From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern
Japan
By Susumu Shimazono. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2004.
348 pages, ISBN 1-876-843-136 (paperback) US$ 34.95.
Reviewed by
Daniel A. Metraux
Chair, Department of Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures
Professor of Asian Studies
Mary Baldwin College, Staunton, VA
Susumu
Shimazono, a professor in the Department of Religious Studies at
the University of Tokyo, is one of the foremost scholars of the
contemporary religious scene in Japan. His research and writing
on Aum Shinrikyo have provided fascinating insights into the growth
and thinking of this extraordinary movement and his vast number
of publications on Japan's New Religions and Japanese religious
history stretching from the 1970s has provided Japanese and foreign
scholars with an incredibly rich goldmine of material to help them
with their own research.
Shimazono's most
recent English-language publication, From Salvation to Spirituality:
Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan, is a rich anthology
of his articles on Japan's religions written between 1981 and 2003.
The introduction and sixteen chapters of this volume previously
appeared in such journals as the Japanese Journal of Religious
Studies, the Journal of Oriental Studies, the Journal
of Alternative Religion and Culture, and Social Compass,
as well as chapters in various edited anthologies on Japanese religion.
Shimazono's focus
in this book is on the phenomenal growth of Japan's new religions
since the Meiji era and of more recent new spiritual movements and
culture in Japan. He examines the reasons for their popular appeal,
the impact that they have had on Japanese culture and on the evolution
of contemporary Japanese society, and on the spread of these movements
abroad. He believes this work is especially important because today
roughly half of Japan's actively religious practitioners are involved
with New Religions and spiritual activities and these movements
are having a profound effect on contemporary Japanese society.
The book is divided
into five distinct sections. A lengthy introduction provides a very
useful overview of the development of Japan's New Religions from
the earliest, Nyoraikyoo, a group that emerged in the early nineteenth
century, to the evolution of the "Spiritual World" since
the 1980s. The first section, "Japan's New Religions in the
Broader Scheme," examines the role of New Religions and the
sociology of religion in Japan, the religious influences that these
religions have had on Japan's modernization since the Meiji era,
and the role that "salvation religions" play in modern
society. The second section consists of three excellent chapters
on "Lotus Sutra-Based New Religions" and the influence
of the Nichiren School on a variety of Japan's more prominent religious
organizations, including the Soka Gakkai.
Part three provides
perspectives on a wide variety of New Religions and "Spiritual
Movements" that have grown in prominence in Japan over the
past two to three decades. Topics include the diverse trends of
Millenialism in modern Japanese religious history, the growth of
"New Spirituality Movements" in Japan including "naturalistic
religiosity" (which includes such factors as "alternative
knowledge movements (AKMs)," "alternative medicine,"
"alternative agriculture," and "AKMs and new spirituality
movements") and a broad discussion of the growth of psychotherapeutic
religion in Japan.
Part four, "Religions
and Spiritual Movements After the 1970s," include work on the
growth of "New New Religions" and "spirituality"
in the 1980s and beyond; the spread of Japan's New Religions abroad;
a comparison of the major distinctions between the New Religions,
such as the Soka Gakkai, that came of age in the immediate postwar
era and those which grew in prominence in the 1970s, 1980s, and
beyond; and two final chapters, "New Spirituality Movements
and the Spiritual Intellectuals," and "'New Age Movements'
or 'New Spirituality Movements and Culture.'"
Since I have been
studying the Soka Gakkai movement since the mid-1970s, I am especially
interested in Shimazono's 1999 article, "Soka Gakkai and the
Modern Reformation of Buddhism." Here Shimazono prefaces his
work with the question, "In a world of rapid change, progressively
urbanized and information-intensive, what transformations are taking
place in Buddhist practice and in the community?" (p. 109).
What follows is a lengthy discussion of the doctrines developed
by Toda Josei (1900-1958), who rebuilt the Soka Gakkai after World
War II, on the "Doctrine of Life Force." Shimazono states
that Toda's idea of life-force was a significant move away from
the theology of the Nichiren Shoshu sect and of the Gakkai's founder,
Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944). Shimazono writes that what is
of supreme interest here is how this idea of life-force "reshaped
the traditional teachings of Nichiren Shoshu in the direction of
a belief in this-worldly salvation that is typical of popular Buddhist
movements in East Asia in the modern period" (pp. 110-111).
There is also a
fascinating chapter on "New Spirituality" movements. Here
Shimazono makes links between more traditional Buddhism and some
of the New Religions and New Spirituality movements. There are concrete
differences between the new spiritualism and traditional Buddhism
in that some of these newer movements do not focus as much on an
awareness of human suffering and lack a concept of personified agents
such as God, gods, or a sacred Other. But, he notes (p. 302) that
[I]f we interpret
Buddhism as a teaching that every person can undergo the Buddha’s
enlightenment as one's own experience if one follows the righteous
paths based on the truth, then Buddhism is rather close to the new
spirituality movements and culture. Significantly, some persons
involved in the new spirituality movements and culture are so sympathetic
to Buddhism that they consider their own quest in the new spirituality
movements and culture as merely a new evolution of Buddhism for
the contemporary world.
This last point
is well argued and most interesting. We call many of these religious
movements something genuinely new, but scholars such as Shimazono
correctly point out their strong roots in more traditional Buddhist
or Shinto culture in Japan. To get back to the Soka Gakkai, there
are those who assert that the Soka Gakkai is not a real "Buddhist
movement," but Shimazono's chapters on the Gakkai, as well
as Reiyukai and other Lotus Sutra-based New Religious Movements
(NRMs), indicate that many of the most popular of these groups are
indeed very Buddhist in their orientation — and quite traditionally
Buddhist at that.
The chapter on Reiyukai
is very important because it shows that the Soka Gakkai does not
have a monopoly on the Lotus-based tradition amongst the NRMs. Reiyukai
is today a fairly small and quiet NRM, but it has fostered other
movements, such as Rissho Koseikai which has thrived as a Buddhist-based
lay religious movement. Shimazono's analysis comparing and contrasting
the Soka Gakkai with the Reiyukai grouping is most helpful.
This rich volume
belongs in the library of every serious student of modern Japan
because of the wealth of truly scholarly information and insights
not only on present-day Japanese religion, but also on contemporary
Japanese society as a whole. The diversity of topics discussed in
considerable depth and wisdom is quite phenomenal.
The only minor faults
of the book lie in its status as a collected anthology of articles
written over a span of more than two decades. Despite the fact that
the editors have carefully grouped the chapters in terms of topic,
the transitions between articles at times can be rather rough. Some
of the chapters are also a bit dated. The piece on Japanese new
religions abroad was published in 1991 and no apparent effort has
been made to update the article. Much has happened to these religions
abroad since the early 1990s, and some of these developments should
have been noted here.
Despite these minor
flaws, this volume by Professor Shimazono is an invaluable resource
for every scholar in the field.