Japanese reading Dopers, please help me learn about this religion.

Factual Questions
1

Hey Dopers,
A friend of mine in Japan is deeply involved in this religion. For example, she spent 5 years of her life living an austere lifestyle in one of their temples.

When I ask her to describe her religion or talk about her experience, she changes the subject. This raises warning flags in my mind, but I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

I asked another Japanese friend of mine to describe the website to me, and she said “It’s like the Aum Shinriko Cult.” :eek: ! That’s the cult of which a certain group decided to unleash Sarin gas in the Tokyo subway. Now, I dont think my friend is going to do anything like that, but I was unnerved to say the least.

I can’t read Japanese, and I dont want to pester my other Japanese friend more about it, so I’m relying upon The Dope for help. Heeeeeeeelp! :frowning:
Sincerely,
Auto

2

Um, linky? Name? Bueller?

3

[For those who might like more knowledge on the cult specifically named, try here for starters]

Well, if the ‘religion’ is called Aleph then it is Aum Shinrikyo, under the new name they adopted after the subway attacks to avoid a bad image. :rolleyes:

As I understand it, in the last few decades there’s been a string of so-called ‘youth cults’ and teenage suicide pacts in Japan; not an epidemic, and granted, at least most of the cults are more of the “take all your money” kind than the “let’s go kill some people” kind IIRC, but it isn’t just paranoia like the satanic-ritual abuse scares we had in the US in the 80’s-90’s either.

Eesh, sorry for that run-on sentence. I keep re-reading it though and can’t think of a better way to phrase it.

As for your friend, have you asked her what the temple was like? Is it a landmark, etc? Play dumb and act like you’re assuming it’s a shinto shrine to see whether it’s just some new-agey thing or something more sinister. You don’t want to be a jerk, so don’t be confrontational about it unless something’s seriously wrong. But it seems to me that it might not be a bad idea to just generally keep an eye on her so that if any other warning signs are put out you can catch them.

It’s very possible that she doesn’t want to talk about it because she assumes people will write it off like they tend to with any new, non-traditional spiritual movement, and she just doesn’t want to be thought of as a fruitcake (or solely on the terms of her faith).

4

Oh Geez, I forgot to put the URL in the Hyperlink.

www.shukyouhoujinooyamenezunomikotoshinjiyoukai.or.jp/4000.html

And, ummm, actually she’s more than just a friend ^^;;;

5

I believe “shukyou houjin” means “religious organization,” and the actual name of the group is “Ōyamanezu no Mikoto Shinji Kyōkai.” This may be helpful.

6

Here is the Japanese Wikipedia page on this group, which I was not familiar with. To recap briefly what it says:

The group was founded by one Sadao Inai (1905-1988). He suffered from cancer of the pharynx and prayed to the god Ooyamanezu-no-mikoto and healed. This lead him to found this organisation to “show the world the existence” of said deity.

In 1952, things took a turn for the worst. At a time when the number of believers was steadily rising, a high-ranking member of the organisation was accused of raping one of the female believers. Furthermore, a sort of internal coup d’etat was staged by none other than Inai’s own wife.

These troubles were however dealt with, but the people who opposed Inai were kicked out of the organisation. The went on to found some of their own sects, which number up to 20.

To avoid similar strife, the structure of the organisation was changed to be more centralised. This allowed it to get back on its feet. It is said that between the mid-70s to the mid-80s the number of adherents grew from 50,000 to 800,000. Many of them converged to the area of Makita, where the church is based, which led to the construction of many buildings and clashes with the local residents.

Inai’s second in command, Hideko Mori took over after his death. She passed away in 2002. Since then, the leadership has been split between two persons. They have 24 centers across Japan.

Inai’s popularity was due in part to his sense of humour.

While the current number of followers isn’t clear, from the number and scale of buildings they own, one can surmise that they are many.

Prayer to Ooyamanezu-no-mikoto is at the center of their practice. Each morning and evening at 6:00, believers must pray. They are made to purchase radio clocks so that they are not even a second late for the prayer. Once a month, they gather to hear preachings. They value social obedience; for instance if one cannot do the evening prayer because of work, waiting after work to pray is okay.

Anyway, that’s what’s on Wikipedia. It seems largely Shinto-based, although the efforts put towards recruiting new believers is typical of new religions. On the dodgy front, they seem to be able to suck substantial amounts of money from their members, if their buildings are any indication. Also, they advocate miraculous healings and such, as a matter of fact, this appears to be their central message: “if you pray regularly to Ooyamanezu, he will heal you like he healed our founder.”

Like I said, I wasn’t really familiar with them, so that’s just what I can surmise from reading a bit.

7

I wonder what the members thought when having to choose who to follow.

Inai? Inai? Bah!
Anyway, googling “nezu no mikoto” brings up a lot of brief mentions of the group, but little in-depth information. This Japan Times author profile / book review (may require registration) mentions the group in passing:

Seems fairly passive. About your friend who compared them to Aum Shinrikyo: while Oyama could have something unsavory going on in the background, remember that Japan is largely secular, and anyone who believes strongly enough in something to make religious activity part of their daily routine is going be looked at as something of an oddball. Plus, if your belief is focused on something beyond the local neighborhood mainstream shrine or temple, a lot of folks here will make the association of ‘strange religious group’ -> ‘cult’ -> ‘Aum’ -> :eek: rather quickly.

8

What you’re looking at here is called a shin shukyo, or “new religion”. These things have been appearing in Japan pretty regularly for the last 80 years or so. Most resemble a heavily watered down version of Shinto, often with folk beliefs or other religious doctrines (most often christianity) thrown in. They run the gamut from strange but harmless groups to outright pyramid schemes and insanely bizarre cults. There probably exist new religions that are much more honest and logical than what I’m describing here, but I’ve never encountered one. Really, they tend to be like creepy jehovahs witnesses with many, many fewer members.

(Even the seemingly benign ones are weird; there was a group in the 30s that tried to annex part of China to found a holy land.)

9

Having lived in Nara for about a year, I got to meet a few members of Tenri-kyo. While it is somewhat older than the typical “new-religions”, I’d perhaps classify it as the father of shin-shukyo.

Their belief system, from the outside, looks like an obvious mix of Shinto, Buddhism and Judean monotheism. I have never heard anything negative about them and all the believers I’ve met were incredibly nice people. They do a little bit of evangelisation, but no much more than handing out pamphlets describing their religion. Sometimes, they’ll go out in groups and clean the sidewalks while playing music. There was a temple right next to where I lived and they made pretty good neighbours.