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Introduction
- University of Hawai'i Press
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1 Introduction In 1934, the journalist and critic Ōya Sōichi (1900–1970) wrote an article that depicted leaders of new religions that were active at that time as “star gods” (kamisama sutā).1 Ōya’s caustic wit runs throughout the piece, which focuses on groups like Ōmoto and Hito no Michi. Despite their popularity, he claimed, these new religions were mere flashes in the pan of modern Japanese society. They looked to their predecessors, the new religions of the Meiji period, to gain their inspiration while promising the public something new. Their leaders enjoyed mass adulation at the time, and were soon to experience widespread opprobrium. Within a short time these two groups were harshly suppressed by the authorities. Throughout his long career, Ōya displayed an uncanny knack for producing catchy phrases that summed up his cynicism while neatly capturing moods that resonated with his readers. Ōya eventually became one of Japan’s most famous journalists, and his name is associated with an eponymous and prestigious literary award, the Ōya Sōichi Prize for Nonfiction (Ōya Sōichi Nonfikushon Shō). In 1995 the prize was awarded to Egawa Shōko. Egawa was the independent journalist whose exposés on the religious group Aum Shinrikyō highlighted its nefarious activities well before the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system perpetrated by members of the group earlier that year. Considering Ōya’s long-standing interest in religion, she was a highly suitable choice as recipient of the award. Ōya’s prewar work on “star gods” was not his first or last foray into reporting on new religions. He contributed the following observation to the major newspaper Asahi Shinbun on 10 October 1948 when Japan was still under the Allied Occupation (1945–1952): Although the public has forgotten about Jikōson, who caused a stir immediately after the termination of the war, a “dancing religion” has appeared in the city and is the subject of much discussion. Postwar society is a veritable hotbed in which pseudo religions flourish. They feed on the ignorance of the public who, in the postwar chaos, lack the power to judge right from wrong. The causes for this lie in the breakdown of feudalistic 2 | celebrity gods traditions, the purge of the bureaucracy, and fears of another world war. Singing and dancing is a feature of this new group. The fact that some intelligentsia has joined the religion is of concern. Dealing with these types of groups is a major problem facing the authorities. Jikōson (born Nagaoka Nagako, 1903–1984) was a woman who led a small religion called Jiu, whereas the “dancing religion” (odoru shūkyō) referred to Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō, a group led by another woman named Kitamura Sayo (1900–1967). Kitamura was labeled “the dancing god” (odoru kamisama) by the press, although most of her supporters referred to her as Ōgamisama, “great god.” Their groups were the first of many new religions to be covered by the Japanese print media during the Occupation into the early 1950s. While these women are no longer household names in Japan, for a brief period they were known nationally and widely portrayed through a variety of print media. Most of the media coverage was highly critical. These two leaders are the “celebrity gods” of this book. This book examines the cases of these two women and the media representation—through print media in general, including newspapers, magazines, and books—that coincided and contributed to their brief period of celebrity and notoriety during a crucial time in Japan’s religious and social history, the Allied Occupation and the postwar period up until the early 1950s. In order to explain their cases, which involve complex interactions between new religions, media workers, Japanese government and Occupation authorities, religious authorities, intellectuals , and ordinary people, I take a historical approach in explaining the relationships between these various parties. In considering the leaders and followers of the groups themselves, and the impact of press reporting, it does not focus on issues concerning audience reception, such as how readers of the media reacted to the representations. Furthermore, it does not focus in detail on individual journalists’ ideological motivations for reporting religious leaders in particular ways, but rather considers the trends of reporting that existed, and the social circumstances that influenced those trends. It is primarily concerned with media representation and its impact, and also with the development of themes from the Meiji period within media that have affected new religions at...