14. Perennial Fears, Novel Responses: The Unification Church in Japan after the Abe Assassination

In March 2025, the Tokyo District Court ordered the legal dissolution of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, a controversial South Korea-based religion better known as the Unification Church. The church attracted intense public and political scrutiny after the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō when it was revealed that his murderer was motivated by political support for the religion. This chapter tracks legal and political developments that unfolded from the time of the murder up to the dissolution. It considers reasons for unprecedented applications of Japanese law to remove legal status from the Unification Church and contextualizes public outcry about links between the church and Japanese politicians within modern Japanese religious and political history. The chapter concludes by considering the local-level female church parishioners who will shoulder the burden of maintaining their religion after it loses its religious juridical person status.