前川元次官、改称は「下村氏の意思」　旧統一教会めぐり野党ヒアリング

　世界平和統一家庭連合（旧統一教会）と政治の関わりをめぐり、立憲民主、共産両党などは５日、国会内で野党合同ヒアリングを開いた。会合に招かれた前川喜平元文部科学事務次官は、２０１５年に文化庁が認めた教会の名称変更に関し「文科相だった下村（博文）氏の意思が働いていたことは１００％間違いない」と述べ、同氏が関与したとの見方を示した。（2022/08/05-18:12）

Approval for the renaming of the religious group widely known as the Unification Church can be attributed to former Japanese Education Minister Hakubun Shimomura, a former bureaucrat said Friday.
   Former vice education minister Kihei Maekawa told a hearing session hosted by opposition parties including the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan and the Japanese Communist Party that he is "100 pct sure" that Shimomura was behind the 2015 approval by the Agency for Cultural Affairs for the renaming of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification.
   Maekawa said that he told the religious group in 1997, when he was chief of the agency's religious affairs division, that the renaming was unacceptable.
   The name change was approved despite Maekawa's opposition in 2015, when he was a deputy education minister and was briefed about the renaming by the cultural agency.
   The agency reversed its 18-year policy of not accepting the renaming, Maekawa said. "Given bureaucratic routines that follow precedents, I can only think that external power was at work," he said.