Shake-up fails to lift support for Japan's cabinet amid questions over church -surveys
Updates with comment from government spokesman, digital minister
TOKYO, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's cabinet reshuffle appears to have done little to ease voter concerns amidst anger about the ruling party's ties to the Unification Church, opinion polls conducted by media groups indicated on Friday.
Links to the church, founded in South Korea in the 1950s and famous for its mass weddings, have become a major liability for Kishida in the month since the suspected killer of former premier Shinzo Abe said his mother was bankrupted by the group and blamed Abe for promoting it.
With approval ratings already at their lowest since he took office in October, Kishida on Wednesday removed some members of his cabinet with ties to the group.
But more than half of respondents to a poll by the conservative Yomiuri daily paper, or 55%, said Kishida's response was insufficient. Overall support for his cabinet slipped to 51%, down 6 points from a poll on Aug. 5-7.
Some 86% of those who responded to a poll by the Nikkei daily said Kishida's action had not erased their concerns about the links of the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to the organisation, but support for the cabinet held steady at 57%.
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