NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS: NEW RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS IN JAPAN

The modern era has been a prolific period for new religious movements in Japan. In Japan, scholars define a new religion as having most or all of the following attributes:

1. Establishment within the last two centuries, usually characterized by features that suggest a religious response to the crises of modernity;
2. A definite moment of establishment and usually a founder possessing special charisma;
3. An important new, distinctive revelation or realization, expressed through some novel doctrine and usually attributed to supernatural sources;
4. A separate institutional structure;
5. Distinctive rites or practices.

In Japan, "old" new religions, which appeared before the restoration of the Meiji emperor in 1868, are distinguished from "new" new religions, which originated after 1970. Some Japanese new religions since the 1960s have become international religions with converts in other countries, while new religions originating in other countries have made converts in Japan. Japans's new religions are significant in the history of religions in Japan and are an important part of global pluralism.

Historical Background

Japanese new religions generally fall into one of the following categories: (1) early new religions, basically Shintō in style of worship but focusing on one central deity and incorporating various Buddhist ideas, and originating before the Meiji restoration of 1868; (2) Ōmoto, whose founders were influenced by the syncretistic, eschatological, and spiritualistic movement of that name dating from the 1890s and its offspring; and (3) the Nichiren group, a category representing revitalizations of Nichiren Buddhism. But there are all sorts of new religions whose religious sources are diverse, including Buddhism, Shintō, Confucianism, Christianity, and others.

The roots of such movements in Japan lie in the rising popular discontent that marked the Tokugawa shogunate (1600–1868) as it drew to a close. During the entire period mass pilgrimages to the shrine of the sun goddess, Amaterasu, at Ise, countryside shamanism, and religious dance rituals were aspects of popular religion, as were the more decorous movements associated with moral philosophers, such as Ishida Baigan (1685–1744), founder of Shingaku (heart learning), and the "peasant sage" Ninomiya Sontoku (1787–1856). The moralists reinforced the Confucian values of work and obligation that made society function, whereas the syncretic "enthusiasts" gave vent to diverse spiritual impulses within a nominally regimented Confucian order. Both tasks became more urgent as the Tokugawa regime went into decline in the early nineteenth century. In those decades the early new religions, synthesizing elements of both popular exuberance and conventional morality, crystallized out of the spiritual ferment.

Many of the new religions offered stability by making pivotal a single example of each type of religious expression in popular religion. Each featured one god out of the many kami and buddhas; one divine teacher and one revelation out of the numerous shamans and visions of the era; one preeminent rite; one religious center and magnet for pilgrimage; one scripture; one institution. At the same time, they interpreted rapid change by explaining it in familiar eschatological language: God is hastening the coming of a new divine age. They helped ordinary people adjust to the ways of the new civilization through their own adaptations of its schools, bureaucracies, and mass media. At the same time by expecting a definite personal commitment of faith (unlike the traditional community Shintō shrines and Buddhist temples), they aided people in meeting the most profound challenge imposed by modernization: taking responsibility for one's own life in a changing and pluralistic world. The influence of the idea of the holy empire gradually dominated the millennialistic imagination during the first half of the twentieth century. Many groups suffered from the strict control of the government because of their deviance from the state system of emperor worship.

After 1945, with the coming of full religious freedom and the discrediting of prewar Shintō and Buddhism in the eyes of many, the new religions grew mightily for several decades. Most were direct or indirect continuations of prewar movements. But they took advantage of the new liberal atmosphere to purify their teaching and practice and drew on Japan's burgeoning affluence to build great temples and even spiritual cities. In the 1970s and 1980s their rate of growth tended to level off, but the new religions remain important aspects of Japanese society; their total membership was estimated somewhere between 10 to 20 percent of the Japanese population in the early twenty-first century.

General Characteristics

Common characteristics of the Japanese new religions include the following:

1. Founding by a charismatic figure whose career often recalls the shamanistic model; that is, supernatural calling, initiatory ordeal, wandering, and oracular deliverances from the spiritual world. As in Japanese shamanism generally, the founder is often female.
2. Tendency toward monotheism or a single, monistic source of spiritual power and value. Against the background of the spiritual pluralism of popular Shintō and Buddhism, the new movements set one deity, one founder, and one revelation as definitive.
3. Syncretism, drawing from several strands of religion and culture. The new religions typically embrace Buddhist doctrine (at least to the extent of inculcating doctrines of karma and reincarnation), extol a basically Confucian morality (as well as what is really a neo-Confucian idea of God as supreme principle or unity), and incorporate Shintō styles of worship. At the same time, notions may be borrowed from Western Spiritualism, New Thought (a nineteenth-century movement stressing the power of thought to heal and bring success), or evolutionism. There is also a strong desire to harmonize the religion with "modern science."
4. The centrality of this world, human beings, and body; a definite, this-worldly eschatology or millennialism. The new religions usually teach that rapid change is afoot and a divine new age imminent, and they place an emphasis on healing. Indeed most of the new religions began as spiritual healing movements, only gradually developing a full spectrum of doctrine and practice. Personal experiences by ordinary people are regarded as important, and accounts of religious experiences play central roles in their practices.

The Early New Religions

The "old" new religions, which appeared before the Meiji restoration, served as prototypes and often training grounds for later new religions. They are characterized by a rural background, making an originally Shintō or folk deity into a monotheistic supreme being and, compared to later movements, show little real evidence of Western influence.

Kurozumikyō

The saintly Kurozumi Munetada (1780–1850) founded this movement after a revelation in 1814. Kurozumi believed himself possessed by the Shintō sun goddess Amaterasu, whom he identified as the infinite deity. This small but influential movement emphasizes healthy living, healing, the cultivation of joy, and worship of the indwelling divine spirit.

Tenrikyō

Tenrikyō (religion of heavenly wisdom) originated in 1838, when a farmer's wife, Nakayama Miki (1798–1887), was possessed during a shamanistic rite by a deity who identified himself to her as the true and original God. Subsequently, this deity, now known to followers as God the Parent, imparted through Miki healing gifts and revealed scripture. Tenrikyō features an account of the Creation and the performance of a dance ritual that recalls it.

Konkōkyō

In 1859 a peasant, Kawate Bunjirō (1868–1912), felt himself called by the high god Tenchi Kane no Kami to a ministry of mediation between the divine and humankind. This he did through the Konkōkyō (religion of golden light), a faith that teaches that God is benevolent and that offers a practice called toritsugi, in which supplicants receive spiritual counsel from a priest.

The Ōmoto Group

The prolific Ōmoto (great source) new religions, stemming from the late-nineteenth-century Ōmoto faith itself, are characterized by a monotheism combined with a rich vision of a complex spiritual world from which souls descend into matter, a picture somewhat reminiscent of Western Neoplatonism and Gnosticism. They also have a strong affirmation of immediate and continuing divine revelation and an eschatological bent emphasizing an imminent paradisical new age. The influence of Western Spiritualism, Swedenborgianism, and New Thought is apparent.

Ōmoto

In 1892 Deguchi Nao (1837–1918), a peasant woman and member of Konkōkyō who had experienced many personal troubles, began to deliver divine oracles. Although the messages were initially from the Konkōkyō deity, Nao left that faith in 1897 and soon thereafter met Ueda Kisaburō (1871–1948, later Deguchi Onisaburō), a mystic and spiritualist whom she believed to be the great teacher her revelations had predicted would be sent from God. Under him Ōmoto became a well-organized and rapidly expanding religion that emphasized the oneness of God, the existence of a formative spiritual world behind the material, the temporary descent of souls from the spirit realm into the world of matter, the expression of the divine through art, and the coming of a new age heralded by a great teacher. Onisaburō also devised rites of healing, as had Nao in the early years of the movement. The increasingly totalitarian government forced it to disband in 1935. Although it was reorganized in 1946, it has never regained its former strength.

Seichō no Ie

The founder of Seichō no Ie (literally, house of growth), Taniguchi Masaharu (1893–1985), was an avid reader of Western and Eastern philosophy as a young man and participated in Ōmoto for four years. In 1928, by chance, he discovered a book by the American New Thought teacher Fenwicke Holmes. This book helped him crystallize a system of thought that was officially launched as Seichō no Ie in 1930, when Taniguchi began publishing a magazine of that name. Seichō no Ie affirms the perfection and spiritual nature of all things and denies the reality of matter, suffering, or evil—one may escape from them through the affirmative power of mind. It teaches a distinctive form of meditation called shinsokan and certain chants.

World Messianity

The founder of World Messianity, Okada Mokichi (1882–1955), was an active worker in the Ōmoto faith until 1934, when he felt called to form his own organization. The present name was adopted in 1950. Emphasizing the coming of a paradise on earth through an accelerating inpouring of divine light, World Messianity seeks to prepare the way through a practice called jorei, channeling divine light through a cupped, upraised hand to a body or other object to cleanse it of evil. World Messianity also regards art and beauty, including gardens, as precursors of the earthly paradise.

The Nichiren Group

The medieval Buddhist prophet Nichiren (1222–1282) started a movement from which most important sectarian developments in Japanese Buddhism have stemmed. Nichiren Buddhism's fundamental conviction is that the Lotus Sūtra is the supreme and full doctrine; it is worshiped in the form of a maṇḍala, the Gohonzon, by means of a chant called the Daimoku. Nichiren Buddhism claims to be the one true Buddhism. It emphasizes the coming of a spiritual new age and the power of the faith to bring benefits here and now.

Sōka Gakkai

Sōka Gakkai was established in 1937 by Makiguchi Tsunesaburō (1871–1944), an educator and convert to Nichiren Shōshū. He shared the belief of pragmatism that human benefit is of greater importance than truth regarded as an abstract ideal, and he saw a compatible view in Nichiren's emphasis on present attainment of the benefits of practice. Sōka Gakkai was reconstructed after World War II under the dynamic leadership of Toda Jōsei (1900–1958) and became a highly organized promotional arm of Nichiren Shōshū. Whereas its tactics were often criticized, in this period it was hailed as the "fastest growing religion in the world," claiming by 1960 some 750,000 households. After Toda's death, leadership passed to Ikeda Daisaku (b. 1928). Emphasizing the movement's cultural and social significance, Ikeda founded a related political party, the Kōmeitō (Clean Government Party) and otherwise sought to advance the coming of the Third Civilization, when true faith would spread over the world, ushering in an era of peace and plenty.

Reiyūkai

The oldest major modern Nichiren sect, Reiyūkai (spiritual friends association) was founded in 1925 by Kubo Kakutarō (1892–1944) and his sister-in-law Kotani Kimi (1901–1971), both of humble backgrounds. Essentially a lay organization, it depends on informal groups and volunteer teachers. In addition to the usual Nichiren emphases, Reiyūkai stresses the importance of ancestor worship, features quasi-shamanistic faith-healing practices, and has developed an influential kind of group counseling called hoza (dharma circle). Reiyūkai suffered many difficulties after World War II, but by the 1970s the movement was again an established part of Japanese spiritual life, inculcating conservative social values.

Risshō Kōseikai

Many new Nichiren movements arose out of the decentralized, charismatic matrix of Reiyūkai. By far the most successful was Risshō Kōseikai (society establishing righteousness and harmony), founded in 1938 by Niwano Nikkyō (b. 1906) and a housewife, Naganuma Myōkō (1889–1957), both former members of Reiyūkai. Risshō Kōseikai includes healing and divination practices and hoza group counseling; it presents an eclectic form of Nichiren Buddhism. After World War II, Niwano attained international recognition for his activity in worldwide peace and interreligious organizations.

Japanese New Religions around the World

New religions in Japan were eager to propagate themselves among the Japanese immigrants, but they were rarely successful in recruiting foreigners until the 1950s. Exceptions were Tenrikyō in colonial Korea and Ōmoto in Brazil. But after the 1960s many new religions started systematically to influence foreigners and experienced some success. In Brazil and Korea many groups attracted substantial numbers of followers. Seichō no Ie, in particular, claims to have millions of followers in Brazil, most of them non-Japanese. In 2003, Sōka Gakkai claimed more than 1.5 million followers in 186 countries all over the world.

New New Religions

After around 1970, most of the existing new religions fell into stagnation. On the other hand, some newly organizing new religions, sometimes called "new new religions," gained recognition. Among the fastest growing were Agonshū, Sūkyō Mahikari, and GLA (God Light Association). Also, other groups, including the Unification Church and Jehovah's Witnesses, that were established in other countries started to grow rapidly in Japan after around 1970.

Although most of the older new religions were stagnant after the 1970s, Shin'nyoen, established in 1936 by Ito Shinjo and his wife Ito Tomoji, was an exception. Their spiritual resources are derived from shamanistic folk religions, modern spiritualism, and Esoteric Buddhism of the older Buddhist sect in Japan. They have their own system of shamanistic or spiritualistic mediumship combined with counseling and the Esoteric Buddhist system. In the 1960s they were already a fairly big organization. They continued to grow in the later decades and became one of the largest new religions in the 1980s.

The 1980s produced a new wave of aggressive movements, including Kofuku no Kagaku, Aum Shinrikyō, and Worldmate. The founders of these new religions were young and sometimes well educated. In the case of Kofuku no Kagaku, the founder graduated from the prestigious University of Tokyo. In the case of Aum Shinrikyō, although the founder, Asahara Shōkō, did not attend any university, the movement attracted many converts who had studied in well-known universities and graduate schools. While most active members of the older new religions were middle-aged housewives, young people are active participants in some new new religions.

One important feature of new new religions is that they are less this-world affirming than older new religions. They tend to emphasize the reality of the other dimensions of the world, and sometimes they segregate themselves from the outer society. The life after death and the eternal existence of the human soul is emphasized. In contrast, ancestors and family are cherished less. The emphasis is on individuality, and ritual settings tend to be less interactive and more theatrical.

Aum Shinrikyō has committed many crimes, including the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subways in 1995, which injured over five thousand people and killed twelve. The founder, Asahara Shōkō, was sentenced to death in 2004. Asahara, born in 1955, was a member of Agonshū around 1980, but, influenced by Tibetan Buddhism, he practiced Yoga meditation much more intensely. Gradually he became an independent religious leader and claimed to have achieved the last stage of spiritual emancipation. In the late 1980s he started to kill members who wanted to defect and those whom he assumed to be enemies. Then, in the 1990s, he emphasized that Armageddon was coming soon and that to survive Japan and the whole world had to change. After the subway sarin gas attack in 1995, not only Aum Shinrikyō but other new religions were viewed critically as "cults."

New religions in early twenty-first-century Japan are less powerful compared with the latter half of the twentieth century, which is characterized as the period that started with the amazingly rapid growth of new religions and ended with catastrophic trauma for new religions as a whole.

See Also

Aum Shinrikyō; Konkōkyō; Kurozumikyō; Nichirenshū; Ōmotokyō; Reiyūkai Kyōdan; Risshō Kōseikai; Sōka Gakkai; Tenrikyō.

Bibliography

Several books accessible to the general reader on the new religions of Japan can be recommended, including H. Neill McFarland's The Rush Hour of the Gods (New York, 1967), a well researched, sometimes critical overview; Clark B. Offner and Henry van Straelen's Modern Japanese Religions (Leiden, 1963), a careful study emphasizing healing practices; and Harry Thomsen's The New Religions of Japan (Rutland, Vt., 1963), a lively survey. Among accounts of particular religions are Kenneth J. Dale and Akahoshi Susumu's Circle of Harmony (Tokyo, 1975) on the hoza (group counseling) procedures of Risshō Kōseikai; James Allen Dator's Sōka Gakkai, Builders of the Third Civilization (Seattle, Wash., 1969), a substantial sociological study; Robert S. Ellwood's Tenrikyo, A Pilgrimage Faith (Tenri, Japan, 1982); Winston Davis's Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in Modern Japan (Stanford, Calif., 1980); Helen Hardacre's Lay Buddhism in Contemporary Japan, Reiyūkai Kyōdan (Princeton, N.J., 1984), representing high-level sociological research; and Delwin Byron Schneider's Konkokyo, A Japanese Religion (Tokyo, 1962). For a complete bibliography, see H. Byron Earhart's The New Religions of Japan: A Bibliography of Western-Language Materials, 2d ed. (Ann Arbor, 1983). Works of detailed study on new religions in Japan include Helen Hardacre's Kurozumikyō and the New Religions of Japan (Princeton, N.J., 1986) and H. Byron Earhart's Gedatsu-Kai and Religion in Contemporary Japan (Bloomington, Ind., 1989). A detailed description of Aum Shinrikyō in English is in Ian Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyô (Richmond, U.K., 2000).

Robert S. Ellwood (1987)

Shimazono Susumu (2005)