Japanese Society for Parapsychology

Interest in parapsychology spread in Japan in the decades following World War II (1939-45) and a desire to engage in related research emerged at Tokyo University in the 1960s. Over the decades of the last half of the twentieth century, Japanese researchers had become known for their work on the Philippine psychic surgery, thoughtography (a form of psychic photography), and psychokinesis. As early as 1963, university professor Akira Onda, along with Soji Otani, a professor at the National Defense Academy, and Motoki Kanazawa, an instructor at Takenodai High School, created an informal organization to pursue parapsychological studies. This information organization was superseded by the Japanese Society for Parapsychology in 1968. Toranousuke Oguma (1888-1978), a professor of psychology at Meiji University, was the first president of the new society.

The society holds an annual convention each December and an annual seminar each August. In 1996 it launched the Japanese Journal of Parapsychology, a biennial scholarly journal that includes research articles in both Japanese and English. Scholars and researchers with the society conduct a variety of research attuned to the most recent experimentation being conducted in the West. The society also publishes an e-mail periodical, the Electronic Newsletter of the JSP, for those members and subscribers who have Internet access.

Soji Otani, now retired, serves as the current president of the society, and Arika Oda, also retired, has been named the society's advisor. The society's headquarters is at 29-24-204 Sakuragaoka, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo 150-0031, Japan. Its webpage is at http://wwwsoc.nacsis.ac.jp/jspp/jspp_e.htm.

Sources:

Japanese Society for Psychical Research. http://wwwsoc.nacsis.ac.jp/jspp/jspp_e.htm. April 14, 2000.