertain the wealth of prospective believers. The Unification Church does this at the earliest stage, because it is impossible to obtain donations from those who have no assets. "If you say, to prevent people from making large donations, what exactly do they do? It is nothing but sophistry", mentioned the Attorney Kawai, the sectretary.
It was just the "excuse press conference" only to increase distrust of the Unification Church.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
