Conviction Buddhist institutions and contexts Buddhist institutions and lineages Tōgane, Chiba, Japan · 2024

Japan: temple abbot convicted after court finds he exploited a disciple's 'absolute obedience'

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Record class

Core record

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

chief priest (abbot) of a Buddhist temple

Organization

Myōon-ji Temple, Honmon Butsuryū-shū

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

The court's own finding supplies the nexus in the plainest terms available anywhere in this database: the doctrinal relationship of absolute obedience between abbot and disciple is what prevented the victim from refusing.

Guru or spiritual-teacher authority
Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

2024-12-11 · conviction and sentence

Chiba District Court, Yōkaichiba Branch, Japan. Sachihisa Fukasawa, former chief priest of Myōon-ji Temple, was convicted of quasi-forcible indecency against a female disciple, assaulted inside the temple. The court found he had exploited the relationship of absolute obedience (絶対服従の関係) to prevent the victim from refusing.

Documented coercion mechanisms

doctrinal relationship of absolute obedience between abbot and disciple

Cited record

Sources

reliable contemporaneous court reporting verdict report Contemporaneous Japanese reporting of the Chiba District Court (Yōkaichiba branch) verdict in the Myōon-ji case, 11 Dec. 2024.: Reports the conviction for quasi-forcible indecency and quotes the court's finding that the abbot exploited the relationship of absolute obedience.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis: https://ameblo.jp/yume-ichijo/entry-12878511753.html Corpus classification: reliable-contemporaneous-court-reporting; evidentiary role: verdict-report. SHA-256 f29084698c09014a3b52e127bb14f544a73da6d4f8d9ee9cb689564fafe7b53b
Retrieval: 2026-07-20 · Preserved; Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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