Celebrity Gods: New Religions, Media, and Authority in Occupied Japan

Chapter 7 New Religions and Critics in the Immediate Postwar Press

204 7 New Religions and Critics in the Immediate Postwar Press The appearance of Jikōson and Kitamura Sayo in the press as “celebrity gods” coincided with the beginning of the so-called “rush hour of the gods.” As the new laws liberated religious groups and individuals and allowed them unprecedented freedoms, the staff of scap’s Religions Division and the Ministry of Education’s Religious Affairs Section attempted to deal with the impact of the new policies. Yet while the term “rush hour” developed from the media, it was not only journalists who focused on new religions. Academics and intellectual elites also contributed to media texts that became part of the reconstituted images of new religions that drew from prewar representations and notions of superstitions and irrationality. New religions became a focal point for discussions about beliefs in the postwar period. The cases of Jiu and Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō demonstrate that although their reputations were damaged by the predominantly critical negative media reporting, there were other important factors that affected their eventual trajectories, such as their reactions to the coverage and their awareness of postwar conditions. The leaders of new religions like Sekai Kyūsei Kyō, Reiyūkai, Seichō no Ie, and Makoto Kyōdan (later Shinnyo-en) also came under critical press scrutiny. But as the Occupation began to draw to a close toward the 1950s, the negative coverage inspired some new religions to join together and form an organization that could present a united front in the religious world. One view is that the participating new religions that were “once held in contempt, acquired, at least in form, citizenship in the Japanese religious world.”1 At the same time, some journalists and commentators attempted to examine the role of religion more broadly within the context of postwar democracy. This chapter will examine examples of criticism, counterattack, and defense surrounding the subject of religion and new religions in particular during this period. It focuses on published work related to new religions and established groups, considering the motives of the interlocutors and their claims to new religions and critics in the press | 205 holding a legitimate voice in the conversations related to spirituality and society in the immediate postwar period. religion under attack Although new religions and their various unique leaders came under press scrutiny in the postwar period, the problems affecting established religions were also publicized. A scap report from the Religions Division analyzing publications that were written just after the Kanazawa incident of January 1947 involving Jiu noted that “there seems to be no lack of freedom of religious criticism in Japanese publications, and both Buddhism and Shintoism are severely treated in a number of instances.”2 An article published in the Asahi Shinbun on 17 October 1949 claimed that Buddhism and other religions had “lost face” as a result of the appearance of the new religions that were gaining adherents from the established groups. Many established groups in the postwar period continued to advocate stricter controls over new religions as they had in the past to protect the public from their “dangers.” However, as Takagi Hiroo notes, Buddhist groups were unable to launch a successful campaign of criticism against new religions as they had done in the Meiji period.3 A combination of internal disputes and continued press criticisms of their own social standing effectively weakened their attacks on new religions. Buddhist and Shinto groups struggled with a variety of internal problems , not the least of which was a widespread perception that they had colluded with the wartime government and had abandoned the spiritual needs of the people. No longer constrained by the wartime government policies that forced them to merge together in the late 1930s, many Buddhist groups established themselves as independent religious organizations under the Religious Corporations Ordinance of 1945. However, internal quarrels that had existed for some time resurfaced and financial scandals emerged. Eventually representatives of established religions published or contributed chapters to books that criticized the new groups and their leaders who were gaining significant attention at the time. The struggles established groups faced in the Occupation period were related to their inability to effectively attack new religions. This inability reflected not only the criticism they faced from commentators in the press but also their own internal issues. On 3 November 1947 an article in the Mai­ nichi Shinbun argued that established religions were responsible for the 206...