The Ghosts of Tsunami Dead and Kokoro no kea in Japan’s Religious Landscape

Abstract

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami in 2011, ghost tales have spread throughout disaster affected areas. There have been reports of ghost sightings and even of people being possessed by ghosts of the tsunami dead. In 2013, I conducted a survey to investigate how religious specialists deal with such phenomena. The results show that a substantial number of them were actually consulted by people troubled by ghosts. In this article, I identify four common characteristics of how priests treat such clients: (1) Acceptance and listening, (2) Performing rituals, (3) Providing moral instruction, and (4) Promoting self-care for the afflicted. Priests offer traditional religious care, but the care they provide is based on a psychological understanding of ghosts, while they also account for secular factors when considering how to best treat the people who come to them for help. This attitude toward ghosts and treatment reflects the priests’ struggle to work in the interstices between the secular and the religious in contemporary Japan, a balancing act which accounts for the recent increase of religious specialists offering kokoro no kea (care of the heart/mind) based on secular teachings in clinical fieldsites. Whether this trend will be successful or not is a yardstick by which to judge the secularity or post-secularity of contemporary and future Japanese society.

What is the association between post-traumatic stress disorder and unemployment after a disaster?

“…Considering the results, the second hypothesis is rejected. Although the prevalence of PTSD is higher in places close to the epicenter, its association with unemployment would knowledge) present in public policies to face disasters in Japan, and which has also been adapted to Chile [59,60]. Likewise, it is possible to mitigate the impact of traumatic events and unemployment at the same time, considering the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy for postdisaster distress to generate strategies that allow activating behaviors which facilitate job search and, in parallel, perform a cognitive restructuring that allows one to elaborate the trauma [61].…”

Practicing Spiritual Care in the Japanese Hospice

“…Takahashi Hara examines this phenomenon and does not deny that the work of interfaith chaplains is ostensibly post-secular in that religious professionals are entering new nonreligious spaces. However, he cautions that although their work occurs in the interstices between religion and the secular, their actual activities tend to be more psychotherapeutic than religious in nature (Takahashi 2016). This reinforces Fujiwara's point that these so-called post-secular examples of religious activism tend to manifest values that can "easily be approved, shared, or promoted by people who deem themselves non-religious or secular" (Fujiwara 2016, 100).…”

Buddhism and Comparative Constitutional Law

“…13 For discussions of women clergy and their quotidian engagements with local-level parishioners, seeRowe 2017;Starling 2019. For accounts of exorcism in Japanese Buddhism and its renewal in the wake of the March 2011 disasters in northeast Japan, seeTakahashi 2016.…”