Nanzan Library of Asian Religion and Culture. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012. viii, 269 pp. (B&W photos.) US$42.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-3621-4.
Celebrity Gods is a well-researched, neatly written manuscript on the often conflicting relationship between religious freedom, print media and the state in modern Japan. Dorman’s research tries to answer what is the state of religious freedom in contemporary Japan in the wake of the “most serious case of domestic terror” by leaders of Aum Shinrikō when they coordinated a lethal sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in March 1995. How can one explain the universal media portrayal of Asahara Shōkō as the “personification of evil” and “fraudster” of the innocent and naïve (12)? Why have all new religions, such as Pana Wave, which have little-to-no similarities with Aum Shinrikō, come to bear the same characterization: crazy, morally suspect and dangerous? To answer these questions, Dorman turns to history and sociology to explain “why certain (negative) representations of new religions developed” and how these representations were produced, perpetuated and evolved in the print media (3, 21). The originality of Dorman’s research is his conjecture that since mid-Meiji the Japanese mass media has been unwavering in its criticism of new religious movements.
Dorman begins his narrative with the secularization of religious belief under the authority of the state from the middle of the Meiji era (chapters 1 and 2). Well-established religions were happy to collude with Japanese bureaucrats in return for recognition and funding associated with social work cum philanthropy. New religious movements organized around charismatic leaders, such as Shimamura Mitsu of Renmonkyō and Deguchi Onisaburō of Ōmotokyō, however, were problematic to Japanese authorities. The beliefs of these two religious movements challenged the carefully constructed charisma and monopoly of the Emperor as living god, gender hierarchies (Simamura and Deguchi Nao, the founders of Ōmotokyō, were women), and the raison d’être of the state as a force of progress and development based on expert knowledge. The popular press, heavily invested in the ideals of the pre-war state and in their role as watchdog of public interest, coupled with an eye to increase circulation, emphasized the scandalous sexual practices, dubious mystical powers, and even more dubious financial practices of Renmonkyō and Ōmotokyō. In collusion with established Shinto and Buddhist institutions and experts of the new science of psychology (54), the popular press was able to shape public opinion in sensational exposés that revealed how new religious movements were remnants of irrational superstition among the uneducated masses (Renmonkyō), or immoral “cults” that targeted the gullible (Ōmotokyō). Shimamura Mitsu and Deguchi Onisaburō, argues Dorman, became the archetypes by which the popular press came to evaluate all other new religious movements led by charismatic leaders.
Chapter 3 introduces the main subjects of his study; Jikōson (born Nagaoka Nagako) and Jiu, and Kitamura Sayo and Tenshō Kōtai Jingū. Both of these new religious movements were established in pre-war Japan, grew in size during the US occupation, and were led by women. Both women and the organizations they founded were the target of strong criticism by journalists such as Ōya Sōichi, intellectuals and psychologists in the print media. Dorman narrates the road to “celebrity god” travelled by Jikōson and Kitamura Sayo, emphasizing the ambiguous relationship they developed with the authorities and media, and the pivotal role the media played in concocting their notoriety or repute. The contrasting fate of Jikōson and Kitamura Sayo as post-war “celebrity gods” is covered in detail in chapters 5 and 6.
Chapter 4 covers the major changes introduced by the US occupation in the way officials and the media criticize and intervene in the workings of new religious movements. Utilizing Supreme Command for the Allied Powers (SCAP) documents, and the memoirs of the main Japanese and American protagonists involved in expanding religious freedom in Japan, Dorman narrates the challenges SCAP and Japanese officials faced in implementing the rule of separation of church and state. Celebrity Gods describes in detail the tension between the occupation authorities and the existing Religions Division with regard to the proper function of the Religious Corporations Ordinance and Religious Corporations Law. The major issue was over how to administer the escalating number of new religious movements, and what contingencies had to be in place before action could be taken against shady religious leaders suspected of bilking.
The strengths of Celebrity Gods are Dorman’s painstaking research in identifying the complex relationship between media and religion and SCAP’s role in establishing the conditions that allowed new religious movements to emerge and grow without repression after 1945. However, there is also a major shortcoming. Celebrity Gods falls frustratingly between two stools. It is neither a study in the historical contingencies that allows the formation of new religious beliefs, nor does it offer any original insights into the sociology of modern media. In his narrative Dorman is aware of the major role Japanese media played in the secularization of religious belief via its championing of freedom whilst simultaneously being heavily invested in the project of nation building and the promotion of a secular modernity. However, he has little to say about how belief both challenges and is challenged by the secular developmental agenda immanent in modernity. What happens to religion in modern societies when belief is gradually and constantly being replaced by models of knowledge and expertise interested in the conditions under which true knowledge is possible? Why does power of affirmation and new forms of subjective investment crystallized around religious belief pose a danger to the secular modern? How do religions, both established and new, have to adapt and evolve if they are to continue to have relevance? What is lost or gained in the act of compromise?
Hopefully Dorman will take up some of these questions in his future contributions to the study of new religious movements in post-war Japan.
Bill Mihalopoulos
University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
pp. 161-163