Did Aum Change Everything? What Soka Gakkai Before, During, and After the Aum Shinrikyo Affair Tells Us About the Persistent “Otherness” of New Religions in Japan

Abstract

Scholars share a broad consensus that the Aum Shinrikyō subway attacks in March 1995 fundamentally shifted prevailing attitudes against "religion" in Japan. However, comparison with the case of Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest active "new religion, " complicates this view. In this article, I provide a counter-narrative to the argument that "Aum changed everything" by showing that public officials' strategies against Aum Shinrikyō from 1995 emerged in large part from a sustained anti-Soka Gakkai campaign that intensified immediately before the Aum attacks. Tracking interactions among politicians, the media, and Soka Gakkai before and during the Aum Shinrikyō incident, I outline ways in which Soka Gakkai and Aum Shinrikyō form part of a historical continuity of high-profile "new religions" that public moralists have consistently scapegoated for political gain throughout the modern era. At the same time, I also confirm that Aum Shinrikyō did, in a way, change everything: Aum may have marked the end of religious mass movements in contemporary Japan.

What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11? Part 2: From Religious Mobilization to “Spiritual Care”

“…Information on this project, including preliminary results of the latest surveys and lists of publications that made use of these data, is available here: http://www.kt.rim.or.jp/~n-inoue/ index.files/jasrs.htm. 3 For explorations of the media impact of Aum Shinrikyo coverage and ways media images of Aum overpowered those of other religions from 1995, see Hardacre 2007, McLaughlin 2012, and Shūkyō Jōhō Risāchi Sentā et al, 2011 Vagaries surrounding "religion" in modern Japan are examined in Josephson 2012. Analyses of ways Japanese youth encountered religion through popular culture in the years after Aum appear in Thomas 2012a, and discussions of a slight yet perceptible post-Aum rehabilitation of religion in manga and anime can be found in Thomas 2012b.…”

“… For explorations of the media impact of Aum Shinrikyo coverage and ways media images of Aum overpowered those of other religions from 1995, see Hardacre , McLaughlin , and Shūkyō Jōhō Risāchi Sentā et al, 2011.…”

Media and New Religions in Japan

“…After the Aum Affair, religious organisations in Japan had to face open criticism and still-lingering negative images of religion in society. As other studies have discussed (Baffelli and Reader 2012;Chilson 2004;Dorman 2012a;Gag né 2014;McLaughlin 2012), the consequen ces of the Aum Affair invo lved not only new religions, but also more traditional religious organisations with no evident link to Aum. For the groups discussed in this book (Agonshū, Kōfuku no Kagaku and Hikari no Wa), the situation was more complicated, due to the fact that they were, as discussed in the Introduction, more or less directly a target of criticism and were associated in the public mind with Aum.…”

Hard Lessons Learned: Tracking Changes in Media Presentations of Religion and Religious Aid Mobilization after the 1995 and 2011 Disasters in Japan

“…The Gakkai's engagement in electoral politics through its members' support of Komeito (the Clean Government Party) has long been treated by Soka Gakkai's religious and political opponents as a threat to Japan's postwar constitutional polity. These opponents seized upon the Aum attacks as an opportunity to intensify their anti-Soka Gakkai and anti-Komeito campaign by conflating Aum with Soka Gakkai (LoBreglio 1997;McLaughlin 2012;Wilkinson 2009). This move had the effect of transforming public fear of new religious groups into fear of any religious identity, which in turn opened a chasm between religious organizations that provided aid after the Hanshin earthquake and the Japanese public that received it.…”