Celebrity gods: new religions, media, and authority in occupied Japan

Celebrity Gods explores the interaction of new religions and the media in postwar Japan. It focuses on the leaders and founders (kyōsō) of Jiu and Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō, two new religions of Japan's immediate postwar period that received substantial press attention. Jiu was linked to the popul...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Dorman, Benjamin (Author)
Format: Electronic Book
Language:English
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Published: Honolulu University of Hawaiʻi Press 2012
In:Year: 2012
Series/Journal:Nanzan library of Asian religion and culture
Further subjects:B Mass media in religion (Japan) History 20th century
B Japan Religion 20th century
B Mass Media (Japan) Religious aspects
B Religion and state (Japan) History 20th century
Online Access: Volltext (Verlag)
Description
Summary:Celebrity Gods explores the interaction of new religions and the media in postwar Japan. It focuses on the leaders and founders (kyōsō) of Jiu and Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō, two new religions of Japan's immediate postwar period that received substantial press attention. Jiu was linked to the popular prewar group Ōmotokyō, and its activities were based on the millennial visions of its leader, a woman called Jikōson. When Jiu attracted the legendary sumo champion Futabayama to its cause, Jikōson and her activities became a widely-covered cause célèbre in the press. Tenshō Kōtai Jingū Kyō (labeled odoru shūkyō, "the dancing religion," by the press) was led by a farmer's wife, Kitamura Sayo. Her uncompromising vision and actions toward creating a new society--one that was far removed from what she described as the "maggot world" of postwar Japan--drew harsh and often mocking criticism from the print media. Looking back for precursors to the postwar relationship of new religions and media, Benjamin Dorman explores the significant role that the Japanese media traditionally played in defining appropriate and acceptable social behavior, acting at times as mouthpieces for government and religious authorities. Using the cases of Renmonkyō in the Meiji era and Ōmotokyō in the Taishō and Shōwa eras, Dorman shows how accumulated images of new religions in pre-1945 Japan became absorbed into those of the immediate postwar period. Given the lack of formal religious education in Japan, the media played an important role in transmitting notions of acceptable behavior to the public. He goes on to characterize the leaders of these groups as "celebrity gods," demonstrating that the media, which were generally untrained in religious history or ideas, chose to fashion them as "celebrities" whose antics deserved derision. While the prewar media had presented other kyōsō as the antithesis of decent, moral citizens who stood in opposition to the aims of the state, postwar media reports presented them primarily as unfit for democratic society. Celebrity Gods delves into an under-studied era of religious history: the Allied Occupation and the postwar period up to the early 1950s. It is an important interdisciplinary work that considers relations between Japanese and Occupation bureaucracies and the groups in question, and uses primary source documents from Occupation archives and interviews with media workers and members of religious gr ...
Renmonkyō and the Meiji press -- Deguchi Onisaburō as a prewar model -- The birth of two celebrity gods -- Before Jikōson -- Building a "kingdom of god" -- Bureaucracy, religion, and the press under occupation -- Jikōson and Jiu -- Kitamura Sayo -- New religions and critics in the immediate postwar press
Item Description:Includes bibliographical references (pages 243-287) and index
ISBN:0824836219