Hikari no Wa: A New Religion Recovering from Disaster

Abstract

In March 2007 Joyu Fumihiro, ex-spokesperson of Aum Shinrikyo and exrepresentative of Aleph, set up a religious organization called Hikari no Wa (literally of Light) with around two hundred members. Hikari no Wa strongly and publicly rejects Asahara's authority, and the image the is trying to construct and promote is centered on its desire to separate itself from Furthermore, the seems interested in exploring different religious practices (including practices related to the Shinto tradition) in order to project itself as a ''new group and not be accused of being a new Aum. This article draws on fieldwork and interviews with Hikari no Wa's members in order to explore the tension in Hikari no Wa between its attempt to create a ''new religion, distancing itself completely from the previous leader and practices, and, at the same time, its need to deal with the legacy of Aum Shinrikyo and the consequences of the tragic event of 1995. keywords: Hikari no Wa-Aleph-new religious movements-Aum Shinrikyo (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences. -John Berger, From A to X: A Story in Letters At the beginning of March 2007, Joyu Fumihiro ... ex-spokesperson of Aum Shinrikyo ... and ex-representative of Aleph ... (the name used by Aum since 2000), and four other members held a press conference to announce their withdrawal from Aleph and to reveal their intention to start a group. Two months later another press conference was organized in Tokyo and Joyu, together with the group's representatives, proclaimed the foundation of Hikari no Wa ... (the English name used by the is The Circle of Rainbow Light). Members briefly introduced to the journalists the changes they intended to make to the group's teachings and practices. 1 They openly emphasized their intention to separate themselves from Aum, invited people to visit their centers, showed videos of their activities to journalists, and presented themselves in front of the press wearing suits or tracksuits rather than the religious clothes worn by Aum's renunciants (shukkesha ...). This event drew attention to the fact that Aum, in various guises, had continued to exist after the events of 1995, and that people associated with that movement were continuing to search for a religious identity in the aftermath of This is an area that has thus far not been covered to any degree in studies of Aum, and my article is aimed at dealing with this lacuna. Several works were published on Aum immediately after the sarin gas attack (Kaplan and Marshall 1996, Watanabe 1996; Repp 1997; Shimazono 1997; Metraux 1999; Reader 2000; Kisala and Mullins 2001), and the has gained attention from scholars in very different fields such as religious studies, sociology, psychology, political studies and so on, but comparatively little academic study has been done on what happened to Aum members after the leader and high-ranking members were arrested.2 Materials produced by the media are also very limited. After two years of deep interest in Aum (1995-1996), newspapers and tv channels now report about the only in the case of significant events, for example, the final results of trials or incidents involving ex-members such as the dispute that arose between Aleph members and residents in Adachi ward in Tokyo in 2010 and 2011.3 Yet the continued activities of those associated with Aum to pursue religious paths-an issue highlighted by the attempt by Joyu and others to form a movement in 2007-merit serious attention, since this not only allows us to explore the question of what impact the Aum Affair had on the movement itself, but also raises major academic questions about how religious groups that are associated with catastrophes try to deal with their past while striving to continue or develop their activities in the present. …