The Encyclopedia of World Religions

Japan, new religions in S 231

the Omoto (1892) group of new religions, includ ing not only Omoto itself but also World Messi anity (1935), Seicho-no-Ie (1930), and Perfect Lib erty (1946), started as a peasant religion stressing the imminent coming of a new age. The original foundress of Omoto was a peasant woman, Nao Deguchi, but her son-in-law, Onisaburo Deguchi, expanded Omoto in several directions: healing, art, radical politics, and spiritualism. Partly as a result of government persecution in the 1920s and 1930s, it spun off several other movements. World Mes sianity continued the eschatological emphasis. The more conservative Seicho-no-Ie has a science of mind kind of teaching, a positive thinking empha sis. Perfect Liberty, whose motto is “life is art,” stresses the spiritual meaning of art. Finally, there is a group of new religions based on N ICHIREN Buddhism: Reiyukai (1925), Rissho Kosei Kai (1938), and the largest of all, Soka Gakkai (1952). They emphasize the power of the Nichiren chant, the Daimoku, to change life for the better here and now. Changing life for the better in this present world, but through contact with spiritual reality, is really the theme of all the new religions of Japan. In the last decades of the twentieth century a fresh set of religious movements, sometimes called “new new religions,” arose in Japan. Some of them could be identified with the world-wide N EW A GE MOVEMENT , which has had a large following among the Japanese. Some were, at the same time, new forms of B UDDHISM or Shinto. One with Buddhist roots was Agonshu, founded in 1978. It teaches a form of Shingon or esoteric Buddhism ( see J APANESE RELIGION ). Its wor ship centers on a spectacular fire RITUAL called, as in Shingon, goma, believed able to burn away evil KARMA in those who participate in it with faith. Another movement of Buddhist background is Shinnyo-en, “Garden of Absolute Reality,” which was established in 1936 under a different name but only more recently has become prominent. The two founders, husband and wife, were deep stu dents of Shingon. They lost two sons to incurable childhood diseases; seeing spiritual significance in this, they believed the death of the “holy brothers”

2. M ONOTHEISM or monism. The new religion may select one god or Buddhist reality out of the S HINTO or Buddhist pantheon and make it cen tral, so that in effect religious reality centers on one principle or divine will. 3. Syncretism, or drawing from several traditions. Many of the new religions combine Shinto ways of WORSHIP , perhaps including dance, with Bud dhist teachings like REINCARNATION , Confucian morality, and perhaps Christian ideas about G OD . 4. This-worldly eschatology and SALVATION . Most of the new religions do not talk about going to HEAVEN after death or salvation in another world. Instead they say that God is bringing about a radically new paradisal order here in this world; the present troubles are but the birth-pangs of a new age. If not in this life, then through reincar nation we will be born into it soon. 5. Emphasis on healing. Most of them began essentially as spiritual healing movements. 6. A sacred center. Most of them have a sacred center, even a holy cry, to which people go on PILGRIMAGE . 7. A simple but definite process of entry. Join ing one of the new religions means making a definite decision, yet it is easy enough that the simplest persons enter; they are for ordinary people, not just an elite. People have to take responsibility for their own spiritual life by join ing, but anyone can do so. 8. A single, simple, sure technique that is the key practice. This would be like chanting the Daimoku ( “Nam myiho renge kyo” ) in S OKA G AKKAI , doing jorei or channeling light in World Messianity, and so forth. Like all new religions worldwide, they tend to isolate as their “trade mark” one powerful practice that anyone can do and that brings quite powerful results for many people. The well-established new religions of Japan fall into three main groups. First are the “old” new religions, like TENRIKYO (1838) and KONKOKYO (1859), founded by peasant prophets, which have Shinto type worship but are monotheistic. Then, there are