Celebrity gods: new religions, media, and authority in occupied Japan

Abstract

Celebrity Gods explores interaction of new religions and media in postwar Japan. It focuses on leaders and founders (kyoso) of Jiu and Tensho Kotai Jingu Kyo, two new religions of Japan's immediate postwar period that received substantial press attention. Jiu was linked to popular prewar group Omotokyo, and its activities were based on millennial visions of its leader, a woman called Jikoson. When Jiu attracted legendary sumo champion Futabayama to its cause, Jikoson and her activities became a widely-covered cause celebre in press. Tensho Kotai Jingu Kyo (labeled odoru shukyo, the dancing religion, by press) was led by a farmer's wife, Kitamura Sayo. Her uncompromising vision and actions toward creating a new society-one that was far removed from what she described as maggot world of postwar Japan-drew harsh and often mocking criticism from print media. Looking back for precursors to postwar relationship of new religions and media, Benjamin Dorman explores significant role that Japanese media traditionally played in defining appropriate and acceptable social behavior, acting at times as mouthpieces for government and religious authorities. Using cases of Renmonkyo in Meiji era and Omotokyo in Taisho and Showa eras, Dorman shows how accumulated images of new religions in pre-1945 Japan became absorbed into those of immediate postwar period. Given lack of formal religious education in Japan, media played an important role in transmitting notions of acceptable behavior to public. He goes on to characterize leaders of these groups as celebrity gods, demonstrating that media, which were generally untrained in religious history or ideas, chose to fashion them as celebrities whose antics deserved derision. While prewar media had presented other kyoso as antithesis of decent, moral citizens who stood in opposition to aims of state, postwar media reports presented them primarily as unfit for democratic society.Celebrity Gods delves into an under-studied era of religious history: Allied Occupation and postwar period up to early 1950s. It is an important interdisciplinary work that considers relations between Japanese and Occupation bureaucracies and groups in question, and uses primary source documents from Occupation archives and interviews with media workers and members of religious groups. For observers of postwar Japan, this research provides a roadmap to help understand issues relating to Aum Shinrikyo affair of 1990s.