Plan for Homes on Church-Inspired Golf Links Riles Neighbors

‘We were told that California Fuji and the church are the same thing, that their religion involved building golf courses around the world.’

Pam Emerson

planner, state Coastal Commission

In the western Santa Monica Mountains near the Ventura County border, looking like an emerald-green carpet lining the bottom of a remote, fire-blackened valley between Westlake Village and the Malibu beaches, is a small golf course with an exotic past and a controversial future.

The PL Malibu Golf Course was founded by a Japanese church that connects golf to its worship--the Church of Perfect Liberty, which has its North American headquarters at a small church in a residential neighborhood of Glendale.

The golf course is the subject of a debate between its owners, who want to build 420 single-family houses around the links, and neighbors who oppose such a development in the lightly populated area.

California Fuji International, which owns the golf course, appears to be connected to the Church of Perfect Liberty. But both the corporation and the church are secretive, refusing to discuss their activities or relationship.

Corporation Holds Title

The church purchased the land in 1972, and title went to California Fuji International in March, 1975, according to county tax records.

(California Fuji has no relationship to Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd., the giant international manufacturer, a spokesman for the U.S. subsidiary of the firm said.)

Church leaders, the golf course manager and Shinya Uehara, the sole California Fuji executive listed with the California secretary of state’s office, declined to be interviewed.

The golf course maintains the PL--for Perfect Liberty--in its name. The church’s founder and former patriarch was Tokuchika Miki. His brother, Michumasa Miki, was president of California Fuji International, according to the Rev. Tatsumi Yano, secretary to the pastor of the Perfect Liberty church in Glendale. Both men are now dead, Yano said.

President Member of Church

Uehara, president of California Fuji who lives in Downey, is a member of the church in Glendale, said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Jack Koshimune. He would not say whether Uehara is related to Keiko Uehara, identified in the church magazine, Perfect Liberty, as its publisher and identified by the church’s headquarters in Japan as “director for North America.”

California Fuji and the church also share telephone numbers and a mailing address at a rear entrance to the golf course property.

California Fuji exists only as a corporate owner of the land and has no other business or function, said Jim Johnson, who described himself as an unpaid consultant to the corporation for the construction project.

“We were told that California Fuji and the church are the same thing, that their religion involved building golf courses around the world,” said Pam Emerson, a planner for the state Coastal Commission, which will have to rule on the acceptability of the construction project if it is approved by county authorities.

‘The Golf Church’

Golf has become firmly, perhaps inextricably, linked with the name of the little-known church.

Called the “Golf Church” even in its native Japan, where golf holds high social status, the church does indeed have golf courses in several nations, including a 36-hole spread in Japan and a golf course in Brazil. Some of the churches in Japan have driving ranges on the roof, and the church has sponsored international golf tournaments.

However, the religion has nothing to do with golf itself and there is no intrinsic connection between the two.

There is nothing in the church’s published beliefs--an outpouring of books, pamphlets and magazines--that sanctifies golf. Baseball fulfills the religious or philosophical needs of many of its millions of Japanese adherents. So, apparently, would almost any other activity or sport, from soccer to cabinetry.

Leaders of the church declined to be interviewed, but the sect’s history, beliefs and achievements are outlined in the group’s literature and in scholarly histories of Japanese religions.

‘Life Is Art’ Tenet

According to the writings, the church’s primary tenet is: “Life is art.” Followers are encouraged to worship God by leading an “artistic life.”

“What that means,” said a woman who said she belonged to the church for several years, “is that you must bring to what you do--whatever it is--the dedication, the passion for excellence that a true artist brings to his work.”

“The person who mops out a cathedral is worshiping God just as greatly as the person who designed the cathedral, if he brings to his art the same dedication as the designer did, the same artistic commitment,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified.

“Golf is a favored sport because it requires such concentration on details and because it can be played by almost anyone. The principles could be applied to any other sport or activity, but it would be difficult to recommend to many people that they take up, say, pole vaulting.”

The idea was expressed by the Church of Perfect Liberty’s founder in its literature:

“There is nothing in human affairs that cannot become art. . . . A conscientious artist, when engaging in artistic creation, completely devotes himself to his work, does not think of position, honor or money and makes extraordinary efforts, even at the risk of his life. In this process of creation, he feels spiritual pleasure akin to religious exaltation.”

Church Founded in 1946

The church was founded in 1946 by Tokuchika Miki, who said he deliberately gave it an English language name because he regarded English as the closest to a universal language and “a modern American name” was needed to help spread the religion around the world. Services at the church in Glendale are conducted in English and Japanese.

Although it is a popular example of what are called in Japan “the new religions,” which sprang up after the country’s defeat in World War II, the church has roots in the nation’s classic religions, Shintoism and Buddhism.

In 1912, a religion called Tokumitsu-kyo was founded by an itinerant Shinto priest named Tokomitsu Kanada.

His chief follower was Tokuharu Miki, a Buddhist priest. Miki said he followed Kanada’s instructions to plant a tree on the site of Kanada’s death in 1919 and pray to it for five years in order to learn who Kanada’s successor was to be. Miki said he then learned that he himself was to be the successor, and he founded the Hito No Michi, or Way of Man, religion.

It was estimated to have a million followers by 1934, but in the late 1930s, with the growth of militarism in Japan, the government banned the religion and arrested its leaders as a threat to the official emperor worship.

Church Re-Established

Miki died in 1938. His son, Tokuchika, was able to re-establish the religion under the American occupation government. He gave it the “PL” name and is revered as “the second founder.” When he died in 1983, he was succeeded as oshieoyasama, or “holy father,” by his adopted son, Takahito Miki.

According to a quasi-governmental Japanese statistical agency, the church had 2.6 million followers in Japan in 1978.

It has a large headquarters, including a hospital, college, “PL Land” amusement park for children, 600-foot-tall modernistic “peace tower” sculpture and three golf courses in Tondabayashi, near Osaka. There are five other golf courses around Japan, owned through a private company, but the church is involved with other sports as well. The church’s senior high school is well known throughout the country for its championship baseball teams.

The church claims a membership of 20,000 families in eight congregations in the United States and Canada. Five of the churches, as pictured in the sect’s English-language magazine, are in private homes.

1,000 Families in L.A. Area

Yano, from the church in Glendale, said the membership in the Los Angeles area is about 1,000 families. A reporter who attended services at the Glendale church on three Sundays found attendance in each case to be about a dozen worshipers.

Church headquarters in Japan said at the time the church bought the PL Malibu Golf Course land in 1972 that the Japanese church was not supplying the purchase funds.

Officials of the church in Glendale have declined to discuss the source of the money used to purchase the PL Malibu Golf Course or anything else about the church’s business.

California Fuji owns not only the 128-acre golf course, but also most of the valley around it--a total of 592 acres.

The assessed value of the land was about $3 million when Proposition 13 froze assessments at the 1975 level, said Mark Ryavec, chief deputy to the county assessor, “so it would be worth considerably more today.”

$33,000 in Property Tax

The tract has not been declared a church site, and the corporation pays about $33,000 a year in property taxes, he said.

In fact, he said, the corporation has not even taken advantage of a legal provision that lowers taxes on golf courses. Owners of golf courses are entitled to be taxed only on the land’s value as a golf course, not its real estate potential, Ryavec said. It is probable their taxes would be far less if California Fuji were to use that provision, he said.

California Fuji wants to build 420 large, three- or four-bedroom houses on winding private streets around the golf course, said Johnson, the building consultant who is with McCoy Investment Co. of Woodland Hills and McCoy Construction Co., which has done grading work on the site.

Although the land falls within the boundaries of Santa Monica Mountains National Recreational Area, the U.S. Park Service, which oversees the recreational area, has no plans to buy the site, said Dan Kuehn, superintendent of the area for the park service.

Subdivision Request Filed

A request to subdivide the property and amend the county general plan to allow construction was filed June 2, said Jeff Taylor, administrator for subdivisions of the county Regional Planning Department. The project conforms to current zoning regulations on the site, which require an acre for each residential unit. However, the county plan requires a minimum of five acres per residence on the level part of the property and 20 acres on hilly segments.

The proposal is being reviewed by the department’s environmental and subdivision committees, Taylor said. “There are a lot of problems, and they can’t act until these are cleared--traffic, hillside development, where the water comes from, where the sewage goes, the whole gamut,” he said.

Eventually, the committee recommendations will go to the Regional Planning Commission, and the project will be the subject of a public hearing, he said. A favorable recommendation by the commission would go to the county Board of Supervisors, which would have to hold another public hearing.

Whatever development the supervisors approve would then have to be reviewed by the Coastal Commission. “I’m confident we’re talking about a matter of years,” Taylor said.

Organizing Opposition

Neighbors hope the lengthy approval process will give them time to block the development. Groups have been meeting in living rooms of isolated mountain houses, planning a campaign against the development.

“A development of this size is in total opposition to all the political decisions of the last 10 years” aimed at creating a national park in the Santa Monica Mountains, said Bill Fox, the informal leader of an ad hoc coalition of groups that includes West Mulholland and Decker Canyon homeowners associations and the Malibu Highlands Assn.

The three groups represent about 200 households living in the immediate area, he said, and they have received promises of support from other groups, including Malibu Township Council and Las Virgenes Homeowners Federation, which represents 17 associations from Calabasas to Lake Malibu.

There are now about 200 residences within six miles of the PL golf course, Fox said. The planned development “would at least double or maybe triple the population,” he said.

Traffic, Sewage Worries

Residents worry about traffic and sewage, he said. Many of them are particularly concerned that the development will have street lights, which they say will ruin their view of the stars, a sight many of them regard as their reward for tolerating the inconveniences of living in the remote, rural hills.

They also worry that the narrow mountain roads will not accommodate traffic if the area is ordered evacuated in a brush fire, as has happened twice in the last eight years.

Johnson said the planners are aware of the neighbors’ concerns and are working on remedies, including an attempt to get county planners to agree on the dimmest street lighting possible.

The development, concentrated on the lower slopes of the property, will not be visible to many neighbors, he said.

“We don’t think it will be obtrusive,” Johnson said. “More than 400 units sounds like a large number, but with that amount of land, this will be a low-density project. The part of Westlake Village where I live averages 3.2 houses to the acre, and this would be about .75 houses to the acre.

“The Santa Monica Mountains plan is to have recreational facilities available, not to prohibit people from living there,” he said.