Uchu Shinri Gakkai (Cosmic Truth Society), a Japanese religious body that operates “love hotels” in five prefectures, hid some 1.4 billion yen in income in the seven years up to February 2008, it has been learned.

The group claims the money represents donations that wen to help needy youngsters.

Bankruptcy procedures for AUM Shinrikyo have effectively ended, but victims of the 1995 sarin gas attacks on Tokyo’s subway system and other crimes by cult members have received only 40 percent of the compensation that they should have been paid, the receiver said Wednesday.

The victims will also receive up to 30 million yen each from the central government depending on their degree of suffering under a relief law set to take effect Dec. 18. [video]

Lawyers for the Japanese doomsday cult leader on death row for ordering a deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995 have requested a retrial, a court official said Tuesday.

The petition was based on what Asahara’s lawyers considered new evidence from testimony by a senior member of the cult that the attacks had been carried out against their leader’s wishes.

When it comes to funerals the Japanese have traditionally been inflexibly Buddhist – so much so that Buddhism in Japan is often called “funeral Buddhism,” a reference to the religion’s former near-monopoly on the elaborate, and lucrative, ceremonies surrounding deaths and memorial services.

But that expression also describes a religion that, by appearing to cater more to the needs of the dead than to those of the living, is losing its standing in Japanese society.