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On February 22, 1959, Okada Yoshikazu-former officer in the Japanese army, former owner of an aircraft manufacturing plant, and descendant of samurai-experienced a vision. From an image of a god washing clothes in a tub of gold, he determined his purpose in life was to cleanse the world. Then a few days later he awoke to a voice saying, "Give the True Light of God and declare the dawn of the Spiritual Civilization. Your mission is to be as a sphere of light. Your name shall be Kotama (Jewel of Light)" (McVeigh 15).
The following year Okada formed a movement which has become one of the fastest-growing so-called New Religions in Japan, and one of the few that has succeeded outside of Japan. This essay will explore the manner in which this New Religion-Mahikari-reflects features of Japan's contemporary culture. After placing Mahikari in the context of other New Religions, it will focus on five topics: (1) healing, (2) spiritualism, (3) apocalypticism, (4) Japanocentrism, and (5) science. All five relate to Japan's popular culture, and most also serve to connect Mahikari with "New Age-ism" in Japan (Haga and Kisala 236).
New Religions in Japan
First, what are New Religions in Japan and how do they differ from the "old" ones? Just as "high" culture tends to merge with popular culture in modern Japan (Painter 197), sometimes traditional religions flow into and influence the "new" ones in Japan. Both emphasize the importance of nature, living and dead family members, purification rites, festivals, daily rituals, and the connection between religious history and Japan's nationhood (Earhart 2). In the last two centuries, however, many reformulations of Shintoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and other belief systems have produced what are termed "New Religions."
Some claim the New Religions movement started in the early nineteenth century. Additional suggested starting points include the years after the Meiji restoration in 1868, the early 1900s, or the period after World War II (Inoue 4). Helen Hardacre believes the phenomenon started in 1800 and then had three distinct periods of growth: 1800-1860, the 1920s, and the years after World War II (4). Most recently, Shimazono Susumu, in an analysis of Aum Shinrikyo, noted that New Religions can be grouped into four main periods of growth, the last...