Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 7/1

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S h ~ i k y 6Shakaigaku Kenky&ai

i:kS @f%2

Association for the

Stu dy of Religion and Society ] ed., Shuky6 no imi sekai m,8Yke

,

[The religious world of me aning]. To ky o: Yfizankaku, 1980 . Hard-

bound. 25 4 pp. Y2,500.

This book is th e second t o be published by th e Association for th e

Stu dy of Religion and S ociety. Th e first bore the title Gendai shlikyi

e no shikuku %k =k,-+E [Perspectives on con tem pora ry religion]

(1978 ). ' Each contains articles by about a dozen contribu tors.

The book under review involves considerable diversity in respect of

matters studied, but what unites the various contributions is a common

interest in the changing features of con tem pora ry religion. Th e essays

themselves are unequally grouped in to four parts.

Part

1,

with four essays, is titled Heritage an d development in the

wo rld of tradit ion. Th e first essay, Izuna and i z u m masters by

SATO Noriaki, focuses on a ty pe of local magician foun d in the Tohoku

area (a district of nort hern Honshc). Th e izuna is an imaginary animal

ab ou t t he size of a m ouse. It is supposed to have beneficial, super-

natural powers and be subject to the control of the i z u m masters,

th e only ones able to see these c reatures. Many clients call on izuna

masters to present requests fo r assistance. Sa t6 gives an acco unt of

the structure of this form of belief.

The second essay, by MOGISa ka e, is called The w orld of the festival

considered under the heading of tradit ion. His data are drawn fro m

Nagano prefecture and focus primarily on two phenomena that have

long attracted the at ten tion of Japanese folklorists: the midwinter

Snow Festival and the midsummer Bon Festival (sometimes identified

as the Festival for th e Dead). Mogi clarifies th e mu tual rel ati on sh p

between the social structure and the way the festivals are carried out.

The ideology of noro succession in the Am am i area is the work

of two authors, IGETAMidori and YAM AZA KI oshie. Noro is the term

for a traditio nal priest-ritualist of th e Amami and O kinawa areas. Igeta

and Yamazaki did their research in the Amami area over a period of

several years and established considerable rapport with a number of

info rm ant s. Th ey seek to get at the ideology of th e traditional belief

system centering

in

the noro on the assumption that its normally veiled

1.

For a review by Jan Swyngedouw see Japanese journal of religious studies

1978 ) : 299-304.

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struc ture becomes manifest when difficulties arise tha t interfere with

the traditio nal ways of carrying out rz r rituals.

Th e last essay in part is Social and cultur ai aspects in the ap pro -

priation

of

religion by MOM Sachio. He takes up the phenomenon

of the Kann on cult, one of the most popular in Japan.

He

analyzes

how it has changed in

the course of its diffusio n. As a faith objec t

Kannon has great popularity, but few Japanese know much about

this figure. This paradox is one of the key points in this essay.

Part 2 , The expe rience and logic of salvation, consists of three

essays. W T N BE Masako's ' T h e logic of salvation treats this

problem in relation to the modern period religious organization

Tensh6 Kotai Jingukyo, popularly known to Japanese people of the

imm ediate postwar period as the dancing religion. T he recen tly

deceased foun der of this sect, Kitam ura Sa yo , left man y messages for

her followers. W atanabe analyzes no t only these messages bu t also

the way that they have been interpreted by those who received in-

struc tion and advice on life problems directly fro m her.

The paper by MN N G Ku nik o, The logic of possession and

exorcism in co ntem pora ry Japan, deals with ano ther new religious

group: Sekai Mahikari Bunm ei Ky oda n [True Light for World En-

lightenment M ission ]. T h s sect is particularly kn own for its salvation-

purification ritual called tehzzashi (a kind of healing ritual that makes

use of hand action but avoids physical contact between ritualist and

clients). She traces how members becom e drawn int o the practice

of this ritual.

In his paper Salvation for th e bod y and salvation for the spirit,

SHIMADAHiromi advocates developing a subdiscipline that might be

called medical science of religion. He sides with those who see

medical care as a kind of magico-religious healing and seeks to throw

light on the boundary area where religious and medical care overlap.

Part 3 The w orld of meaning in scripture and theo logy , likewise

contains three essays, tw o of which deal with phen om ena external to

Japanese society. Religious exp erienc e and socie ty in Methodism

b y Y M N K Hiroshi focuses on the theology of John Wesley and

considers the relationship between Methodism and the work ethic.

Perceptions of the world in fundam entalist Islam by

OTSUKA

Kazuo

takes its theore tical orie ntation from t he work of Wilfred Cantwell

Sm ith an d deals with data gained during a on e-year stay in Sau di

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Arabia. dt su ka addresses himself no t to the problem of understanding

lslamic theology in general but to that of comprehending how indi-

vidual Muslims live in the modern Islamic world. The third essay,

J6do Shinshii theology and the

Tannish

by HAYASHIMakoto, takes

up the question of the role of the sacred text in a religious organization.

In the case of the J6do Shinshii or True Pure Land Sect, the

Tannish6,

a text based on the words of the sect's founder, Shinran, is widely

read and has resulted in the publication of numerous commentaries.

Hayashi takes the view that analysis of these various interpretations

provides an invaluable clue for persons interested in understanding

the role of a written text in a religious organization that regards it

as normative if not sacred.

Part

4

The mode of existence of the sacred, is comprised of two

theoretical articles. The first, by KAWAMURAunirnitsu, is on Charisma

and its magnetic field. In this paper Kaw amura reexamines Weber's

concept

of

charisma and proposes as a less psychological and more

sociological corrective the term magnetic field of charisma. This

term

is

intended to refer to th e social sphere in which charisma be -

comes established and has its effects. Th e author explores the question

of the structure of the charismatic field and alsc that

of

the social

developm ents in which its influence can be traced.

Th e second, by TSU SHIMA ichihito, is entitlea The 'real' existence

of a religiously transcendent world. Th e most speculative of all the

contributions, Tsushima's paper examines the process through which

religious people, interpreting diverse and ongoing experiences, fashion

images cons titutive of their world of reality. He identifies four form s

of this process: naming, direct experience of the transcendent, intuitive

grasp through experience of hierophany, and analogy with the natural

world.

All these contributors, still in their twenties and thirties, are relatively

young . Perhaps for this reason their papers show considerable free-

dom from orthodo x models. Som e give us first-hand informa tion

on the religious situation

in

present-day Japan. Others propose new

and stimulating methods for the analysis of complex religious phe-

nom ena . By and large their con tributio ns evoke a generally positive

assessment. At the same tim e, however, there are a few problems.

One problem is that of how a given paper relates t o previous work

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R E V I E W S

in the field. There exist, for exam ple, ma ny scholarly studies of magico-

religious folk practices, and a few theoretical constructions have been

proposed. In th e paper on Ama mi area

noro

by Igeta and Yamazaki,

however, there is no indication as to how their research relates to the

general corpus of data and theo ry. This lacuna will create difficulty

for readers.

Mogi's essay on winter and summer festivals is overbalanced on the

side of detailed descrip tion of various rituals and processes. Readers

will doubtless call for a more theoretical explanation of the phenomena.

The so-called new religions of Jap an have a collective histo ry of

over a hundred years, but academic inquiry and research in this area

did n ot begin in earnest u ntil a fter W orld War 11. Perhaps because of

its very newness, the question of what approach t o take

in

order to

com prehen d this phe nom en on is still unresolved. Three of th e papers

in part 2 deal with religious bodies of the modern period and seek to

develop new approaches, but it would be venturesome to say that they

have succeeded. mo re suitable appraisal would be t o say th at with

these papers the aut hor s have no w joined th e ranks of those searching

for a new approach.

The final point in my list of the book's weaknesses is that several

of the authors are so eager to set out and develop their own views that

the y fail t o give a clear acc oun t of their cen tral the me . This criticism

applies particula rly to th e concluding essay.

Despite these weaknesses, this book can be positively assessed as

one that will stimulate further contributions to the study of the con-

temporary religious situation.

Before concluding, should like t o say a word abo ut the relationship

between this book and the one that preceded it. Th e earlier book

likewise sought to clarify the contemporary religious situation and

also consisted of four parts: New attem pts to comprehend religion,

Conte mpo rary ma nifestation s of deep-seated beliefs, New develop-

me nts am ong religious movements, an d Points of con tac t betw een

religion and culture. Th e reader will observe that the them e and

structure of the two books are quite similar.

The main difference

between them is that the earlier book is more general and inclusive

than th e second. Interest has shifted from the problem of the relation-

ships between religion and other dimensions of culture to that of the

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religious world in and of itself. Bo th the virtues and th e defec ts of

th e present bo ok derive from this cha racteristic.

The young but professional scholars affiliated with the Association

for the Study of Religion and Society will certainly continue their

studies bo th empirically and theoretically. We can expect tha t they

will take seriously the criticisms leveled at their work take encourage-

ment from th e sy mp athetic support they receive and come ou t with

another book in the not-too-distant futu re.

I NOU Nobutaka

Assistant in Religious Stud ies

University of Tokyo

Documents

Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 7/1