Eight serving vice ministers and former senior government members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party acknowledged they were asked to sign “policy pacts” by organizations affiliated with the Unification Church in exchange for support in elections.
Of the eight, four admitted to having signed such a document.
The findings are based on an online survey by The Asahi Shimbun of all 711 legislators in the Diet between late October and November.
One lawmaker could not be reached.
There were 656 replies. Fifty-four Diet members did not reply, all but four of them legislators with the LDP.
Lower House Speaker Hiroyuki Hosoda, who spent weeks avoiding comment on his links with the Unification Church before grudgingly admitting that reports on the issue were accurate, also did not give an answer. His post does not allow him to be a member of a political party.
The survey came on the heels of an Asahi report last month that multiple Diet members had signed the policy pact with the church-linked organizations.
The Unification Church is now formally called the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
Officials with the church-related groups approached candidates running in elections --in October 2021 for the Lower House and last July for the Upper House--to sign policy agreements titled “Confirmation of Recommendations” in exchange for campaign support.
It later emerged that some senior members of the Kishida government signed the document.
The Asahi’s survey asked lawmakers whether they had been shown such a document or something similar, and if so, how they responded.
Eight acknowledged they were presented with a policy agreement to sign, of whom four affixed their names.
One of them is Masaki Ogushi, the Cabinet Office vice minister overseeing the Consumer Affairs Agency, which is working to introduce legislation to provide relief to people duped into buying expensive goods or making large donations to the church under pressure.
Ogushi told a recent Diet session he was asked to sign a policy pact in exchange for the confirmation of recommendations issued by a church-affiliated organization. He also recalled that a set of policies listed in the pact was similar to the LDP’s policy manifesto, including revision of the war-renouncing Constitution.
Kenji Yamada, a vice minister of the Foreign Ministry, said he signed soon after he addressed a gathering on national politics held at the request of an individual affiliated with the church.
“I was indiscreet in signing without carefully studying the content” of the document, he said.
Hiroaki Saito, a former parliamentary secretary for the internal affairs ministry, and Yoichi Fukazawa, a former parliamentary secretary for the health ministry, both acknowledged they had signed a policy pact.
The four lawmakers, who are all members of the Lower House, denied that their links with the church had influenced their political activities.
When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida reshuffled his Cabinet in August, he said the lineup, including vice ministers and parliamentary secretaries, was comprised of individuals who had pledged to review their relations with organizations affiliated with the church after verifying their own records.
The latest Asahi finding shows that two of the four legislators who signed a policy agreement are vice ministers.
Among the four former senior government members who denied signing were Tomomi Inada, who once held the defense portfolio.
In the survey, eight respondents--all of them members of the LDP--replied that they “do not know” whether they were shown any confirmation of recommendations.
Church-affiliated officials said they asked dozens of candidates across the nation to sign policy pacts in recent national elections.
The LDP, citing its own internal investigation, found that Saito and another lawmaker had received campaign support from the church side.
However, its eight-point checklist did not mention a policy pact.
Kishida recently toned down his earlier vow to investigate further to ascertain the extent of ties between his party and the church side after the earlier Asahi report on the policy pact.
