Japan Seeks to Dissolve Unification Church After Abe Killing

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Thursday that the government would seek to dissolve the Japan branch of the fringe Unification Church, more than a year after the group’s extensive ties to conservative Japanese politicians were revealed in the wake of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination.

After Mr. Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was killed at a campaign event in Nara, near Kyoto, in July 2022, details emerged that the suspect in the murder, Tetsuya Yamagami, had held a grievance against Mr. Abe for his perceived ties to the Unification Church.

Mr. Yamagami wrote to a blogger who covered the church that his mother, a longtime member, had bankrupted the family by making substantial donations to the group against their wishes.

Lawmakers scurried to contain the political fallout and began to scrutinize the church, which was found to have manipulated members over several decades into handing over large sums of money.

The government had been considering for weeks whether to ask a court to strip the church, founded in South Korea by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon and known for its mass weddings, of its official religious status in Japan.

Mr. Kishida told reporters in Tokyo on Thursday that legislators in his conservative Liberal Democratic Party had been cutting ties with the church since Mr. Abe’s death.