<figure id="attachment_265693" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-265693" style="width: 4000px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="#" data-ident_hash="19f2f21c"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/fridaydigital/image/private/t_article_image/wpmedia/2022/09/aflo_178186139.jpg" alt=""></a><figcaption id="caption-attachment-265693" class="wp-caption-text">Minister Yamashii&#8217;s &#8220;post hoc&#8221; announcement of his relationship with the Unification Church. The way he handled the situation is questionable&#8230;</figcaption></figure>
 In a survey conducted by the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan (LDP) of all Diet members regarding their relationship with the &#8220;Family Federation for the Unification of World Peace&#8221; (hereafter, the former Unification Church), Minister of State for Economic Revitalization Dashiro Yamagai was not listed in the &#8220;attendance at sponsored events&#8221; column. However, on September 20, after an outside party pointed out that he had attended the meeting, Minister Yamashigai admitted that he had attended the meeting.
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 The website of the organization showed a picture of me attending the meeting, and I confirmed my attendance. I will correct the report to the party as soon as possible.
 He apologized at the press conference. I wonder if it really slipped my mind and I didn&#8217;t fill out the questionnaire&#8230;.
 This event is not an event of the nature of a Unification Church affiliate or friendship group whose name is being withheld, but is a genuine event organized by the former Unification Church itself.
 If you check the church&#8217;s website for the event held in 2006, you will find President Han Hakko receiving a bouquet of flowers from the children. Nearby, under the stage, a photo of Minister Yamagai smiling and watching the scene was shown.
 However, shortly after Minister Yamagai&#8217;s press conference, only the part of Minister Yamagai was neatly trimmed from its website. At this event, Mr. Yamagai said
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 When I heard True Father&#8217;s message, I felt a truth beyond words.
 He congratulated the audience on the event.
 True Father&#8221; refers to the late Moon Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church and husband of current President Han Harko. Yamashiki was paying tribute to &#8220;True Father&#8221; to the cult, which is said to collect donations from Japanese believers and send tens of billions of yen a year to Korea.
 He spoke as if he were talking about something else, saying something like, &#8220;I checked the website and was finally able to confirm their attendance. He did not seem at all offended by the reporters&#8217; questions at the press conference.
 When asked if he had any followers on his staff, he replied, &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t.&#8221; When asked if there were any believers on the staff, Minister Yamashii simply stated, &#8220;I could not confirm whether they were believers. As for the &#8220;mystery&#8221; behind the immediate removal of the photo from the cult&#8217;s website after the meeting, some experts suspect that there is still a connection behind the scenes and that &#8220;he asked the cult to delete the photo. Some experts believe that there is still a connection behind the scenes, and that they may have asked the church to delete the photo.
 In addition to the &#8220;post-disclosure&#8221; of Minister Yamagai, there are also testimonies from former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe&#8217;s office and House of Representatives Speaker Hosoda, who are suspected of involvement in the distribution of the votes. The LDP should not rely on surveys conducted by Diet members themselves, but rather the party as a whole to clarify the actual situation and prevent a recurrence.

 Yoshio Tsunoda/Afro

 Minister Yamagai has come under increasing criticism for his "after-the-fact" announcement that he attended an event at the Unification Church, even though he was not named in a survey conducted by the Liberal Democratic Party...

Mystery of Minister Yamashiki’s “True Father” remark at former Unification Church event also published later.

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