Support for marriage equality is widespread among Japan’s political parties, with the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) being the only major party against reform. While the party sponsored a recent ‘LGBT understanding promotion bill’, by the time it was passed by both houses the text had been diluted to the point where members of Japan’s LGBTQ+ community considered it close to meaningless.

Among the factors contributing to the LDP’s reluctance to openly support the country’s LGBTQ+ community is the reliance of the LDP on support from conservative religious organisations. Japan does not have a popular conservative religious movement corresponding to evangelicalism in the United States, but the LDP has still maintained close ties especially to two organisations — the Unification Church and the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership.

The assassination of former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2022 shed light on connections between the LDP and the Unification Church. A number of prominent LDP politicians have utilised the church in electoral work, and while it is unclear whether or not these individual politicians share the church’s beliefs, they pay lip-service to maintain support.

LDP lawmakers have often expressed sympathy with the Unification Church in their opposition to marriage equality, with a number of lawmakers at Unification Church events in opposition to marriage equality. The influence of the church over LDP policymaking has had important implications for Japan’s policies on gender equality and LGBTQ+ rights.

While the LDP’s ties to the Unification Church have been mostly hidden from public view, the party maintains a more open relationship to organised Shrine Shinto, including the Association of Shinto Shrines, and its political branch, the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership. Shinto institutions have played a role in lobbying for a number of political reforms, including the ongoing attempt to revise the 1947 constitution.

Though the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership is outspoken on its views about traditional gender-roles, the organisation is not particularly focused on issues related to LGBTQ+ rights. The topic of marriage is often discussed in the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership’s publications, but mostly in connection to the question of retaining family names after marriage.

Same-sex marriage is not a particularly prioritised issue for the Shinto right, but the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership has taken a clear position against marriage reform and the partnership system introduced in some municipalities. But since Shinto does not really have any doctrinal basis for opposing same-sex relations, the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership has had to rely on other kinds of arguments, often borrowed directly from Christian lobbyists.

One example of this can be found in an article published in the magazine Kokoro in June 2022, where constitutional scholar Hidetsugi Yagi outlined his arguments against the partnership system. These included a conservative depiction of marriage as an institution solely devoted to protecting nuclear families and promoting reproduction, but he also included a basic view of homosexuality as mostly a social phenomenon, borrowed directly from Christian conversion therapist Neil Whitehead.

This reliance on conservative Christian writings in what is purportedly ‘Shinto’ opposition to LGBTQ+ rights can also be seen in a leaflet published as a collaboration between conservative LDP lawmakers and the Shinto Association for Spiritual Leadership in July 2022. The leaflet argued that homosexuality is a psychological disorder, and was informed by current evangelical Christian discourse. This included an excerpt from a lecture by the Christian theologian Yang Sang Jin.

The degree to which opposition to same-sex marriage in Japan is informed by foreign trends is striking. Following a video posted in May by fifteen ambassadors to Japan in support of LGBTQ+ rights, many conservatives reacted in anger on social media platforms, arguing that this was an attempt to force a Western problem upon Japan. While those working for marriage equality in Japan are informed by trends in other democratic countries, supposed traditionalists appear to be equally informed by foreign ideologies. This includes the influence of conservative Christianity on the Shinto establishment’s views on the issue of marriage equality.

Much like in other democracies, opposition to marriage reform in Japan is spearheaded by vocal religious organisations. At the same time, it is important to note that neither the Unification Church nor the Association of Shinto Shrines work as mass organisations, and the success of their political campaigns depends mostly on their usefulness in LDP electoral politics.

In the case of the Unification Church, this usefulness is clearly waning, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida calling on all LDP lawmakers to sever their ties to the church. Some LDP lawmakers still utilise these organisations as part of their electoral work, but it is unlikely that conservative religious organisations without a major popular support base will be able to hold back the party in the long run. As popular opinion changes, the pragmatic politicians of the LDP are likely to follow.

Ernils Larsson is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society at Uppsala University, Sweden.