SOCIAL CRISIS AND RELIGION IN
CONTEMPORARY JAPAN
Robert 1. Kisala and Mark R. Mullins
That new religious movements emerge and flourish in times of social crisis and rapid social change has become a commonlyheld
viewpoint in both academic circles and within the popular media. In the Japanese context, this perspective became widely known
through the work of H. Neil1 McFarland’s The Rush Hour of the Gods. In this volume, McFarland explained that “The New Religions of Japan are variously dated products of or responses to the endemic, recurrently intensified social crisis that has been the burden of the Japanese people for approximately the last three and a half
centuries” (1967, 54).
| The disintegration of the
Tokugawa feudal order, for example, was accompanied by the emergence of
Tenrikyo, Konkokyo, and Kurozumikyij, movements that experienced their most significant growth
after the Meiji Restoration (1868). These groups drew mainly upon the folk religious traditions and were particularly popular
among farmers who were oppressed by the government’s new land tax
policies. Taxes were no longer to be based on crops but on the
assessed value of the land, which meant that a poor harvest could force
them to sell their land and become tenant farmers or move
to the cities as laborers. By emphasizing solidarity in the rural
community the new religions that emerged in this period helped people
to cope with these new insecurities. |
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The defeat of Japan in 1945 represented a similar
social crisis, which again was accompanied by the emergence and rapid
growth of a
number of new religions. The ideology that had united and propelled the
nation since the 1930s disintegrated with Japan’s surrender and
occupation by General Douglas MacArthur and the Allied Powers
(SCAP). The wartime devastation, shock of defeat, and disestablishment
of State Shinto, provided a social environment that invited religious
alternatives. Some new religions that had been suppressed during the
war re-emerged and scores of others were organized in the early postwar
period. The groups experiencing the most phenomenal growth during this
time were Soka
Gakkai, Rissho Koseikai, Reiyukai, Seicho-no-Ie, and PL Kyodan. Soka
Gakkai membership, for example, grew from 35,000 households to a
membership of more than one million households in just over a decade.
The success of these new religions can only be understood in light of
the rapidly occurring processes of industrialization and urbanization.
By 1950, Japan’s economic recovery
was underway and laborers poured into urban areas to meet the demands
of the recovering industrial economy. It was from among these laborers
and factory workers that the new religions gained most
of their adherents. Lacking the wider network of support once provided
by the extended families and rural communities, many individuals found
a supportive community in one of the new religions as they struggled
together to overcome poverty and various forms of illness.
In marked contrast to these earlier periods analyzed
by McFarland and characterized by social crisis and poverty, the
newreligious movements that emerged in the post-industrialized world
since
the1970s appeared in a society characterized by affluence and material
security. For the most part it seems to have been boredom with the
routine and restrictions of the educational system and the business
world that gave birth to the new wave of movements and seekers. While
physical conditions certainly improved since the war, Nishiyama Shigeru
(1988,26) points out that a “new kind of poverty” has appeared and
exists alongside material abundance. By-products of the modernization
(rationalization) process have been boredom, fatigue, and the loss of
meaning: Youth in particular, Nishiyama argues, have felt this new form
of poverty most keenly as they are enclosed in a competitive and
bureaucratic
educational system from kindergarten to university.
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This is the sociocultural
context within which we must understand the
development of Aum Shinrikyo. While those attracted to earlier
movements were often housewives and working class laborers, Aum tended
to attract a different clientele-young and relatively well-educated,
but disillusioned with the ambiguities and contradictions of the modern
Japanese social order.’ In this sense, it is not clear that Aum emerged
as a response to social crisis-at least in its previous understanding.
In fact, Japan was at its economic peak and was riding a wave of
national confidence buoyed by international acclaim as reflected in
books such as Ezra Vogel’s Japan as Number One.2 Aum was
organized several years prior to the collapse of the “bubble economy,”
which induced the recession with which Japan is struggling today. |
While we have our reservations regarding the
adequacy of “crisis” interpretations of the emergence and development
of new religious movements, this is not our concern in this volume.3
Rather,
the point we would like to make here is that a social crisis can also
be
precipitated by a religious movement. At the time Aum Shinnkyo emerged,
most
Japanese assumed that they lived in one of the most well ordered and
safest societies, a model that had much to offer the chaotic Western
world. Japanese were also accustomed to reading about violence
elsewhere-related to the gun culture in the United States or ethnic and
religious conflict in various regions of the world but rarely at home.
Violence in Japan was largely assumed to be confined and controlled
within the yakuza subculture.
This taken-for-granted reality was shaken-up on 20
March 1995 as the public was bombarded by reports that the deadly nerve
gas sarin
had been released on the Tokyo subway system. Shortly after 8 a.m.,
thousands of rush-hour commuters and scores of subway workers began
stumbling out of some 16 stations in central Tokyo coughing, vomiting,
and collapsing. All told, the nerve gas attack on the Chiyoda, Hibiya,
and Marunouchi subway lines left 12 people dead and over 5,000 injured.
No doubt the impact of this incident was further heightened by the fact
that the nation was still reeling from the shock of the disastrous
Kobe-Osaka earthquake that occurred just two months earlier on 17
January 1995.
The overall impression one received from the TV
coverage and ongoing journalistic reporting about of the “Aum affair”
was that this
movement revealed some fundamental problems in postwar Japanese
society. Without denying that there are some serious problems that may
be brought into relief by the emergence of groups such as Aum, it is
misleading to make generalizations about Japanese society on the basis
of one small religious movement. One cannot even generalize about
Japanese youth culture on the basis of this youth-dominated movement.
At its peak, this movement had no more than ten thousand members. It is
clear that the vast majority of young people found the level of
commitment and demands of religious practice required by membership in
such a group to be wholly unattractive. Opinion polls since the Aum
crisis indicate that the attitudes of young people toward religion have
become
even more negative and levels of distrust toward religious
organizations are particularly high among those in their twenties.4
Needless to say, the “Aum affair” has already had widespread
repercussions and shaken the Japanese psyche in a serious way. In
addition to the trials, political debates, and lawsuits, the events and
tragedies surrounding Aum Shinrikyo have forced many Japanese to think
critically about the nature of postwar Japanese society. Like “cult
controversies” in the West, the fallout of the “Aum affair” will
surely-to borrow James Beckford’s words-force Japanese society “to show
its hand and declare itself.
AN
OVERVIEW
The basic assumption underlying
this collection of essays is that one can understand more about the
nature of contemporary Japanese
society by considering the various reactions and responses to this
“crisis” than by focusing narrowly on the movement itself. While our
larger aim is to examine the wider circle of responses to the “Aum
affair” by representative groups and institutions in Japanese society,
this volume begins with an overview and introduction to the development
of Aun Shinrikyo as a religious movement.
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Shimazono and other scholars have subsequently
prepared more detailed
studies of this movement, but this concise essay is still a helpful
introduction to the evolution of the teaching and practice of Aum
Shinrikyti leading up to the tragic events of March 1995.6 Shimazono
was the first scholar to prepare a study of this movement shortly after
the violent criminal activity of some members became apparent. This
chapter is an abridged translation of his study, initially published as
a booklet in Japanese.
While many observers tend to dismiss Aum Shinrikyo
as a deviant “cult,” Shimazono’s chapter makes the paint that Aum needs
to be understood as a religion and clarifies the defining
characteristics of its universe of belief. The founder of Aum
Shinrikyo, Asahara Shoko,
was a member of Agonshu, one of the more recent new religious
movements, and spent several years diligently practicing that faith
before founding his own religious group in 1984. He emphasized intense
ascetic practices for the achievement of gedatsu (emancipation) and the
teaching of a world-renouncing enlightenment. The tendency towards an
introspective faith, seen broadly in the New New Religions, is
especially striking in Aurn Shinrikyo. The group fell into conflict
with the surrounding society because of its push to rapidly increase
the number of its world-renouncing
members, adopting a style of proselytization common to previous New
Religions aimed at mass mobilization. Rather than trying to resolve the
tensions peacefully, Aurn adopted an aggressive position, and
especially after 1989 its isolation deepened and it headed towards
violent introversion. Although its violent and destructive nature only
became evident in 1994, the roots of that violence were already present
from the group’s beginning. Elements that invite an eruption of
violence, such as a conception of the human person as a mass of data
that can be manipulated, a distorted understanding of Buddhism as
justifying violence as a means and perceiving reality as an illusion,
and an intense leader worship, were all present in
Aum’s universe of belief.
Christopher Hughes provides an analysis of
the Japanese Police and Security Authorities response, or rather
failure to
respond, to the threats posed by Aum Shinrikyo. Even before the sarin
gas attack in March, there were a number of concerned citizens’ groups
struggling with Aum and seeking intervention by the authorities. One
group, which had been represented by the lawyer Sakamoto Tsutsumi until
his mysterious disappearance in 1989, was an association of parents of
Aum followers. There was also an association for “Victims of Aum” (Aum
Higaisha no Kai) as well as a number of groups that organized in local
areas to oppose the building of Aum facilities in their small
agricultural communities. In a book entitled Aum 2000 Nichi Sensb
[Aurn: A 2,000-day war], Takeuchi Seiichi, a farmer and
vice-chairperson of the Aum Shinrikyo Task Force Committee of Kamikuishiki, a village of 1,750
people, documented their several-year struggle against Aum as the group
built a major complex of facilities in the village, including the
facilities that were used in the production of sarin gas. In addition
to his many criticisms of Aum, Takeuchi is quite outspoken regarding
the failure of the police to take appropriate action in spite of their
numerous appeals. As early as 1990, the citizens’ groups from the
villages of Kamikuishiki, Tomizawa, and
Namino went to Tokyo to formally request that the government revoke
Aum’s legal status as a religious organization. Their appeals were
essentially ignored, he claims, because Tokyo bureaucrats had little
concern for the predicament of rural communities and no major incidents
had yet occurred in the metropolitan area. Takeuchi continued his
opposition to Aum’s building program despite warnings that something
might happen to him, just like the missing lawyer Sakamoto. In July
1994, residents of Kamikuishiki also
notified authorities of nausea and eye and nose irritation due to
mysterious fumes coming from Aum facilities. The authorities still took
no decisive action against Aum.
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Although the Japanese police
have been generally effective in controlling the flow of weapons into
Japan, Aum managed to acquire
chemical and biological weapons without serious interference from the
authorities. According to Hughes, the primary cause of the failure of
the Japanese police to adequately deal with Aum’s crimes is the fact
that the security apparatus was designed to deal with Cold War
terrorism and was ill-prepared to detect threats from other quarters,
especially from religious movements. Hughes explains how the movement
was able to evade the scope of police surveillance and examines how
Japanese security institutions, namely the Public Security
Investigation Bureau and the Self- Defense Forces, are re-defining
their anti-terrorist roles in light of
post-Cold War realities. |
In response to the subway gas attack, the police
finally took decisive action and began serious investigations into Aum
activities nationwide.
These investigations led to the arrest of over two hundred Aum members
and fueled the movement demanding that Aum’s legal status as a
religious organization be revoked. Mark Mullins reviews
the basic legal response by the government to Aum’s criminal activities
and considers the wider “fallout” of this incident. Not only was Aum’s
legal status as a tax-exempt religious body dissolved, but the law
governing all religious bodies in Japan was revised and passed by the
Diet in record time. This was
only possible because of the sense of crisis that enveloped the nation
in the months following the gas attack. In spite of these legal
actions, Aum managed to reconstitute itself and survive as a voluntary
organization. In addition to continuing religious activities, Aum
members operated various businesses and managed to purchase new
properties. These activities became a new source of controversy and
local leaders from communities across Japan appealed to the national
government to take further action against Aum on their behalf. In light
of these developments, some observers suggested that the government
made a mistake in its decision not to apply the Anti-Subversive
Activities Law to Aum, which would have prohibited Aum members from
engaging in corporate activities of any sort. In response to pressure
from local governments dealing with ongoing conflicts between residents
and Aum members around the country, the national government passed two
bills in December 1999 that gave the Public Security Investigation
Agency the authority to monitor and investigate Aum for a three-year
period. Under the new law, Aum is required to provide a list of its
membership and report on its religious and business activities every
three months. The law also allows the authorities to enter Aum
facilities to conduct additional inspections as deemed necessary. It is
too early to know what impact this will have on Aum as a religious
movement, but leaders already have changed the name of the movement to
“Aleph” in an apparent effort to distance itself from the stigma
attached to “Aum.”
From early in its history various groups were formed
to oppose Aum’s activities and religious practices. Watanabe Manabu
sketches the development of this opposition movement in terms of
several phases and draws attention to the primary reasons why Aum
practices were considered problematic. He gives special attention to
the relationship of these forms of opposition to the “anti-cult”
movement in Japan. This “anti-cult” movement was imported from the
United States through the translation of works by various prominent
anti-cult activists. Although this movement was initially preoccupied
with issues surrounding the Unification Church or “Moonies,” it was
quickly expanded to address similar
concerns regarding Aum Shinrikyo-issues like “mind-control” or
“brainwashing,” the forcible separation of its members from their
families and the larger society, and suspicions of financial
impropriety, The anti-cult movement in Japan received a tremendous
boost from the revelations of Aum’s deviant activities, and anti-cult
rhetoric entered common discourse through its widespread use by
journalists and reporters.
In the midst of the media blitz following the
revelations of Aum’s crimes attention also turned to other religious
groups. Some in the media sought out reactions from other religions,
while some groups for their part offered their own interpretations of
Am’s
activities. Robert Kisala provides translations of a sample of
religious responses to Aum that appeared either in the secular press or
in religious publications. The translated statements include
perspectives offered by established religious bodies such as the
Catholic Church as well as a rather outrageous assessment by Kofuku no
Kagaku (The Science of Human Happiness), one of Aum’s key rivals in the
contemporary religious marketplace. In their responses many of these
groups attempt to distance themselves from Aum by describing that group
as unorthodox or even a psuedoreligion that must be distinguished from
their own authentic religious traditions. Although all of the
translations presented in this chapter appeared early on in the Aum
saga, the concluding observations provide an update on the position of
religious bodies concerning various issues that have become prominent
since the Aum crisis began. Religious bodies also need to be concerned
about the increasing level of distrust that average Japanese seem to
hold towards organized religion in general. In their response to Aum,
therefore, they have often been forced into a defensive posture,
realizing that they must do something to improve the overall image of
religion in Japan.
It goes without saying that the
mass media has been a major player in the “Aum affair.” After the gas
attack and allegations of Aum’s involvement, the daily newspapers,
weekly magazines, and
television programming gave almost constant coverage to the
developments regarding Aum for several months. For the first few weeks
after the subway attack and investigations of Aum began, the TV
converage was almost nonstop. There were numerous special programs on
religion, with panel discussions by lawyers, religious studies
scholars, sociologists, psychologists, and journalists.
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Representatives
of Aum also appeared on a number of these programs, denying all
allegations of involvement in the production and use of sarin. The peak
of media coverage was on May 16, the day Asahara was arrested.
Television stations mobilized hundreds of employees to cover the Aum
story, with a focus on Asahara’s arrest and transportation from the
Kamikuishiki facilities to the Metropolitan Police Department in Tokyo.
On “X-Day,” as May 16 was referred to, the Tokyo Broadcasting System
(TBS) deployed 660 crew members, Nihon Television (NTV) sent out 400,
and the Japan Public Television (NHK) another 330. Almost all regular
programming was bumped by Aum coverage and special reports. Across the
country approximately 50 newspapers issued special editions to provide
Television coverage of Aum on all of the networks was almost constant
for the first six weeks after the subway incident. According to viewer
ratings, the top 20 TV shows during April and May were programs dealing
with the Aum affair, with the highest viewer audience rating of 36.4
percent and the lowest at 25.8 percent. By the end of May, each
television network was on the average dedicating seven hours each day
to Aum-related news and programming. While the coverage given to Aum
decreased over the summer months, it picked up again in the fall in
order to report on the trials of key Aum leaders.
For the past several years, the media has
continued to cover the trials of Asahara and his inner circle. Richard
Gardner
provides an analysis of the media’s involvement in the “Aum affair,”
with special attention given to a documentary on Aum entitled A.
Focusing on Aum’s key spokesperson after the arrest of Asahara and his
immediate disciples, the documentary puts a human face on the Aum
believer that belies some of the more sensational coverage of the mass
media. The documentary further raises serious questions regarding
the popular mind-control or brainwashing thesis usually put forward to
explain the behavior of those involved in marginal or new religions.
Gardner also points out that few Japanese have seen this documentary,
since it is highly controversial in presenting a more nuanced picture
of Aum believers that challenges the neat interpretations that have
been given to the “Aum affair” by the mass media.
In a rather pessimistic review of the reaction of
some political and intellectual elites, Matsudo Yukio sees
ominous signs
of a resurgence of neo-nationalist values that do not bode well for the
future of Japanese democracy. He draws attention to the “invented
tradition” that imposed conformity on pre-war and wartime Japan and
indicates how this ideology is being revived and employed in current
arguments regarding the control of religious minorities. In this
“invented tradition” Shinto held a place of prominence as the authentic
cultural inheritance of all Japanese. Participation in the rituals of
State Shinto in wartime Japan, therefore, were regarded as the duty of
all Japanese citizens and transcended all other specific religious
commitments. These ideas have reappeared in debates regarding official
participation and support of civil religious rituals at Yasukuni Shrine
and Shinto establishments around the country as well as in the call to
revive patriotic rituals in public schools as the foundation for moral
education. Paradoxically, Aum itself became a miniature version
of the authoritarian model of politico-religious unity that
characterized wartime Japan. While the Aum tragedy should not be
downplayed, Matsudo suggests that this neo-nationalist revival is
equally dangerous and argues that religious minorities have an
important role to play in protecting individual freedoms and a
democratic society.
Perhaps one of the most interesting questions is how
Aum members themselves have reacted to the Aum affair. Maekawa
Michiko provides a helpful account of how Aum members have coped since
the arrest of their founder and many key leaders of the movement. The
presentation of evidence regarding Aum’s crimes led many members to
defect from the group, but a number of core members remained and others
eventually returned after a short period of disaffiliation. In spite of
police reports to the contrary, proselytization activities have
generally not met with success. Although outsiders might assume that
all rational people would abandon such a movement, Maekawa explores the
internal logic and
external factors that account for the continued involvement of members
in such a suspect organization. Pre-existing doctrinal elements have
been used to explain Aum’s participation in these criminal activities
and provide reinforcement of their faith as a persecuted minority
movement. Self-authenticating religious experiences gained from Aum’s
practice have kept a number of individuals deeply committed to the
movement in spite of the serious charges against the former leadership.
RELIGION AND SCHOLARSHIP IN A
POST-AUM WORLD
In concluding this introduction, we would like to
offer some general observations on lessons to be learned from the “Aum
affair” and draw
attention to some of the issues that must still be addressed as we seek
to understand the role of religion in contemporary society. First of
all, it is clear to us that this incident offers serious challenges to
those of us engaged in the academic study of religion. Following the
gas attack, academics had to scramble to try and respond to the many
questions raised regarding Aum by the mass media and general public.
Until the crisis in March, very few sociologists or religious studies
scholars had given serious attention to Aum. A particularly significant
event in the Japanese academic community was the quickly organized
symposium on “The Aum Shinrikyci Incident and Religious Research,”
sponsored by the Japanese Association for the Study of Religion and
Society and hosted by Kokugakuin University in Tokyo on 9
September
1995. A journalist on the panel was particularly critical of the
general failure of scholars to provide adequate information on Aum
during the initial crisis and to offer critical perspectives on this
movement.
Some observers argued that postwar Japanese scholarship on new
religious movements tended to be overly sympathetic-an approach taken
in part, perhaps, in response to the earlier wartime oppression of
religious minorities. In short, scholars had failed to adequately
acknowledge and draw attention to the exploitation and manipulation
that often occurs under the banner of religion.
This reappraisal of the relationship between
scholars and the religious
groups they research led to the serious disciplinary action of Shimada
Hiromi, Professor of Religion in the Faculty of Literature, Japan
Women’s University. Shimada was one of the few scholars who had been
following Aurn’s activities for several years before the subway gas
attack. In various weekly magazine articles and books, Professor
Shimada had made a number of statements that were widely interpreted as
favorable toward Aum and implied that the negative societal reaction to
the movement was just another chapter in the history of religious
persecution in Japan. He was critical of journalists and social critics
who freely used terms such as
“brainwashing” and “mind-control” when attempting to explain the
behavior of Aum
members.7 Shortly after Aum was suspected of chemical
production at one
of its Kamikuishiki buildings, Shimada was invited to the facilities to
confirm that it was a place of religious training and worship, making a
public statement to that effect after touring the facility.8
In
addition, one of his seminar students joined A m , partly as a result
of Shimada’s research activities and favorable statements regarding the
movement. The student’s father was eventually pressured into donating
real estate to the
movement, developments that undoubtedly added pressure on university
administrators to take some disciplinary action against Shimada.
In the end, he was removed from his post for
discrediting the school’s
name and bringing the university into disrepute by his numerous
statements that had been generally supportive of Aum, statements that
were used by the group to gain social legitimacy.9
It was not just Japanese
academics who came under fire in relation to the Aum incident. Shortly
after the police investigations of Aum
Shinrikyo became intense, James Lewis and J. Gordon Melton, two
well-known researchers in the field of new religious movements, along
with Barry A. Fisher, a human rights lawyer, and Thomas F. Banigan, a
chemist, arrived in Tokyo to meet with Aum representatives a gather
additional information on the group’s activities. At the time, little
information was available and it appeared to some observers that Aum
was being unfairly persecuted and blamed for the subway gas attack.
Before returning to California, the team of four held a news conference
on 7 May 1995, and reported their findings and views on the ongoing
police investigation of Aum. Aum’s newspaper reported that this team
had essentially given them a “clean bill of health.”
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Barry Fisher, the human rights lawyer, is
reported to have said that the police appeared to be violating the
civil rights of Aum members by arresting them on misdemeanors and by
separating families through the removal of children from Aum
facilities. Thomas Banigan, the chemist on the team, is quoted as
saying that it would be impossible for Aum members to have produced
sarin gas in their facilities as alleged by the authorities. Gordon
Melton’s statement placed Aum Shinrikyo in a comparative context and
pointed out that Aum’s monastic Buddhism was normative in other
Buddhist cultures, but appeared somewhat radical in
the world of established Japanese Buddhism. Finally, James Lewis stated
that Aum’s ascetic practices and disciplines were in continuity with
traditional yoga and these training methods should not be regarded as
methods for brainwashing members.
From what we now know, it is clear that Aum provided
the US team with limited information and exploited their statements to
improve their public image. At this early stage, however, these
researchers were certainly not alone in regarding the investigation of
the police as heavy-handed. Now it is clear that the police were not
sharing what they knew until Asahara could be found and arrested. Prior
to the Aum incident, James Lewis offered some personal reflections on
the nightmares with which researchers of nontraditional religions
sometimes have to struggle. “This nightmare,” Lewis writes, “is that I
examine a controversial religious group, give it a clean bill of health
on the basis of my research, and, later, after my study has been
published, discover that I have defended the People’s Temple, or
worse.” No doubt, Lewis now regards the Aum Shinrikyo affair as one
“bad dream.””These examples of scholars being manipulated by a
religious movement have raised serious questions regarding the academic
study of religion both within and outside Japan.12
The “Aum affair” also highlights the dilemma of how
to protect society from potentially dangerous religious groups while at
the same
time protecting the free practice of religion. Many see the changes
introduced to the Religious Corporations Law in the immediate aftermath
of the subway gas incident as unnecessarily intrusive. Indeed, some
religious groups have decided not to comply with the provisions of the
revised Religious Corporations Law, in protest to what is perceived as
a violation of the constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.
Perfect Liberty, a new religion headquartered in
Osaka, has been most
vocal in this regard. Claiming that the revisions in the law have
transformed it from one protecting religious freedom to one that seeks
to provide governmental oversight of religious groups, Perfect Liberty
has refused to file financial statements with the proper government
agency, as required in the new law. In a statement from the group
summarized in the 25 September 1998 issue of the Shinshinbo Shinbun (a
newspaper representing the new religions), Perfect Liberty refers to
the fact that the group was itself persecuted under the wartime policy
of state control of religion and claims that compliance with the
present law would be a compromise of postwar freedoms. Their defiance
of the law is thus described as a high-minded attempt to highlight the
issue of religious liberty and protect the postwar constitution.
However, the group has apparently agreed to pay the Y10,O0O fine levied
by the courts in Osaka as a result of its action.
Constitutional issues are also raised by the
laws recently
enacted to rein in Aum’s continuing activity. Although the laws enjoy a
high degree of support, as indicated by opinion polls taken just before
their enactment, the fact that they allow for search and seizure
without a court-issued warrant is seen by some as an erosion of postwar
constitutional guarantees. Although these new laws were designed with
Aum in mind, in theory they could also be applied to other religious
groups regarded as antisocial or dangerous.
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However, the case of Aum
Shinrikyo reveals how one small but determined
group can manufacture chemicals, illegal drugs, and develop weapons of
mass destruction. The violence carried out by Asahara and his inner
circle constitutes a prime example of what the late French sociologist
Jacques Ellul referred to as the “democratization of evil” in modern
technological societies.13 As Ellul explained: ... an
increasing number
of people among us is acquiring instruments that can hurt our neighbors
or unknown people who, whether we like it or not, are close to us. This
is the democratization of evil. Means that were once reserved for the
powerful, for the rich, for aristocrats, and which constituted their
privilege, are now within the reach of all of us. These means were
always the means by which the rich and mighty could ensure their
domination and do wrong to the rest. It is very important to realize
that these privileged means are now within the reach of us all.14 |
Aum may be one of the first new religious movements
to try and achieve
its goals with the tools of modern science and technology. We may hope
that it will be the last, but it would be naive to ignore the potential
for similar violence and destruction in other marginal apocalyptic
movements. As Robert J. Lifton reminds us: Although Aum was Japanese,
there was hardly a religious tradition or geographical region-from
Russia to Australia, India to the United States-that Asahara did not
ransack for the components of his spirituality, his weapons systems,
and his rationale for mass
murder. Conversely, there are impulses closely related to Asahara’s
found in each of these regions and their spirituaI traditions. And
given the expanding availability of ultimate weapons, no national
boundaries can contain those who are bent on forcing the end.15
The difficult task ahead is to find a way to
preserve the free practice
of religion in modern societies, while at the same time keeping
dangerous materials and technology out of the hands of those who would
use it to bring on Armageddon and establish their particular version of
the millennium.
Finally, the debate surrounding the “Aum affair” has
brought into clear
focus the moral crisis facing contemporary Japan. Just two decades ago,
many observers seemed to think that Japan was a model society and that
it had been rather successful in its efforts to rebuild the economy and
catch up to the West in record time. Japan was lauded as “number one”
for its postwar successes-a rapidly growing economy, stable families
and a low divorce rate, and an educational system that produced a
steady stream of loyal workers for the expanding economy. Many social
commentators now recognize that postwar economic development created a
materially abundant society, but left many individuals with an inner
emptiness and longing for deeper meaning in life. Some have also
sympathized with the many young people interested in experimentation
with various new religious groups that claim to put individuals in
touch with a higher power. In short, many suggest that there is
something fundamentally wrong with Japanese society.
Inoue Nobutaka, a specialist on Japanese new
religions, suggests that
Aum reflects the fundamental illness of modern Japanese society.
Although an afluent and technologically advanced society, Inoue
maintains that the development of Japanese spiritual civilization
(seishin bunmei) has not kept
up with the rapid development of the
material civilization (busshitsu
bunmei).16 Now the economy is in
disarray, and we are beginning to realize that postwar modernization
was achieved at considerable human cost. Although currently in the
midst of a recession, Japan Inc. is still a society of material
abundance, but very little thought has been given to the basic moral
question of what kind of society should be created with
these rich resources.
|
The rational organization of
modern economic life alone does not
provide an adequate basis for building and sustaining a society worth
living in. The modern economic order will collapse under its o m weight
without a supportive social and moral system. As Oxford University
sociologist Bryan Wilson pointed out some years ago: “To work at all
there must be, behind the exchange relation, a sense of commitment, of
obligation, a disinterested goodwill, an attitude of public
responsibility and civic virtue.”l7 Unfortunately, our
primarily
institutions-family, schools, and religious organizations-have been
less effective in inculcating these virtues and dispositions in recent
years. |
Although the incidents surrounding Aum have served
to confirm in the
minds of some Japanese that society would be better off without
religion, others have been convinced that it is time to think seriously
about the need for religious and moral education. Many politicians are
calling for some kind of moral education in public schools, presumably
to keep young people loyal and committed to the “system” and to
“vaccinate” them against deviant religious groups like Aum in the
future. What is still unclear, however, is precisely what kind of moral
education is being called for.
Moral education in Japan, for many, simply means
prewar education. The Ministry of Education has recently issued
guidelines for schools to
sing the Kimigayo and use the Hinomaru for official events-both
symbolic of Japan’s prewar nationalistic education. Is there some
alternative to the neo-nationalist vision to which Matsudo’s essay
refers? Will Japan resort to some kind authoritarianism in order to
maintain some semblance of social coherence in the decades ahead?
“Until we find a genuine response to the dilemma of
modernity and the
crisis of contemporary civilization,” Shimazono Susumu concludes in his
chapter, “we will lack an effective basis to counter the destructive
side of freedom. And can we ever find such a way without religion?”
While violent and antisocial religious movements like Aum need to be
monitored, this alone will not fill the socioethical vacuum of
contemporary Japanese society. Is there a positive role for religion to
play in post-Aum Japan? To answer this question is the challenge facing
both established and new religions. What is required today is a
compelling vision that can contribute to the moral discourse about what
it means to be human as Japan enters the new millennium.
NOTES
1. For a study fiocusing on this aspect of Am, see Daniel A Metraux,
Aum Shinrikyo and Japanese Youth, Lanham: University Press of America, 1999.
2. Ezra Voegel, Japan as Number One, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University
Press, 1979.
3. For criticism of the “crisis theory,” see Byron Earhart
(1989,223-36) and Helen Hardacre (1984,30-34).
4. See, for example, Ishii Kenji, Data Bukku-Gendaijin no Shirko
[Databook: The Religion of People Today], Tokyo: Shinyesha 1997,150-51.
5. James Beckford, Cult Controversies: The Societal Response to New
Religious
Movements, London: Tavistock Publications, 1985.
6. For a more detailed analysis of the evolution of Aum Shinrikyo’s
belief system and legitimation of violence, see Ian Reader’s most recent study,
Religiaus Violence in ContempomyJapan: The Case ofAum Shinriky6, Nordic Institute for
Asian Studies Monograph Series, No. 82, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000.
7. See, for example, Shimada Hiromi, Ima Shirk6 ni nani ga okotteiru no
ka [What is happening in religion today], Tokyo: Kodansha), 1991: 41-69.
8. See Takarajima 30 March 1995.
9. Am’s exploitation of Professor Shimada has been discussed in books
by Arita (1995,14-171 and Egawa (1995,306-319), the two leading journalists who
have been covering Aum.
10. In private conversations with this chemist, Mark Mullins was
informed that it was highly unlikely that the materials Aum had on hand would be used
for the production of agricultural fertilizers, as Aum’s representatives
claimed. He went on to say that they had better come up with a better story if they
expected anyone to believe them. He also pointed out that sarin gas could be produced
in a rather modest laboratory and was not such a complicated process, though
certainly dangerous.
11. See James R. Lewis, “Introduction,” in James R. Lewis and J. Gordon
Melton,
eds. Sex, Slander, and Salvation: Investigating the Family/Children of
God,
12. Although not concerned with the Aum incident per se, a helpful
collection of articles addressing problems related to the academic study of new
religious movements may be found in the Symposium papers, “Academic Integrity and
the Study of New Religious Movements,” Nova Religio: The Journal
ofAlternative and Emergent Religions 211,1998. Regarding the manipulation of scholars by
Aum, Ian Reader writes that: “none of those who appeared to speak up for A m had
had sufficient depth knowledge of the movement at its grassroots-close and lengthy
contacts with its members, time spent in its commune observing day to day life,
even discussions with former members-to gain a thorough recognition of how
the movement functioned. They were unable therefore to see beyond the
surface veneer that Aum, like any other religious organisation, liked to present to
the outside world”(“Scholarship, Aum Shinrikyo and Academic Integrity,” Nova Religio,
forthcoming, p. 10 of pre-publication manuscript). Stanford, CA: Center for Academic Publication, 1994, v.
13. This section is adapted from Mullins 1997, 321-22.
14. Jacques Ellul, What I Believe, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Grand
Rapids,
Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1989,60.
QHobert J. Lifton, Destroying the World to Save1t:Aum
Shinr&ycj,Apocalyptic
Vi0 ence, and the New Global Terrorism, New York Metropolitan Books,
Henry
Holt and Company, 1999,272.
16. Inoue Nobutaka, “Gendai shakai no ‘bye’ to ‘shinshiikyo’ toshite no
Aum
Shinrikyo,” Shiikan Asahi 30 May 1995,3637.
17. Bryan Wilson, Religion in SociologicalPerspective, Oxford: Oxford
University
Press, 1982, 50.
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