Tokyo High Court Orders Dissolution of Unification Church

On March 4, the Tokyo High Court ordered the dissolution of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (formerly the Unification Church) under the Religious Corporations Act, following a request by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

While the decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court, the dissolution order takes effect immediately upon the high court's ruling. The procedures to liquidate the organization's assets have already started.

Reform or Reputation Management

In its ruling, the High Court examined in detail the organization's posture and the trends in its donation revenues. It rejected the group's claim that it had implemented measures to prevent harm from donation solicitations and to provide compensation, concluding that such steps were merely temporary efforts to avoid social criticism.

The organization's 2009 Compliance Declaration became a major dividing line in the case. In its March 2025 ruling, the Tokyo District Court estimated damages incurred prior to the declaration — based on past civil lawsuits — at more than ¥19 billion (about $120 million USD).

Although damages after the declaration fell to more than ¥900 million (about $5.7 million), the court said the harm had "continued uninterrupted."

The organization had criticized the earlier district court ruling for "overestimating" damages incurred after the declaration compared with the actual scale of harm.

It argued that, in addition to issuing the 2009 declaration, the church had introduced numerical evaluation metrics to assess the severity of claims handling and compliance violations.

Furthermore, following the 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the group said it established new guidelines to prevent "excessive donations" and has provided compensation accordingly.

Court Questions the Reforms

The High Court, however, stated that the indicators created by the organization were intended "to reduce the number of civil lawsuits and other cases," rather than to prevent illegal acts by its members.

Measures adopted after the declaration were aimed primarily at "preventing problems from surfacing" to avoid a dissolution order, the court said.

Moreover, the court stated that the organization's budgeted donation income remained at roughly the same level even after the declaration. In fiscal year 2022, it even exceeded the level before the 2009 declaration.

"It is reasonable to infer that solicitation practices deviating from socially accepted norms continued even after the declaration," the court said.

The court also explained the necessity of dissolution, citing concerns that the group could once again increase its fundraising targets and demand recruitment efforts from its followers by setting numerical goals that would be difficult to achieve under normal circumstances.

Such a situation, the court added, could arise because the Japanese branch is unable to refuse funding requests from its headquarters in South Korea.