Japanese New Religions in the Age of Mass Media
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Japanese New Religions in the Age of Mass Media IJCC 2017 Japanese New Religions in the Age of Mass Media INOUE Nobutaka Translated by Norman HAVENS and Carl FREIRE © Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University, Tokyo, Japan, 2017 Main shrine of Kurozumikyō (Okayama prefecture) Headquarters of Tenrikyō (Nara prefecture) Mirokuden of Ōmoto (Kyoto prefecture) Headquarters of Sekai Mahikari Bunmei Kyōdan (Shizuoka prefecture) Asahara Shōkō performing an Initiation ritual Sōka Gakkai young members' convention in 1989 CONTENTS Chapter 1 Are the New Religions a Menace? .................................... 1 Chapter 2 The Fate of the New ............................................................ 14 Chapter 3 Those Who Anger and Attract ........................................... 27 Chapter 4 The Sudden Appearance of a New Mutation ................... 47 Chapter 5 The Metaphorof Disease ...................................................... 61 Chapter 6 Behind the Scenes of Postwar Transformation ................... 82 Chapter 7 Reproduction and Normalization in the New Religions ... 96 Chapter 8 The Road to Phenomenal Growth .................................... 114 Chapter 9 Expanding Abroad ............................................................. 127 Chapter 10 The Age of Religious Information .................................... 140 Chapter 11 A New Model? ................................................................... 153 Chapter 12 Behind the Façade ............................................................. 168 Chapter 13 Aum Shinrikyō and the Age of Confusion ........................ 183 Choronology ........................................................................................... 197 Chart ....................................................................................................... 200 Glossary ................................................................................................... 202 Preface The bulk of this book comprises a translation of Shinshūkyō no kaidoku (An interpretation of new religions) written by Inoue Nobutaka and published in 1996. Chapters 1 through 12 were first published in 1992, while Chapter 13 was written as a supplementary update to take into account the Aum Shinrikyō gas attack of March 1995. Norman Havens translated the Japanese original, with subsequent editing and revisions by Carl Freire. The author then reviewed the new English text with the translators to discuss the rendering of technical terms for English readers and make further revisions. A chronology of significant events, a chart outlining Japan’s major new religions, and a glossary have been added for the convenience of English readers. Nishio Takumi, a graduate student at Kokugakuin University, assisted in making the glossary. Despite the fact that Shinshukyō no kaidoku was originally published in the 1990s, the basic tendencies in how Japan’s mass media handle new religions in the country remains basically unchanged even in the 21th century. For this reason, I believe the book can still contribute toward understanding the ways in which new religions and Japanese society influence one another, particularly with respect to the role played by mass media in the modernization process. The chart of Japanese new religions has been added to illustrate the nature of the deep interconnections among these groups, making it easier to see how many of them branched off from earlier groups in organizational schisms, or were influenced by another group’s teachings and rituals. The chronology provides a listing of some of the significant events related to new religions that have had a social impact, including some of the changes to the government’s policies on religion since the Meiji Restoration related specifically to the activities of these groups. The glossary compiles the names of religious groups and significant individuals who have been introduced in this book. The names of Japanese religious groups and their founders are often presented inaccurately in works written in foreign languages, so it is hoped that this will serve as a tool that might remedy this issue in the future. We hope that this book will help readers to get a broad outline of the activities of new religions in modern Japan. © 2017 Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University. All right reserved. Published by the Institute for Japanese Culture and Classics, Kokugakuin University, 4-10-28 Higashi, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, Japan. Printed in Japan by .Marui Kōbunsha HAPTER ONE C Are the New Religions a Menace? 1. Biased Perspective Japan’s new religions represent a provocative challenge to everyday perceptions. Unexpected individuals with unlikely backgrounds appear, founding movements that challenge the ordinary, accepted order of society. A middle-aged man or housewife, or on occasion a young woman who until then has been the subject of no particular attention, is suddenly transformed into a “religious founder” (kyōso) capable of mesmerizing crowds. It is this extraordinary or entirely unanticipated aspect of their appearance that elicits the sense of shock, and that may lead to an excessively “scandalous” assessment by others in the society. These new religions continue to be generally referred to in Japan as shinkō shūkyō, the “upstart” religions. When applied to religious groups, the adjective shinkō has the meaning of “newly arisen,” but it may also include the nuance that such groups are shady, and impoverished in terms of religious value. In more common parlance, they are perceived as “dangerous,” “fraudulent,” “opportunistic,” “greedy,” and “shallow.” As a result, while there may be favorable aspects to a group being described as a shinkō shūkyō, the negative nuances of the term generally outweigh any positive connotations. At the same time, it is also undeniably true that responsibility for that negative image lies principally with the sensationalistic way in which the new religions have been depicted within the popular press. One can point to any number of examples in which new religions have been the focus of social scandal, the most recent example being the events connected with the activities of Aum Shinrikyō. Only a few years before that, seven female followers of the group Michi no Tomo Kyōkai immolated themselves on a Wakayama beach following the death of their group’s leader, and before that, one can recall the media coverage given to the group Iesu no Hakobune (“Ark of Jesus”) and their vagrant lifestyle. Already in the late 1950s and 1960s, Japanese society experienced turmoil in response to Sōka Gakkai’s technique of shakubuku or “aggressive proselytizing”; other memorable incidents of the era included the “gold bullion scandal” involving Reiyūkai and the charge that its members embezzled money from a public charitable collection campaign, together with real estate problems experienced by Risshō Kōseikai. 1 In the immediate postwar period, attention was focused on groups like Tenshō Kōtai Jingūkyō—the “dancing religion” founded by the “dancing goddess” Kitamura Sayo—and the events surrounding the “movement of the national capital to Kanazawa” prophesied by the self-styled messiah Jikōson (Nagaoka Nagako) and her proselyte, former sumo grand champion Futabayama. It should be pointed out that such scandals occurred in the prewar period as well. One thinks of Renmonkyō, which was heavily criticized during the Meiji period for its use of “holy water.” Another was the group Taireidō, whose founder Tanaka Morihei attracted attention from the late Meiji into the early Showa periods for his claims of spiritualistic powers. And of course, one must not forget the two great state persecutions of Ōmoto in 1921 and 1935. The doctrines of Tenrikyō were even debated within the National Diet, and the group was subjected to repeated, critical journalistic campaigns. As this brief catalogue makes apparent, the new religions have excited social attention for quite some time. The uproar has been the result of these new groups’ strange behavior from the perspective of everyday society, but the groups themselves likely feel they have done nothing more than act in accordance with their beliefs and their interpretation of prevailing conditions. On some occasions, groups have engaged in their activities with full awareness of the likely social backlash, while in other cases the fact that any social resistance occurs at all appears to come as a surprise to the group. Still other new religious groups maintain a low profile and innocuous level of activities, even though their doctrines do not appear particularly exceptional: respect the deities and buddhas, don’t neglect memorial rites for ancestors, take care of parents, and give earnest attention to your occupation—such entirely conventional ethical norms and values form the central lifestyle guides for many new religious groups. But “conventional” groups like these rarely find themselves at the center of media attention. And while professional scholars study such groups, the resulting research has very little impact on public perceptions of the new religions. To investigate the nature of activities undertaken by such “passive” groups would hardly arouse the natural “news interest” of the typical Japanese journalist—or perhaps more precisely journalists assume their ordinary audience will exhibit little interest in such groups. Based on the standards of popular media, such rationale are only natural, but it must also be pointed out that one result of