By Regis Arnaud
Posted 2 hours ago, Updated 2 hours ago
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe walks behind Shinto priests during a visit to Ise Shrine January 4, 2019. -/AFP
The assassination of Japan’s former prime minister reignites controversy over the links between politics and religion in the land of the rising sun.
Tokyo
Forty-eight hours after the assassination of their former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Japanese went to the polls for partial senator elections on Sunday in an almost ordinary, surreal atmosphere. As expected, the majority parties consolidated their position and won enough votes for possible constitutional reform – the very one Shinzo Abe pursued in vain throughout his life.
But behind this “dark victory,” as the daily Nikkei dubbed it, the ruling party remains stunned by this unprecedented act in a country normally spared from violence, especially political violence. With the personality and above all the motives of the killer, it gets unexpected relief. Tetsuya Yamagami, a lonely and uneventful ex-employee, said he set his sights on a cult leader the day his mother devoured her fortune and promoted Shinzo Abe; Since the first was absent, he would have successfully targeted the second.
This scenario embarrasses the country. For the past 48 hours, the major media have been using their gigantic human and material resources (the five national daily newspapers have 9,355 journalists) to reconstruct the affair. As always, television stands out: the scene of the crime is flown over by helicopter, reconstructed as a model on the set and dismantled down to the smallest detail.
Correspondents are sent to all corners of the country to collect the most insignificant information. But this riot of effects is matched only by the watered-down nature of its product. The day after Shinzo Abe’s assassination, the five major Japanese dailies all published the same front page, including font size, word for word, betraying their complicity.
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Investigators trickle visibly paraphrased “confessions” to a clique of “accredited” journalists, who print them with no regard for accuracy or even plausibility. “It is undeniable that the main Japanese media give too much space to police announcements – at least in the early stages of the case,” notes César Castellvi, author of Last Empire of the Press, a well-documented work on the Japanese Press.
The best Japanese readers are therefore surprised to read that the killer is said to have stated that he had “the misleading impression” (omoikomi) that Shinzo Abe was affiliated with an unnamed “religious organization” – to which he was in fact affiliated. The Japanese police are currently headed by Itaru Nakamura, famous for interrupting the prosecution of the rape of a journalist close to power. Better: As of Sunday evening, the Japanese “major press” had still not named the “religious organization” targeted by the killer. However, this, the Unification Church (also known as the Moon sect), had been exposed by local tabloids, foreign titles and even the church in question. Critics of the latter, who claim 3 million followers worldwide, criticize the brainwashing it inflicts on its followers.
The mainstream media walks on eggshells
Why? The mainstream media walks on eggshells. Traditional (like the local Shinto cult), mainstream (like Soka Gakkai), and “new” (like the Unification Church or Seicho no ie) religions play a discreet but crucial role in Japan’s political life. Their ability to mobilize loyal supporters in voter strength and donations makes them valuable allies of parties, especially in the majority and particularly in cities with anomic populations where opportunities for socializing are few. “Many of the hierarchs of the PLD are linked to religious organizations, whose representatives they are in the political world,” explains Axel Klein, a political scientist at the Universities of Duisburg and Essen and a specialist in relations between religion and politics in Japan. “They never admit it publicly because it would alienate other voters, but those ties are real and strong,” he says.
The PLD’s majority ally, the Buddhist Komeito Party, is historically an offshoot of the Soka-Gakkai sect (the two organizations claim they are no longer affiliated) with millions of followers. “Japan is not the only country where politics and religion go hand in hand. It has a lot of similarities with the United States,” notes Axel Klein. The Shukan, those irreverent weekly newspapers that blatantly write what the big Japanese newspapers are reluctant to publish, are mobilized. “The cult supported Shinzo Abe. We will therefore write about the links between the two,” assures one of their journalists.