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| 5. Acts of soliciting donations committed against Plaintiff
B A. The following is a summary of the Higashi Osaka Culture Center system, according to evidence submitted. 1. From 1980 until 1992, Hitomi Hayashi was a member of the Defendant. However, while she was a member, she joined the Higashi Osaka Culture Centerfor a period in which she conducted missionary work aimed at attracting women. In this capacity, Hayashi played the role of soliciting women and bring them to the culture center. The specific methods involved in her work consisted of reading the destinyof women by recording the sum of strokes in each of the Chinese characters in the woman's name and the total sum of these strokes. She would them draw a fate line which connect these said two figures. Thirty (30) patterns of this type of destiny reading could be applied to the fate line. The destiny reading could reveal any one of three fates: (1) "Katei Suiin" (declining of one's family fortune) i.e. "The family lineage up to three generations previous gradually fails to show talent or skill sue to a decline in fortune. Chances may be missed due to such things as unexpected illness"; (2) "Shikijo Innen" ( fate of sexual relations) i.e. "suffering due to problems with the opposite sex, and/or family break down, an extra-marital affair, and suicide of a female spouse sure to problems in sexual relations"; and (3) "Shinen usui" (weak destiny for children) i.e. "Children are difficult to bear; even if children are born, they may die early; Boy children are difficult to raise; One is not blessed with many successors; and family extinction." At the Higashi Osaka Culture Center, thegoal amount of money to be acquired each month was as much as 100,000,000 yen. Also, at the Higashi Osaka Culture Center, a chart was posted on which thefollowing information was recorded: (1) the agenda for donations (e.g. 1 Day,provisional Closing, Closing ( the set day a donation would be made) and X Day (the day on which the donator would be made to resolve that s/he must offer his or her financial assets; (2) weak points (needs) (of prospective donators; and (3) the goal sum of donations to be acquired was decided according to the following process: the first time a prospective guest wouldcome to the culture center, his or her financial assets would be inquired. Based on this information, a Co-ordinator (e.g. the role of John) would say two amounts of money: one more than and one less than the amount of money inthe guest's holdings. The Co-ordinator would then report these two sums to his or her superior. The superior would then determine the goal amount of the donation to be made by the guest. 2. The above methods were methods of solicitation carried out by the defendant - as the Defendant has admitted in the above) commonly throughout Japan. 3. Minoru Nakai was the director of the Higashi Osaka Culture Center at the time when Plaintiff B (hereinafter, "PB") Nakai has stated that the practiceof name analysis was done as a service in response to the wishes of guests, and was not a means used for sales purposes, and that the manual was nothingmore than something personally drawn up by an earnest salesperson. However, according to what has been admitted in the above and in light of the fact that name analysis was a means used nationally in various places as a way to draw people into missionary activities, Nakai's statement cannot be qualified. Further, witness Uenishi and Nakai have denied the fact that a chart whichrecorded the agenda for donations of other persons, their weak points and the goal amount of donations sought from them - was posted at the Higashi Osaka Culture Center. However, according to what has been admitted in the above, and in light of the facts that goal amounts of donations were set in various places throughout Japan and that these donations were solicited in aplanned way, the statements of witness Uenishi and of Nakai cannot be qualified. |
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