Tenrikyo remains the largest and one of the most active of the Japanese new cults, with many adherents among the Japanese overseas communities and with some foreign disciples. Not long after Miki embarked upon her mission, another poverty-stricken woman, Deguchi Nao (1837–1918), falling into a trance and declaring herself to be possessed by the god Ushitora-no-Konjin, received a similar summons to lead mankind to salvation. Out of this experience grew the Omoto ('teaching of the great origin') cult. Both Nao and Miki produced extensive 'scriptures', some of them apparently by automatic writing. Although many religious leaders were women (who nevertheless often attracted to their side a capable male administrator), the leader of the powerful Sekai Meshiakyo or 'World Messianity' sect, now about 700,000 strong, was Okada Mokichi, born in 1882. This strange man, who was at first a failure as well as a chronic invalid, announced that he was 'possessed' by Kannon, the goddess of mercy: thereafter he developed extraordinary psychic powers as well as the gift of healing.
Another more recent claimant to divine status was Kitamura Sayo (b. 1900), foundress of the so-called 'Dancing Religion' (Tensho Kotai Jingukyo), who declared in 1944 that her body was inhabited by a snake. This creature not merely gave her commands, but inspired the homilies and songs which, without her bidding, poured from her lips and also the dance which her followers still perform. These followers today number something like 350,000, and they regard Kitamura Sayo as a true successor of the Buddha and of Christ.
Many of the cults place emphasis upon happiness and contentment in this world. To that extent they diverge from 'pessimistic' religions such as Buddhism, even in the case of cults with Buddhist affiliations, such as the well-known Soka Gakkai, with its political wing of Komeito, and also Reiyukai, another cult founded by a woman, Kotani Kimi. Most of the others betray blends of all the higher religions, particularly Christianity. All stress the need for ritual purity. Indeed, the general aim seems to be to effect in their disciples a kind of psychic spring-clean, by expelling evil forces from the unconscious in order to achieve 'peace of mind'. In Japan, the extraordinary phenomenon called 'fox possession' was formerly an indication of the presence of some psychic obstruction, and just as in the field of psychiatry the patient can sometimes produce precisely the symptoms — such as dreaming the dreams — expected of him, what was formerly considered to be 'possession' by an animal might today be interpreted in terms more in keeping with psychoanalytic thinking. But even so, the Japanese psyche seems to have resisted psychoanalytic investigation more than that of the West, possibly owing to the strength of the 'dependency relationship', which would otherwise be undermined. The fact remains that psychic 'possession' of some kind, whether by another creature or by 'voices', seems a good deal commoner in Japan than in Western countries. Consequently, in the rural areas, the shaman or the ascetic is still much in demand, whereas these figures have no equivalent in the West save in the few ecclesiastically licensed exorcists or freelance faith healers.
We may sum up the significance of the Shinkō-shūkyō by reaffirming that the Japanese have traditionally regarded the mind not as an engine of perception and cognition, but as the psychospiritual part of the person which seeks identification with ultimate reality. If some of the new cults strive to achieve this identification by rather superficial means — for example, by the emotional and to some extent hypnotic appeal of mass gatherings — this may be due to their simplistic view of 'the end of life'. As with Aristotle — in the Metaphysics at least, and in that part of the Metaphysics which is concerned with 'being as such' — knowledge is an experience, not the accumulation of information. Granted, there are Japanese philosophers who, following the Western empiricists in their early and latterly in their linguistic form, believe in the identity of the mind and the brain — the one being an epiphenomenon of the other — and who consider philosophy not as an experience, leading to enlightenment, but as 'linguistic analysis' (not that some analytic thinking would come amiss on occasion). But this is mainly due to the tendency for the academic world in Japan to assume an attitude of excessive veneration for whatever happens in the West, and particularly in the Anglo-Saxon countries. Meanwhile, the cults undoubtedly meet a psychospiritual need which the decline of the higher religions has rendered all the more compelling. The persistence of such cults also raises for the student of mind the unsettled question of the nature of hypnotic and trance states, and of 'possession' by another 'self' — divine, daemonic, or animal. (See dissociation of the personality; hypnosis; hypnosis, experimental; mesmerism.)
(Published 1987)
— E. W. F. Tomlin
- Bibliography
- Blacker, C. (1975). The Catalpa Bow: A Study of Shamanistic Practices in Japan. (Includes extensive bibliography.)
- McFarland, N. (1967). The Rush Hour of the Gods.
- Thomson, H. (1963). The New Religions of Japan.
