Japanese religious freedom and Prime Minister Kishida

OPINION:

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Washington is an important step in the Freedom Alliance’s effort to contain China.

Specifically, Mr. Kishida must achieve the combined goals of maintaining political and national freedom — as well as freedom of navigation.

Japan is the United States’ strongest Pacific ally. Its economy is far stronger than any other American ally in the region. Its scientific research capabilities make it a full partner in developing better health care, stronger military capabilities, and more advanced space programs.

For example, it is exciting that two Japanese astronauts will collaborate with the American space program and become the first non-Americans to land on the moon.

The collaborative effort on joint defense industrial production will significantly strengthen the alliance of free nations and help the United States sustain its worldwide defense obligations in an increasingly dangerous world.

Mr. Kishida will no doubt be warmly welcomed when he addresses a joint session of Congress on Thursday. The world is growing increasingly treacherous. There are wars in Ukraine and Gaza and serious Chinese threats to Taiwan and the South China Sea. American legislators know that this visit by our strongest ally in the Pacific is historically important.

In this totally appropriate focus on the positive side of the Japanese-American relationship, however, I hope some members of Congress will raise the issue of religious liberty in their meetings with Mr. Kishida.

Japan’s prime minister is an important ally of the United States, but on the issue of religious liberty, he has taken a strange and indefensible turn.

Mr. Kishida has had a strange pattern of hostility to several religious organizations, including the Unification Church. He aggressively tried to break ties between the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s supporters and the church. Importantly, the church, founded in 1954 by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, has been a leading opponent of the Japanese Communist Party and engaged in a 30-year struggle to weaken the Communists’ efforts to subvert democracy in Japan.

At one point, the Kishida government engaged in a lengthy and expensive process of requiring every element of the church to fill out long questionnaires and undergo investigation. On Oct. 18, when nothing illegal could be found, Mr. Kishida announced that the Unification Church could not be dissolved because no criminal law had been broken. The very next day, however, he suggested he would use civil settlement cases to try to dissolve the church.

This was disturbing because there was no provision for using civil settlements to dissolve a church. In Japan, the cause must be criminal. The prime minister himself has acknowledged there is no such criminal case.

The Rev. Moon, a fierce proponent of religious freedom, founded The Washington Times, which is owned by a commercial enterprise affiliated with the global spiritual movement in over half a dozen countries.

As Americans, we have watched our own court system and the rule of law be undermined by the political party in power. The Biden administration is trying to destroy the president’s political opponents with the power of government. So, I am keenly focused on opposing efforts to replace the rule of law with the rule of power.

I hope members of the House and Senate who have a chance to chat with Mr. Kishida will remind him of the importance of the rule of law and the vital basis of religious liberty as the ultimate foundation of freedom.

Military cooperation is important. Going to the moon together is important. Defense-industrial cooperation is important.

But beyond all those alliance activities, a deep commitment to the rule of law and religious liberty is key to the American-Japanese relationship. This has been true since Japan adopted a constitution designed to preserve freedom after World War II.

It is vital that the Japanese government reaffirm its commitment to the rule of law and to the principles of religious freedom, which are the heart of a truly free society.

This visit is an opportunity for American leaders to deliver that message to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.

• For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com. Also, subscribe to the Newt’s World podcast.