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243 Notes Details of scap records are listed in the bibliography. introduction 1. The piece was published a year later in his book Shūkyō o nonoshiru [Scolding religion] Ōya Sōichi, Ōya Sōichi zenshū, vol. 4, 21–25. 2. For example, questions arise over the precise point that a new religion becomes “established” and, indeed, who has the authority to determine this. Furthermore , it is questionable whether “old” new religions such as Tenrikyō, which developed in the mid-nineteenth century, can be equated with newer groups, such as Sōka Gakkai, Risshō Kōseikai , or Sekai Kyūsei Kyō. These are groups that have significant histories themselves. While these may be vexing questions for scholars, at bottom the very categories that are used may be seen as downright offensive to people who belong to groups that some might label “new religions.” When I visited Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō’s headquarters in Tabuse, Yamaguchi prefecture, on 16 December 1998, two informants, who requested anonymity, balked at the term “new religions” in relation to their group because they insisted that while the group was new compared to other religions, the founder’s teachings were universal and not her invention. 3. Hayashi Makoto, “Religion in the Modern Period,” 214. 4. Inoue Nobutaka, “Masukomi to shinshūkyō” in Shinshūkyō jiten, 516–18. For an example of print media criticism of a new religion in the Meiji period see Takeda Dōshō, “The Fall of Renmonkyō”; see also Oku Takenori, Renmonkyō suibō shi and Sukyandaru no Meiji, 43–80; and Inoue Nobutaka, Shinshūkyō no kaidoku, 53–81. For arguments about the mostly negative print media criticism of new religions in the immediate postwar period, see Kishimoto Hideo, Sengo no shūkyō to shakai, 212, and Morioka Kiyomi, “Attacks on the New Religions.” For an opinion about press criticism of new religions from the perspective of a scap Religions Division official, see scap #20. Helen Hardacre provides a brief discussion on new religions and Japanese media in “After Aum.” 5. Jakyō was recently used by the Chinese government to denounce Falun Gong. See John Wong & William T. Liu, The Mystery of China’s Falun Gong, 31. See also Danny Schechter, Falun Gong’s Challenge to China. 6. scap, meaning the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, also referred to General Douglas MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the Occupation force. 7. H. Neill McFarland, The Rush Hour of the Gods. McFarland cites Inui Takashi (237), whose book Nihon wa kurutteru includes a chapter by Saki Akio entitled “Rush Hour of the Gods.” The frequently cited image of religions mushrooming like “bamboo shoots after the rain” must have resonated with the spirit of the times 244 | Notes to pages 6–17 because people spoke of living a “bamboo-shoot existence” (take no ko seikatsu, selling one’s clothes to earn a living) during the Occupation. 8. Chris Rojek, Celebrity, 18. 9. Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō, Seisho vol. 1. 10. Catherine Wessinger, How the Millennium Comes Violently, 2. 11. Michael Barkun, Disaster and the Millennium, 1. 12. Among Yasumaru’s works are Nihon no kindaika to minshū shisō, Deguchi Nao, and Bunmeika no keiken. 13. Inoue Nobutaka, Japanese College Students’ Attitudes Towards Religion, 20. 14. Hardacre, “Aum Shinrikyō and the Japanese Media,” 171–74. 15. Stuart A. Wright, “Media Coverage of Unconventional Religion,” 101. 16. Hardacre, “Aum Shinrikyō and the Japanese Media,” 184–85. 17. Ian Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan. Beat (Kitano) Takeshi, one of Japan’s foremost media personalities, is a comedian , actor, and director whose films are widely known in the West. Aum was not the only new religious movement in which he displayed some interest. In the 1980s, he appeared in two feature-length films for television based on two widely criticized groups in Japan, Iesu no Hakobune (Yagi, Iesu no hakobune) and Jehovah ’s Witnesses (Yagi, Settoku). Kitano still appears on television programs that discuss supernatural phenomenon, although he is not associated with any particular religious group or philosophy publicly. 18. This group, founded in 1986, changed its official English name from “The Institute for Research in Human Happiness” to “Happy Science” in 2008. 19. Watanabe Manabu, “Reactions to the Aum Affair,” 37–38. 20. Personal interview, 27 January 2010, Tokyo. 21. Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan, 34. 22. Stewart M. Hoover, “Introduction,” in Practicing Religion in the Age of the Media, 1. 23. William Gamson and Gadi Wolfsfeld, “Movements and Media as Interacting Systems...

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