教祖は『55歳から世界一のマグロ釣り師に』－ 旧統一教会の水産ビジネス
もしお父さんのためのワイドショー講座が続いていれば旧統一教会に関する話題が宇露戦争（宇克蘭 対 露西亜）に関する話題と年間ベストテン第１位を競ったに違いない2022年が過ぎ去り、旧統一教会に関するニュースが新聞や雑誌やテレビを騒がす機会は減りましたが、マグロの初競りのニュース
を聞きながら、文鮮明教祖がスポーツハンティング（狩猟）に加えて（ハマちゃんと言うより松方弘樹のような）釣りバカであったことを思い出し、杉山孝著『５５歳から世界一のマグロ釣り師に－神の啓示と海の未来』（創芸社（現 創藝社）、2010年）を取り寄せて、先週末、目を通しました。
教祖の自叙伝（日本語版）を刊行した出版社の書籍ですが、この書籍は増刷されていないようです。（古書は、多数、流通しているようです。）マグロ釣りに関する技術的な解説である第４章と水産資源問題を扱う第５章を除けば、主にマサチューセッツ州グロスターを舞台とするこの書籍の内容は『み旨と海』で語られた内容に一致しているようです。
個人の趣味が嵩じて事業に発展させた事例を、時折、新聞や雑誌で目にしますが、日本食ブームを追い風にして旧統一教会の水産ビジネスは大成功したそうです。尚、この書籍を読んでも（鮪の）刺身や鮨が教祖の好物であったかどうかは判りませんでした。
以前の記事『宗教を軸にした国際的錬金術 － 旧統一教会の（営利）関連企業』では殆どふれませんでしたが、水産ビジネスは日本国内においても重要な営利事業のようです。この書籍や『み旨と海』に目を通す時間がない方には（１年余り前に掲載された）米国で大規模に営まれる旧統一教会の水産ビジネスに関する記事（の日本語抄訳）をお薦めします。
2021.12.4
全米の寿司レストランを支える彼らの「鮮魚ビジネス」の歴史
アメリカで寿司を広めた意外な人々─それは“旧・統一教会”だった
ニューヨーク・タイムズ・マガジン
ダニエル・フロムソン
まず、神は「寿司会社」を創造していない。寿司は後からやってきた。「トロ」や「オマカセ」の意味を知っているアメリカ人がほとんどいなかった1980年はもっとシンプルな時代だった。その日、ニューヨークにある「ニューヨーカーホテル」の大宴会場で、統一教会の創始者である文鮮明は、数十人の信者たちに語りかけていた。
集まった70人の信者のほとんどは日本人
その時代のエネルギーと、その日を待ち望んでいた信者たちの姿が想像できるだろうか。アメリカ中から、文が所有する超高層ビルに信者が集められた。元ホテルだったそのビルの2000室を、文は聖塩で祝福し、宣教本部に変えていた。
ほとんどの人は文を遠巻きからしか知らない。同じ服を着た何千人もの「ムーニーズ（統一教会の信者）」をマジソン・スクエア・ガーデンで結婚させた丸顔の「救世主」は、その後脱税容疑で有罪となり、恐れられ、嫌われた洗脳者からぼやけた、道化者的な存在に変わっていった。
だが、大宴会場に集まった若い信者は、文が人類の「真の父」だと考えていた。文は韓国出身だが、その日、彼が人生を変えてしまった70人ほどの信者の大半は日本人だった。
例えば、神戸聖公会主教の末子であるヤシロ・タケシは、進行性の病気で死にかけていた、勉強ができない10代の学生だった。奇跡的に一命を取り留めた彼は、世界を見るために旅に出た。彼がニューヨークで統一教会に入信した後、彼の母親は、彼を訪問しないよう親戚に告げている。そして、その日30歳の移民であるヤシロは、自由の女神よりも高いアールデコ調の建物で、新たな使命を授かろうとしていた。
そしてその日、文はそこにいた。文は未来を見て、夢の中に現れ、霊界と話すことができるとうたっていた。そこでは、キリストや仏、モーゼやワシントン、カリフや皇帝、キング牧師、さらには神までもが、彼の偉大さを称えるのである。
ある信者が保存していた文書によればその日、4月16日は典礼を唱え、汗と涙と血を武器にしてサタンを倒すことを誓う統一教会の祝日の翌日だった。彼らは永遠に父に従い、神の理想郷を取り戻すと誓ったのである。時にそれは真の世界と呼ばれた。
「あなたたちこそ水産業のパイオニア」
ヤシロたちは熱心に聞いていた。「あなたたちこそが水産業のパイオニアだ。シーフードビジネスだ。先駆けとなり、繁栄を取り戻すのだ」。文は彼らにこう告げたという。
信者が育てた事業は今や、アメリカで唯一の全国的なシーフード会社と言っていいだろう。専門は寿司で、社名はトゥルー・ワールド・フードという。
ヤシロが長年社長を務めた同社は、現在ではアメリカ17州（およびイギリス、カナダ、日本、韓国、スペイン）に支社を持つまでに成長した。トゥルー・ワールド・フーズは、40種類以上のサーモンやイクラ製品、5種類の鯛などの魚介類だけでなく、うなぎのたれ、包丁、ゆずなどのシトラス類、もちアイスクリームなど、アメリカの寿司職人が必要とするほぼすべてのものを扱っている。
親会社であるトゥルー・ワールド・グループ社長を務めるロバート・ブルーによると、トゥルー・ワールド・フーズは2021年度、アメリカとカナダで8300以上の顧客に販売しており、その大多数は寿司屋だった。
日本の子会社は2021年、アメリカに100万キロ以上の鮮魚を輸出する勢いである。多くのアメリカの都市で、中・高級の寿司屋向け販売の7〜8割を同社が占めており、同グループの年間売上高は通常5億ドルを超えるとブルーは語る。
もちろん、今回のコロナ禍は通常とは違う。「うまくやれば、寿司は持ち帰りに最適な食品なので、大きな成功になるだろう」。ブルーは先ごろ「史上最高の売り上げを現に記録している」と筆者に語った。
文の娘の1人、文仁進はかつて説教中に、自分たちの運動が本当に世の中を変えたかどうかと問われて、「信じられないようなやり方で変えた」と答えている。彼女の父はトゥルー・ワールド・フーズを設立したが、「父がこのプロジェクトを始めたとき、誰も寿司が何か、生の魚を食べるとはどういうことなのか、知らなかった」と語る。
仁進によれば、彼女の父が「世界に寿司への愛を広めた」。あるいは、別の場面での彼女の言葉を借りれば、「父の仕事は、すでに人々の体内に取り込まれている」。
誰もが知るように、信仰は複雑なものである。信仰により戦争や芸術運動が始まり、私たちの大半の公的な行動や私的な思考までが影響される。信仰は世界を変えると謳う企業の中にも根を張って、日本の珍味をアメリカのネブラスカ州へ運んだり、あなたが昨日食べた寿司にも関わったりしている。
統一教会を際立たせたのは日本での驚異的な成功
1920年、平壌のプロテスタント復興の余波の中で生まれた文鮮明は、15歳のイースターの日曜日にキリストが現れて、これからしなければならない務めについて話したとしている。迫害と生存の物語を織り交ぜた話（特に共産主義者によって労働キャンプに投獄された話は有名である）は、主にアジア、アメリカ、ヨーロッパで何万人もの信者を集めるのに役立った。
キリスト教に仏教、儒教、シャーマニズム、性魔術などの要素を融合させた文の信仰は、ほかの韓国の新興宗教とさほど変わりがなかった。だが、最終的に統一教会を際立たせたのは、日本での驚異的な成功だった。
特に、脱会者たちの証言によると、日本の統一教会の財務部と密接な関係を持つ「ハッピーワールド」というコングロマリットが全国で勧誘担当のネットワークを築くのに大きな役割を果たしたという。彼らは教会との関係を否定するように指導され、しばしば潜在的な信者に、病気や呪いを指摘することによってアプローチした。これは例えば、高価な高麗人参茶や、韓国の文の関連機関から輸入した石塔のミニチュアを購入することによってのみ癒すことができるというものだった。
やり方には問題があるが、効果はあった。資金集めは大成功し、教会史家のマイケル・ミクラー氏の言葉を借りれば、日本は世界的な運動の原動力となる「巨大な資金源」になったのである。1972年、文が渡米した後、日本人の先鋭的な信者も続いた。
元財務担当の供述書によると、文が信頼する日本人会計士の秘書が約180万ドルを詰めたブリーフケースを持ってアメリカに到着した。1976年から2010年まで、日本統一教会はアメリカに36億ドル以上を送金することになる。
何百人もの日本人がアメリカへ渡った
当初、この2つの人的、そして資金の流れは、主に2つの方法で寿司の未来を形作った。1つは数十億ドルを受け取って運営するワシントンの新企業と運命を共にすることであった。統一教会とは法的に異なるにもかかわらず、この企業は「Unification Church International（統一教会インターナショナル）」と名付けられ、現在ではトゥルー・ワールド・グループを所有している。
統一教会インターナショナルは、寿司のホールディングカンパニー以上の存在である。時には直接、時にはペーパーカンパニーを経由して、文のメディア資産、反共活動、バレエ団、脱税をめぐる訴訟、さらには、北カリフォルニアにあるチンチラ牧場（300万ドル近くを受け取った）にも資金を提供した。しかし、これはまた、統一教会がシーフードビジネスを指導するための手段でもあった。
2つ目の要因は、もっと単純なものだ。1980年までに、何百人もの日本人宣教師が地球を半周してアメリカに渡っていたのだ。
ニューヨーカーホテルの大宴会場で、ヤシロは「兄弟姉妹」とともに、世界の飢餓をなくすための計画に駆り出されていることに誇りを感じていた、と彼は回想する。
ほとんど知られていないことだが、ヤシロの「真の父」は1970年代から1980年代にかけて、巨大なマグロを追いかけながら、海の霊的可能性について説いていた熱心な漁師であった。文は、海こそが難解な神学プロジェクトと垂直統合されたビジネス帝国を含む「海洋摂理」全体の起源だと考えていたのである。ある意味「マグロを捧げものと捉えている」と、文はスピーチで語っている。
ヤシロとほかの「魚のパイオニア」たちが大宴会場で文の話を聞くまでに、統一教会インターナショナルはすでに1000万ドル以上を投じて、アラスカの加工工場を含む、アメリカ本土のすべての海岸で造船所と水産物の事業に始めていた。が、取った魚は売らなければならない。パイオニアたちによると、そこで文が考えたのが、冷蔵車で一軒一軒売り歩き、同時に布教活動も行うことだったという。
全員に100ドル札を渡した
文は全員に100ドル札1枚という資金を渡した。100ドル札1枚である。彼らは全米50州すべてに派遣された。「ノースダコタ州も含めて」とヤシロは笑う（彼はマサチューセッツ州担当になった）。ルイジアナ州を目指したマイク・ツルサキは、文自身から受けた厳しい警告を覚えている。「父がいつ来てもいいように準備しておくんだ。醤油とわさびは常備しておけ」。
ヤシロはボストンに行き、マックス・ナガイという友人も加わって先駆者となった。ナガイは風船を売ってワゴン車を買うための金を稼ぎ、グラスファイバーとベニヤ板で断熱材を作った。「魚を売るのは楽しかった」とヤシロは振り返る。ただ、冷凍のスケトウダラを売るのは大変だったという。
一軒一軒の家を訪ね歩くところから、小売り、卸売りへと移行していった。一方、教会の上層部はヤシロをシカゴに配置転換し、そこで20時間労働を課し、「レインボーフィッシュハウス」という卸売業者の設立に携わらせた。
ヤシロは、精神的な兄弟とともに、粗末なアパートに詰め、時には床で寝たこともあったという。それが彼らの「アメリカンドリーム」でだったとヤシロは言う。その夢が突然、寿司に向かって進み始めたのである。
健康的な食事、テレビドラマ「将軍」、ステータスにこだわる高級志向などの強力な文化の流れが、トヨタに乗り、カシオを身につけた人々が日本のビジネスエリートが食べる生食品を受け入れる方向に作用していたのである。
共同貿易会によると、1977年から1980年にかけて、南カリフォルニアの寿司屋の数は、わずか39軒から116軒に急増したという。1989年、ワシントン・ポスト紙に掲載されたある寿司職人は、昔はナイフとフォークを要求されたと回想している。今では1日に1000貫は握っており、「寿司ひじ」に苦しんでいるそうだ。
寿司現象は明らかに、社会的区別の感覚、独自の儀式と規則を持つ美食の領域に入るという感覚に依存していた。1981年に『USニューズ&ワールド・レポート』がアトランタの「現地スタイルの仕掛け人」を対象に行った調査では、（ラケットボールや「装飾色としての桃色」と並んで）寿司が「流行」だと宣言している。「ブレックファスト・クラブ」では、モリー・リングウォルドが演じるキャラクターの洗練された雰囲気を象徴するために、寿司のランチが登場したのは有名な話だ。
高級食から大衆食になった寿司
しかし、徐々に、必然的に、寿司は社会に浸透していった。球場の軽食になり（1980年代後半からカリフォルニアのメジャーリーグ球場で提供）、ラップの歌詞にもなった（ビッグ・ダディ・ケイン：「俺はグッチみたいに本物だ、寿司みたいに生だ」）。それは文化外交でもあった（ビル・クリントン「とても気に入っている」）。
1991年の「シンプソンズ」のエピソードで、ホーマーは（大将がエドナ・クラバーペルと車の中でいちゃついていて留守のため）未熟な寿司職人がさばいた致死量の毒入りフグを食べながら、「うーん！ ファンフグタスティック」と称賛する。
スプリングフィールドと「シンプソンさん」に受け入れられた寿司は、アメリカ中産階級に広く普及することを予感させるものであった。1995年には、カンザスシティ・スター紙がスーパーマーケットの寿司の登場を報じることになる。
ある意味、単純なことだった。アメリカの寿司職人たちは仕入先を必要としていた。そして、寿司に熱狂しているアメリカの各地には、仕入先となりえる人々が待っていた。「彼らは日本人で、私たちも日本人」。ナガイは回顧する。「彼らが私たちのもとにやってきたのだ」。
寿司は文が考えたものではなかった。「寿司で世界が救えると思いますか？」とナガイ。だが、完全なる偶然でもなかった。「アイデアと現実にはときどきギャップがあり、妥協しないといけない時がある」。
100ドル札の時代から40年近くを経て、ニューヨーク都市圏の寿司店の6割と取引をしているというトゥルー・ワールド・フーズ・ニューヨークに、同社のマネジャーが迎えてくれた。
全米に22あるトゥルー・ワールド・フーズの支社の中で最大となるこの支社は、実際にはニュージャージー州にあり、ニューアーク空港の近くに戦略的に建てられている。時刻は午前6時頃、寿司の世界では午後遅くにあたり、トゥルー・ワールドの配送トラックがマンハッタンに到着しようとする時間帯である。
サッカー場1.5個分相当の冷凍倉庫
冬の南極並みに寒いウォークイン式超低温フリーザーなどの例外を除き、施設の中心部はつねに2℃に冷やされている。ホッキ貝、太平洋産の牡蠣、カリフォルニア産のウニが並ぶ棚の向こうで、従業員がヘアアイロンのようなものを振るい、頭のないチリ産シーバスの鱗を取っている。マグロ部屋では、ボストン産のマグロの塊から細かい骨を取り除く作業をしていた。配車室では、壁一面に貼られた地図や鍵の横でドライバーが朝食をとっていた。活魚室では、湯船ほどの水槽が3段重ねになっており、広大な乾物ゾーンでは、半トンパレットに生姜の漬物のバケツが並べられていた。
倉庫はサッカー場1.5個分よりやや小さい。この倉庫は1980年代後半に、数人の日本の上級信者より購入された。そのほとんどは文が合同結婚式を挙げた人たちだった。
トゥルー・ワールド・フーズは、結局は利益重視のコングロマリットで、その宗教的な背景は興味深くはあるがさして重要ではないかのように見えるかもしれないーー言ってみればマリオット・インターナショナルの寿司版のようなものだと。マリオットは、何十年にもわたって一般株主が主導し、時には創業者一族のモルモン教の信仰とは相反する経営判断（例えば、アルコールの提供など）を行ってきている。
しかし、モルモン教創始者のジョセフ・スミスとその直系の弟子たちによって、その歴史の大半を導かれてきた水産会社をイメージするほうが、現実のトゥルー・ワールドには近いだろう。
トゥルー・ワールドは創業以来、そのアイデンティティーの基礎となる部分、つまり誰がリーダーを務めるか、どこでどのように、いつ事業を拡大するか、年次総会でのメッセージ発信、事業が果たすべき目的、従業員が受け入れるべき犠牲とその理由などを、ビジネス界の通例に反して、直接的、または間接的に文個人の力によって形成してきたのである。
例えば、トゥルー・ワールドが1つのブランド、1つの事業として業界をリードしてきたのは、統一教会のおかげである。もともと、トゥルー・ワールドの卸売部門は正式には統一されていなかった。ヤシロがシカゴで指揮を執り、ナガイがボストンを管轄するのと同じように、ほかの信者たちも独立した事業を立ち上げたり、あるいは継承して、南はマイアミ、西はカリフォルニアまで広がる勢力圏を形成していったのである。
信者たちの企業を次々合併
法人としてのトゥルー・ワールド・グループは、1976年にインターナショナル・オセアニック・エンタープラゼズ（以下IOE）として設立され、統一教会インターナショナル最大の収益を生み出す営利目的の子会社に成長した。IOEの初期の役員には、アメリカ統一教会の2人の会長だけでなく、文自身も含まれていた。文が肩入れするアラスカの水産ベンチャーなど、IOEによる主要な買収は、彼の個人的な関心を反映していた。が、卸売事業については"真の父"の影響力は限定的だった。
1994年、ハドソンバレーの教会の敷地で開かれた海洋摂理についての祝賀会で、文はIOEの社長から黄金のトロフィーを贈られた。この頃には、文が始めたことの方向性はますます明白になっていた。会場はボストンのロッキーネック・シーフード、シカゴのレインボーフィッシュハウスなど、アメリカ中の同業者のブースや展示で埋め尽くされていた。
合併はすでに始まっていたのだ。しかし、それぞれ独立した企業のリーダーたちが、その保有株を統一教会インターナショナルに寄付し、トゥルー・ワールド・フーズとして一体化することは、決して前もって決められてはいなかった。
「自分の会社はいわば自分の小さな王国であり、とても居心地がいいものだ」と、ヤシロの妻で、レインボーフィッシュで彼と共に働き、後にトゥルー・ワールド・グループの管理者となった、ジェニファー・ヤシロは語る。それを放棄することは、「トップダウンの」のスピリチュアルなビジョンの一部だった、と彼女は振り返る。
タケシ・ヤシロは、トゥルー・ワールド・フーズの社長として、1999年に子会社群の正式名称変更の準備作業を行った。トゥルー・ワールドの新しいロゴは、人型のTとWを囲む半球状の2本の矢が宇宙の「ギブ・アンド・テイク」を象徴したものだ。これは統一教会のエンブレムから借用したもので、文は個人的にデザインを承認した、とヤシロは語った。
今にして思えば、全米に展開する寿司の卸売企業の出現は、神の所業とも思えるほど突然の出来事だった。しかし、実際には、トゥルー・ワールドの成功は、ゆっくりと積み重ねられてきたものなのである。例えば、教会によるお見合い結婚では国籍が異なる夫婦が多く、これは日本の「魚のパイオニア」たちが合法的にアメリカに滞在することを可能にした。特に初期の頃は、信者たちは共同生活をしながらわずかな報酬、あるいは無給で働いた。
携帯電話のネットワークのように広がった
事業拡大に際しては、活動の資金援助をしていたハッピーワールドの日本人メンバーが、その豊かな資産力と信用力で、ニュージャージーの冷凍倉庫など新たな施設などを購入し、トゥルー・ワールドの事業規模と地理的な範囲を拡大することを後押ししたのである。
その文化的影響力を数値化することは難しい。しかし、水産業のパイオニアたちがボストンからシカゴ、デトロイト、アトランタ、ダラス、そしてその先まで寿司の新境地を開拓し、大きな変化をもたらしたことは明らかである。デンバーのレストラン「寿司伝（Sushi Den）」の副社長であるヤス・キザキは、「トゥルー・ワールドがなかったら、デンバーは寿司で大きく遅れをとっていただろう」と語る。
文の信者たちは、ブームを起こしたわけではなく、盛り上げたのである。まるでアメリカで最初、かつ唯一の全国的な携帯電話ネットワークのように寿司のネットワークを築き、勢い増し続けることで、誰もがどこにいても腕のいい寿司職人の店に行けるようになった。そして、そうした職人の店はトゥルー・ワールド・フーズの配達圏内にあるのだ。
（敬称略）
Nov. 5, 2021
The Untold Story of Sushi in America
By Daniel Fromson
Illustrations by Igor Bastidas
In the beginning, God did not create a sushi company.
The sushi came later.
So did the unraveling of a controversial religion and the lawsuit for control of its mysterious assets.
In the beginning, it was a simpler time — 1980, when few Americans knew the meanings of toro and omakase — and there was only the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church, speaking to dozens of his followers in the Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel.
You can imagine the energy of that era and their anticipation of that day. The followers had been called from all across the country to New York City, to Moon’s very own skyscraper, the vacant hotel whose 2,000 rooms he blessed with holy salt, transforming it into his missionary headquarters. Most people perceived Moon only from a distance — the round-faced messiah who would marry thousands of identically dressed “Moonies” at Madison Square Garden, be convicted of federal tax fraud and eventually soften from a feared, detested brainwasher into a hazy, zany memory, fit for a Don DeLillo novel or a “Seinfeld” joke. But to the young followers in the Grand Ballroom, he was considered humanity’s True Father.
Though Moon was from Korea, most of the 70 or so followers whose lives he changed that day were Japanese. They were people like Takeshi Yashiro, the youngest son of the Anglican bishop of Kobe — an underachieving student who was nearly struck down as a teenager by a progressive disease. When he miraculously survived, he set out to see the world. After he joined Moon’s church in New York, his mother told relatives not to visit him. Now here he was, a 30-year-old immigrant in an Art Deco ziggurat taller than the Statue of Liberty, ready to receive a new mission.
And here he was. It was said Moon could see the future, visit you in dreams and speak with the spirit world, where Jesus and Buddha, Moses and Washington, caliphs and emperors and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and even God himself would all proclaim his greatness. The date, according to a document a follower saved, was April 16, the day after a church holiday when they would have recited the liturgy known as Pledge, vowing to use their sweat, tears and blood as weapons to defeat Satan. They promised to attend their Father forever and restore God’s ideal world. The true world, they sometimes called it. Their oath ended with the following words:
I will fight with my life.
I will be responsible for accomplishing my duty and mission.
This I pledge and swear.
This I pledge and swear.
This I pledge and swear.
Now Yashiro and the others listened intently. “You,” Moon later recalled telling them, “are the pioneers of the fishing business — the seafood business. Go forward, pioneer the way and bring back prosperity.”
They did. Today a business they grew and shaped is arguably America’s only nationwide fresh-seafood company of any kind. It specializes in sushi, and its name is True World Foods.
Yashiro spent many years as True World’s president, overseeing an operation that now includes branches in 17 states (and Britain, Canada, Japan, Korea and Spain). It distributes not only fish and shellfish — more than 40 salmon and salmon-roe products, five species of Japanese sea bream — but also eel sauce, knives, exotic citrus, mochi ice cream bonbons and virtually every other input a sushi chef might need.
According to Robert Bleu, the president of its parent conglomerate, the True World Group, in its current fiscal year True World Foods has sold to more than 8,300 clients in the United States and Canada, overwhelmingly sushi restaurants. Its Japanese subsidiary is on track to export more than a million kilograms of fresh fish to the United States in 2021. In many cities, Bleu says, True World sells to between 70 and 80 percent of midrange and high-end sushi restaurants; the group’s annual revenues typically exceed $500 million. The pandemic, of course, wasn’t typical, but “sushi was a big winner in Covid, because sushi is a great takeout food if done right,” Bleu told me recently. “We’re actually doing our strongest sales in history.”
One of Moon’s daughters, In Jin Moon, once asked in a sermon whether their movement really made a difference. “In an incredible way, we did,” she said: Her father created True World Foods. “When he initiated that project,” she went on, “nobody knew what sushi was or what eating raw fish was about.” Moon, she concluded, “got the world to love sushi.” Or as she put it on a different occasion, “My father’s work is already in their body.”
Faith, we all know, is complicated. It can start wars or artistic movements, define our most public acts or most private thoughts. It can also live in the marrow of a world-altering corporation, bringing Japanese delicacies to Nebraska or influencing the sushi you ate yesterday, which may itself be edible proof that people and values at the edges of our culture have moved closer to the center, but not in the way we expect. For True World Foods, this deep entanglement of business and religion would confer both hidden advantages and a singular vulnerability. It would make possible “the sushi thing,” as Yashiro once called it, even as it laid the foundation for a bitter Moon-family feud — and a lawsuit whose consequences for tuna and salmon are still unfolding. At times comically, at times tragically, Moon’s followers have expanded our understandings of what faith can and cannot do.
Their greatest achievement would always be linked to their greatest limitations. After all, they set out to build God’s kingdom — and somehow ended up selling America’s raw fish.
Sushi, as the University of Kansas historian Eric C. Rath has written, is an “anonymous cuisine,” a shape-shifter that, responding to forces more powerful than human genius, “keeps evolving silently in new ways that few can predict.”
It originally wasn’t Japanese: Like rice cultivation and ironworking, Chinese characters and Zen Buddhism, sushi came from across the sea, invented in China or Southeast Asia before appearing in Japanese records, as a form of tribute or currency, more than a millennium ago. It also wasn’t raw. For most of its history, sushi was fermented — a patchwork of often esoteric regional dishes consisting of seafood preserved with salt and usually rice, though some mountain dwellers favored deer or boar. A 12th-century tale tells of a drunken peddler who vomits into her sushi barrel, a crime that no one was likely to notice because the contents were so pungent.
The rectangles on today’s plates and emoji keyboards, in contrast, known as nigiri sushi, resulted from a steady reduction in the level of preservation and were popularized as a street food in modernizing Edo (and then Tokyo, as the city was renamed in 1868). Japanese papermaking technology, meanwhile, was adapted to manufacture sheets of seaweed, a prerequisite for present-day sushi rolls. Still, as recently as the 1940s, Rath writes, a survey of rural Japan found places where no one had heard of sushi. To really catch on in America, it had to really catch on throughout Japan.
The reasons for this mutual transformation have been scrutinized by an entire academic and popular canon: refrigeration, globalization, industrialization, long-haul air travel, a wave of U.S. Japanophilia that crested in the 1980s amid broader culinary awakenings. Other reasons are slightly less obvious. World War II, for instance, not only ushered in Japan’s roaring postwar economy but also redefined and homogenized its cuisine (by privileging urban staples like rice and soy sauce, alongside prestigious marine specialties). Science, too, played a role. One writer on global sushi culture has theorized that America’s sushi boom would have been impossible without the development in the early 1960s of new domestic medium-grain rice, capable of appropriate clumping into vinegared pillows for fish.
If soldiers and scientists could alter the course of sushi, surely a messiah could as well.
Sun Myung Moon, born in 1920 amid the aftershocks of Pyongyang’s Protestant revival, would tell of how Jesus appeared to him on Easter Sunday when he was 15 and spoke about the work he would have to do. Moon wove tales of persecution and survival — notably his imprisonment by the Communists in a labor camp — into a mythology that helped attract tens of thousands of followers, mainly in Asia, America and Europe. His beliefs, which fused Christianity with elements of Buddhism, Confucianism, shamanism and sex magic, weren’t so different from other Korean new religions. What ultimately set the Unification Church apart was its staggering success in Japan.
In particular, a conglomerate called Happy World, which defectors have said was closely intertwined with the Japanese church’s financial bureau, cultivated a nationwide network of religious sales representatives. Coached to deny their ties to the church, they often approached potential clients by identifying supposed ailments and curses — which of course could be healed only by buying, say, a wildly expensive ginseng tea or a miniature stone pagoda imported from Moon affiliates in Korea.
The tactics were questionable, but they worked; the fund-raisers were so successful that Japan became, in the words of the church historian Michael Mickler, “the economic juggernaut” that powered his global movement. In 1972, after Moon moved to America, a vanguard of Japanese members followed. His Japanese treasurer’s trusted assistant, according to an affidavit by the former treasurer, arrived with a briefcase stuffed with about $1.8 million. From 1976 through 2010, the Unification Church of Japan would send more than $3.6 billion to the United States.
Initially, these twin flows of people and funding shaped the future of sushi in two main ways. The first was by binding its fate to that of a new corporation in Washington, which would receive and manage those billions of dollars. Despite being legally distinct from Moon’s church, it was named Unification Church International; today it owns the True World Group. Unification Church International would turn out to be much more than a sushi holding company. Sometimes directly and sometimes via a shell company, it would finance Moon’s media properties, his anti-Communist activism, his ballet company, his tax-fraud appeal by Laurence Tribe, even a chinchilla ranch in Northern California (which received nearly $3 million). But it would also be a vehicle through which the religion guided the seafood business.
The second sushi-shaping factor was more straightforward. By 1980, hundreds of Japanese missionaries had traveled halfway around the planet to America.
In the New Yorker Hotel’s ballroom, Takeshi Yashiro felt proud, he remembered, as he and his “brothers and sisters” were conscripted into a plan to end world hunger. It was a little more complicated, actually. Unknown to most of the world, Yashiro’s True Father was a fervent fisherman who spent much of the 1970s and ’80s chasing giant tuna and preaching about the spiritual potential of the oceans, which he saw as the origin of an entire “ocean providence,” a vision capacious enough to include both arcane theological projects and a vertically integrated business empire.
Moon memorably described the business aspect in a speech titled “The Way of Tuna.” “I have the entire system worked out, starting with boatbuilding,” he declared. “After we build the boats, we catch the fish and process them for market, and then have a distribution network.” It was about more than making money: He was “the future food messiah” who would “solve the food problems of the world.” In a way, he said, “I view a tuna as an offering.”
And it was more than just an idea. By the time Yashiro and the other “fish pioneers” listened in the ballroom, Unification Church International had already poured more than $10 million into shipyards and seafood operations on every coast of the continental United States, including a processing plant in Alaska. It would go on to spend tens of millions more. But someone needed to sell the catch. Moon’s idea, the pioneers say, was for them to peddle it door to door from refrigerated vans, and to proselytize at the same time.
Moon gave each person some seed money: a single $100 bill. They were assigned to all 50 states. “I think we had a lottery,” a pioneer named Tom Akuzawa recalls. “I happened to pick Oklahoma — I didn’t know where Oklahoma was at the time.” “North Dakota,” Yashiro told me with a laugh. (He was assigned to Massachusetts.) Mike Tsurusaki, who set out for Louisiana, remembers a stern warning from Moon himself. “He was very clear,” Tsurusaki says: “‘Father is coming anytime to visit you, so you have to prepare. Always you have soy sauce and wasabi.’”
Yashiro traveled to Boston, where he was joined by other pioneers, including a friend named Max Nagai. He raised money by selling balloons outside Faneuil Hall. They saved up to buy a van, insulating it themselves with fiberglass and plywood. “We had a lot of fun selling fish,” Yashiro said. But frozen pollock from Moon’s plant in Alaska? It was a little hard to sell.
Going door to door gave way to retail and wholesale. Church superiors, meanwhile, reassigned Yashiro to Chicago, he said, where he put in 20-hour days and helped found a wholesaler named Rainbow Fish House; he and his spiritual brothers packed a bare apartment, sometimes sleeping on the floor. “But you know,” he told me, “this is no different from, I believe, all the pioneer people or immigrants who came to the United States.” It was, he said, their “American dream,” a dream that now took a sudden turn toward sushi.
Powerful cultural currents — healthful eating, the TV miniseries “Shogun,” status-conscious yuppified living — were conspiring to help an increasingly Toyota-driving, Casio-wearing public embrace the challenging raw cuisine of Japan’s business elite. According to Mutual Trading Company, a leading wholesaler of Japanese dry goods, from 1977 to 1980 the number of sushi bars in Southern California shot up to 116 from just 39. A sushi chef profiled by The Washington Post in 1989 recalled the before times, when diners asked for a knife and fork. Now he made at least 1,000 pieces a day and suffered from “sushi elbow.”
As critics glorified “beguiling” fish served by “skillful sushi masters” — a few words from The New York Times’s four-star review of Hatsuhana in 1983 — the sushi phenomenon clearly depended on a feeling of social distinction, of entering a gastronomic sphere with its own rituals and rules. A U.S. News and World Report survey of “local style setters” in Atlanta in 1981 proclaimed that sushi was “in” (along with racquetball and “peach as a decorating color”). “The Breakfast Club” famously deployed a sushi lunch to symbolize Molly Ringwald’s character’s prim sophistication.
But slowly, inevitably, sushi’s social meanings multiplied. It became a ballpark snack (served at major-league stadiums in California starting in the late 1980s) and a rap lyric (Big Daddy Kane: “I’m genuine like Gucci, raw like sushi”). It was cultural diplomacy (Bill Clinton: “I like it a lot”). “Mmmm! Fan-fugu-tastic,” Homer declares in a 1991 “Simpsons” episode while eating blowfish sliced by a sushi novice, downing a supposedly lethal dose of venom because the master abandoned the bar to make out in a car with Edna Krabappel. Sushi’s embrace in Springfield and by “Mr. Simpson-san” presaged its broader diffusion through Middle America. By 1995, The Kansas City Star would be reporting on the arrival of supermarket sushi.
In a way, it was simple: The nation’s new sushi chefs needed suppliers, and in every corner of this newly sushi-crazed America, a group of potential suppliers was waiting. “They are Japanese; we’re Japanese,” Nagai remembered. “They came to us.”
Sushi, he acknowledged, wasn’t what Moon planned: “How can you save the world with sushi?” But it wasn’t a total accident either. “The idea and the reality,” he said. “Sometimes there’s a gap. Sometimes you have to compromise.”
Nearly four decades after the day of the $100 bills, a manager welcomed me to True World Foods New York, which does business, the company estimates, with 60 percent of the sushi restaurants in the New York metro area. The largest of 22 True World Foods branches around the country, it is actually in New Jersey, strategically perched near Newark Airport. The time was about 6 a.m. — roughly late afternoon in sushi world, and the hour that True World’s delivery trucks try to arrive in Manhattan.
With a few exceptions like the walk-in superfreezer, which is approximately as cold as the South Pole in winter, the heart of the facility is chilled to a constant 36 degrees. Beyond racks of surf clams, Pacific oysters and California sea urchins, a worker wielded what looked like a curling wand retrofitted for “Mad Max,” defoliating a headless Chilean sea bass. In the tuna room, a man peeled fine bones off a chunk of Boston bluefin. In the dispatch room, drivers ate breakfast beside walls covered in maps and keys; in the live-fish room, hot-tub-size tanks were stacked three high; the vast dry-goods zone contained buckets of pickled ginger arranged in half-ton pallets. The warehouse is slightly smaller than one and a half football fields. It was purchased in the late 1980s by several senior Japanese followers, most of whom Moon married in the same mass wedding.
It is tempting to perceive True World Foods as a profit-minded conglomerate with a colorful yet ultimately peripheral religious back story — the sushi equivalent of Marriott, which has been guided for decades by public shareholders and has sometimes made business decisions at odds with the Mormon beliefs of its founding family (by serving alcohol, for example). Instead, it’s more accurate to imagine a fish company guided for most of its history by the equivalent of Joseph Smith and his immediate disciples. Throughout True World’s existence, foundational aspects of its identity — who will lead, where and how and when to expand, messaging at annual meetings, what purpose the business should serve, what sacrifices employees should accept and why — have defied the business world’s usual gravity and been shaped, directly or indirectly, by the pull of Moon.
Moon’s religion, for instance, was responsible for True World’s industry-defining status as a single brand and operation. Originally, the fish pioneers’ wholesalers weren’t officially united: As Yashiro led efforts in Chicago and Nagai took charge in Boston, other pioneers helped create, or sometimes inherited, independent businesses that would form a constellation stretching south to Miami and west to California. Their church, meanwhile, guided both the rise of their eventual parent company and how everything coalesced under it. As a legal entity, the True World Group, founded in 1976 as International Oceanic Enterprises, would go on to become the largest revenue-generating, for-profit subsidiary of Unification Church International. I.O.E.’s early directors included not only two presidents of the Unification Church of America but also Moon himself. Its high-profile acquisitions — like Moon’s beloved Alaskan seafood venture — reflected his personal preoccupations, while the wholesalers, where True Father’s presence was minimal, remained outside the fold.
But by 1994, when I.O.E.’s president presented Moon with a golden trophy during a celebration of Moon’s ocean providence at a church estate in the Hudson Valley, the direction of what Moon put in motion was increasingly clear. The grounds were blanketed with booths and displays from Boston’s Rocky Neck Seafood, Chicago’s Rainbow Fish House and their counterparts from around the country.
The merger was already underway. Still, it was never preordained that the leaders of these independent firms would donate their ownership shares to Unification Church International and unite as True World Foods. “That’s your own little kingdom, so to speak, and that’s pretty comfortable,” says Jennifer Yashiro, Takeshi Yashiro’s wife, who worked with him at Rainbow Fish and later became a True World Group administrator. Surrendering that freedom, she recalls, was part of a “top-down” spiritual vision.
Takeshi Yashiro helped coordinate the new subsidiaries’ formal name changes in 1999, while serving as president of True World Foods. Moon, he said, personally approved True World’s logo: a humanoid T and W surrounded by two hemispherical arrows symbolizing the “give-and-take action” of the universe, which are borrowed from the emblem of Moon’s church.
In hindsight it can feel sudden — a nationwide sushi distributor emerging as a seeming act of God. In reality, True World resulted from a slow accretion of advantages. The church’s arranged marriages, for instance, frequently between spouses of different nationalities, enabled Japanese fish pioneers to remain in America legally. Especially in the early years, they lived communally and worked for little or no pay. When it was time to expand, Japanese members from the movement-financing Happy World conglomerate mobilized their superior assets and credit to help purchase new properties like the one in New Jersey, supercharging True World’s scale and geographic reach.
The cultural influence of this reach is difficult to quantify. But it’s clear that the fish pioneers’ push into the sushi frontier — from Boston and Chicago to Detroit, Atlanta, Dallas and beyond — resulted in a powerful shift. “It changed the market,” says Yasu Kizaki, vice president of the Denver restaurant Sushi Den. “Without True World, Denver would have been very behind in sushi.”
Moon’s followers didn’t start the boom; they amplified it, as if building the sushi equivalent of America’s first and only nationwide cellular network, whose ever-improving strength and reach meant virtually everyone, everywhere, was within driving distance of a good sushi chef, because every sushi chef was within delivery distance of a True World Foods. And where there were no chefs, the followers became chefs. You already know how that went: Japanese members, 1980s, every state. They reportedly opened around 100 restaurants, including some of the earliest sushi bars in places like Omaha, Boise and Little Rock. “My church asked, ‘Are you OK to go to the United States and start a sushi restaurant?’” Seikichi Muto, a missionary who became a sushi chef in Connecticut, told The New Haven Independent last year. At first, he said, he mainly served more classical sushi, but then the pendulum swung toward special rolls.
As sushi’s silent evolution continued in the 1990s and 2000s, Moon wielded tremendous authority but was rarely involved in day-to-day operations, though his approval would have been sought for momentous decisions. He underpinned a corporate culture of reverence and deference. The True World Group reportedly helped finance projects ranging from Moon’s seminary to his right-wing newspaper, The Washington Times. For many years, the group’s headquarters was in the New Yorker Hotel. Moon once visited a True World property and posed for a photograph, eyebrows arched and mouth agape, while holding a giant lobster.
In at least one well-documented instance, a follower’s choice to set aside lifestyle and comfort for largely devotional reasons resulted in the founding of a new branch of True World Foods. It was 2009, and Seijiro Tanaka, a manager at True World Foods Los Angeles, was instructed to open a location in Las Vegas. In a written “testimony” published online, Tanaka says that his wife was taken aback. She was recovering from a near-fatal cancer, and he would have to leave her behind, along with their sons.
But Las Vegas wasn’t just any city. Moon and his wife spent much of their time there. “To support True Parents, True World Foods also must stand and make an effort,” Tanaka recalls that the True World Group’s chief executive told him. “We are not just doing business; we are doing heaven-and-earth restoration.”
Tanaka moved to Las Vegas. He learned that his competitors there were good at high-volume species like tuna and salmon but weak in Japanese imports, so twice a week, when Japanese seafood arrived by air in Los Angeles, he and a partner drove through the desert round trip to make same-day deliveries in Nevada. His strategy was a success. Bit by bit, the city’s sushi grew better and more diverse — largely because of Moon’s presence.
Soon, however, his True Father’s guidance of True World would be called into question: In 2011, according to Tanaka, lawyers told True World’s managers that they should no longer follow Moon’s commands. (Lawyers for Unification Church International deny this.)
An unsettling realignment of faith and business was taking place.
What exactly this meant — for the company’s leadership, for America’s sushi industry — was not yet clear, but it clearly meant something to Tanaka.
“I have come to feel that it is no longer worthwhile to sacrifice my family,” he wrote in a letter of resignation. He added, “Government without virtue creates broken organizations.”
The Unification movement has survived more than half a century of conflict and controversy: tell-all memoirs; federal investigations; disclosures of sacramental sex rituals and, for instance, the fact that the former Korean military officer who served as publisher of The Washington Times also raised Moon’s illegitimate son. But True World Foods has now been drawn into a different kind of ordeal, one that is existential, more akin to civil war. On one side is Moon’s church, which, since shortly after his death in 2012 at age 92, has been led by his widow, Hak Ja Han Moon, who is considered humanity’s True Mother. On the other side is their eldest living son, Hyun Jin Moon, who maintains that he is his father’s only true successor, and who has taken full control of Unification Church International and its estimated billion-dollar assets, the True World Group included.
“What did the terrorists do when they realized they were going to fight against the largest military infrastructure of the world?” Hyun Jin, who is also known as Preston, once told a small group of associates, according to court documents. “They did asymmetrical warfare. We do asymmetrical warfare.”
One reason for the conflict was succession: Moon’s wife gave birth to seven sons and seven daughters. Substance abuse and behavioral problems effectively disqualified the eldest son, while the second son died as a teenager from a car accident. So for many years, Moon elevated the third son, Preston, making him vice president of his newly restructured church and eventually president and chairman of Unification Church International. But in a supplicating yet self-righteous report to his parents in 2008, Preston denounced what he saw as the religion’s misguided copying of “the failing methods and structures of the mainline Christian churches,” arguing that it needed to become more of a global interfaith movement. He added, “Shall we lead the world back to God, or shall we forever remain a cult or new religion?”
Moon not only rejected the pitch; a few weeks later, he inaugurated Preston’s youngest brother as the international president of the church. Preston’s allies have argued that Hak Ja Han, corrupted by Rasputin-like clerics and enabled by a medium who channeled the spirit of her dead mother, plotted with rival heirs to remove Preston from power and has since deviated from Moon’s original teachings, notably by calling herself God’s Only Begotten Daughter. In addition, they have argued that Moon, late in life, was heavily impressionable or even senile. (The youngest brother, Hyung Jin Moon, also claims he was forced out. His own schismatic congregation has achieved infamy for the AR-15-style rifles and golden crowns of bullets made from inert ammunition featured prominently during ceremonies.)
In 2009, Preston filled the board of Unification Church International with loyal associates and began directing its assets toward his own interfaith peace movement. His actions spilled into True World Foods in 2011, when Yashiro visited his True Father in Las Vegas with a delegation of around 60 senior True World employees, in defiance of Preston’s wishes. Yashiro was fired before they even left. Others later resigned or were demoted. According to lawyers for Preston and Unification Church International, Yashiro was told in advance by True World’s board that the visit to Moon was staged as part of an attempted hostile takeover of True World. Yashiro, in contrast, told me that Preston was the biggest thief in the history of Moon’s church. True World, he said, was “the blood, sweat and tears of my brothers and sisters.”
Not long after, Moon’s church filed suit against Preston and his fellow board members in District of Columbia Superior Court, claiming that they had effectively stolen Unification Church International by violating a fiduciary obligation to manage it in the church’s interests. Moon died the following year.
The True World Group’s current president, Robert Bleu, says that True World Foods never stopped serving Moon’s vision. It’s just that the keeper of Moon’s vision is now Preston. “If reason would prevail, I think that we would be fine,” he said of the court case. Bleu called Preston “a man of deep conscience” whose “fantastic work,” like “peace building” efforts between North and South Korea, was being impeded by “a tragic, heart-wrenching situation.”
Paradoxically, by setting off an exodus of True World managers, Preston freed Yashiro and the others to extend Moon’s sushi legacy even further. When Yashiro and I last met, at a diner in the New Yorker Hotel, he explained how he had hired various defectors and started a new distributor, Ocean Providence, whose annual sales had already reached $50 million. He was pushing sushi even farther into the Southwest and Upper Midwest, and he seemed unburdened, even buoyant. “Some of the things that they started doing, I kind of like it,” Yashiro added, referring to True World’s new management. Still, he supported the ongoing lawsuit. Someday, he hoped, True World and Ocean Providence would become allies or even merge.
Whatever the ultimate outcome of the conflict, Yashiro won’t be here to see it. In 2018, he received a diagnosis of advanced cancer. He would not be blessed with a second miraculous recovery. At his funeral, he lay in white holy robes in an open coffin, draped in a white-and-red Unification Church flag — the one with the twin arrows that are part of the True World logo, the arrows of give and take. Enormous floral arrangements exploded with color, sent by former True World managers, the Unification Church of Japan, Happy World, Japanese restaurants in Indiana and Arizona. Other offerings were discreet. One was from “Rainbow Fish, Chicago.” “With deepest sympathy,” another note read. “Sisters from fish company.”
When Yashiro was buried a few days later, the flowers were heaped on his grave, covering the freshly turned earth like a quilt. Then it was time for lunch. As is done in many East Asian traditions, his family arranged an altar, where they offered a meal to their loved one in the spirit world. In front of Takeshi Yashiro’s portrait, they placed slices of raw tuna.
After Yashiro’s death, the District of Columbia Superior Court vindicated Moon’s church and his widow, and all the others who stood with them. A judge, deciding whether Preston Moon and his fellow board members breached their fiduciary duties while taking control of Unification Church International, found that they did: first, by rewriting its articles of incorporation to eliminate any obligation to the Unification Church, and second, by engaging in asset transfers contrary to its original corporate mission.
A more punishing analysis eventually followed. In a nearly 100-page order issued last December, the court found that when Sun Myung Moon became disenchanted with Preston, Preston and his allies on the board “proceeded to pillage the company’s assets” and “did it in a way that was secretive, out of the bounds of any kind of review process and not in the best interests of the corporation.” In particular, it identified an “insidious plan” in which the directors, some of whom did not understand basic aspects of what was happening, agreed to irrevocably transfer $470 million in Korean properties and other assets to a Swiss foundation. The foundation supported Preston’s own projects. (Lawyers for Unification Church International say the transfer was a pragmatic financial decision that benefited the movement.)
The court determined that the directors could never be trusted to act in the corporation’s interests. So it ordered that Preston and three co-defendants be removed from Unification Church International’s board — and replaced with directors chosen in consultation with Moon’s church. They are also jointly liable to make the corporation whole by personally repaying more than $530 million, plus interest.
The order, which has been stayed while the defendants pursue an appeal, was stunning — not only because it trumpeted the righteousness of a religion long viewed with suspicion, and not only because it made Preston out to be a villain in “the age-old tale of a struggle for power and money.” It answered, unambiguously, the question of how Sun Myung Moon’s faith was related to True World Foods and his movement’s other principal American business holdings. And the answer was: The businesses were to be owned and operated for the sake of the church, because that obligation had been there from the start. The pioneers’ understanding that they had always been building something for Moon — that mattered. History mattered. To contradict it was not only insidious; it was illegal.
Precisely what all this means for America’s sushi lovers is still unclear, partly because after oral arguments in June in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the parties are still awaiting a ruling. But unless a First Amendment defense, which failed earlier, succeeds, it seems likely that True World’s profits may once again support the Unification Church, as leadership changes trickle down. “We have so many of our faith brothers and sisters still working in the business,” Jennifer Yashiro told me. “The chatter around the community was kind of excited, like, ‘Wow, so is True World going to come back?’” In the New Yorker Hotel’s diner, Takeshi Yashiro imagined a happy ending: an earnest last chapter in which True World’s profits might finally help solve the food problems of the world, just as Moon dreamed in 1980.
Yet the reality may be both more ordinary and more eternal: that the changes will be small but persistent. That an unknown few will continue to influence what we eat and maybe even love. That the “economic juggernaut” that now feeds us sushi existed before Takeshi Yashiro and Robert Bleu and will exist after them, having absorbed what they could offer. People move on, get old. Max Nagai retired in Japan. Yashiro, of course, is dead.
If faith’s power has an ultimate limit, it may be the human life span. Over the years, I found myself reading followers’ obituaries. One woman worked “in various church-affiliated Japanese restaurants in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio.” Another, one of “43 Japanese sisters” Moon summoned to his processing plant in Alaska, later delivered packaged sushi in China, “waking at 4 a.m. every morning, preparing the sushi, sending the kids to school, shopping for groceries as well as the next day’s sushi supply, then delivering the packaged sushi by 9 a.m.” — before she finally yielded to a nerve disease and pneumonia. If Moon created a juggernaut, he didn’t stray far from the concept’s origins, the Sanskrit word jagannath, which referred, according to history and legend, to a likeness of Vishnu paraded on an enormous chariot, under whose unrelenting wheels believers were willingly crushed. A follower named Ray O’Neill, who works at a marina in Gloucester, Mass., offered a different metaphor. In the three and a half decades since Moon drew him to Gloucester, he had raised eels, exported dogfish bellies and provided tech support for a tuna fleet in Tunisia. Sometimes, he said, he felt like one of those Japanese soldiers stranded in the Pacific after World War II: still principled, still fighting, left behind.
There was a capriciousness to it all. A few words and off you went. You could pilot a refurbished trawler in doomed pursuit of Antarctic krill — or take tuna to every corner of America. One day the messiah was showing off your lobsters; then he was gone, your company stolen, remade and maybe returned, though maybe not. Your notorious faith might be forgotten, or worse, condemned to watch itself blow up.
But sushi was something certain, something concrete. Taste it. “My father’s work is already in their body.” Moon may be dead and his movement divided, but forget about all that: He gave us money in a ballroom, and we gave you these slices of bream. Was it a compromise? Of course. It was also a liberation. It was American and foreign. It was ridiculous; it was deadly serious. Moon’s tuna was an offering, and it was lunch.
Daniel Fromson is a copy editor for the magazine and an occasional contributor who has written about a quixotic mountaineer, a notorious fish hobbyist and used clothing. Igor Bastidas is a Venezuelan artist, an animator and a director in Brooklyn known for his use of simple images in complex storytelling.
Additional design and development by Jacky Myint.
野村農林水産大臣記者会見概要
日時：令和4年11月4日（金曜日）9時19分～9時44分 於：本省7階講堂
輸出促進事業の再委託先について
『旧統一協会の関係で、2018年の輸出促進事業の一環で事業の再委託先が旧統一協会の関連企業だったことについての質問です。採択の基準では、事業を的確にできるかどうかということで判断されたため当時の決定には問題はなかったということで認識、理解しているんですけれども、今後の再発防止策の必要性については、何か対策をとる必要があるのかないのかについては、省としてどのようにお考えなのかというのがまず1点と、また再発防止策が必要である場合は、事業の採択の基準として、宗教との関係性についても検討する項目として盛り込むべきかどうかについてもお伺いできればと思います。』
『今の質問で1点だけ。このTrue World Foodsですか、これ統一協会の関連企業・関連団体と、農水省は認定しているんですか。そういうふうに考えてらっしゃるんでしょうか。』
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