“DISTORTED THE ENTIRE LIFE”
Japan grew to become a financial hub for the church, which trained Japanese believers which they needed to atone for his or her country’s wartime occupation of Korea.
“They allocate different roles to each country intentionally, ” said Hotaka Tsukada, an associate professor of the sociology of religious beliefs at Joetsu University of Education.
“They have (sales) manuals to exploit believers, ” he told AFP.
The particular church offered “spiritual sales” of exorbitantly priced goods including a 43 million yen (US$350, 000) statuette, which Japanese believers were told would certainly absolve them or their ancestors.
Huge outlays simply by members led to a backlash.
Japan’s National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales says it offers filed suits seeking 123. 7 billion dollars yen (US$900 million) in damages pertaining to former followers since 1987.
A series of arrests in the 2000s and verdicts against the church prompted limitations on “spiritual sales”, but lawyer Yamaguchi said that believers continue to be pressed to meet month-to-month donation targets.
“It’s a goal God decides, ” he said the cathedral tells members. “It’s a quota they need to meet. ”
The church denies that members are pressured.
“Our view is that almost all donations before Heaven must be freely provided, ” FFWPU push contact Demian Dunkley told AFP.
“FFWPU sometimes can make appeals for donations, but FFWPU associates choose whether, whenever and how much they will give. ”
In 2005, Yamagami reportedly attempted committing suicide after his mother’s bankruptcy, hoping that will his siblings would certainly receive an insurance plan payout.
Their older brother, a years as a child cancer survivor, died by suicide ten years later.
Inside a letter to an anti-church blogger sent the morning before Abe’s homicide, Yamagami said that his teen years were marred by their mother’s “overspending, household disruption and bankruptcy”.
“The encounter has distorted playing, ” the letter published by local media said.