1990. Produced by Dr. Jamie Hubbard and Dr. Ed Bastian. Educational Communications Productions. 47 minutes.
This video was a collaborative project between a BBC cinematographer and a Buddhist scholar, Jamie Hubbard, to document an important religious phenomenon in contemporary Japan. This is the wide and still-growing popularity of fundamentalist sects, the so-called New Religions, which often combine pragmatic goals, personalistic doctrines, and faith-healing techniques.
The documentary opens with several scenes of religion within and against contemporary Japan. That is, religion is in crisis–ignored by the secularizing patterns of both work (business success) and play (shots of Yoyogi Park). It exists in some occasional rituals, like visiting a shrine at New Years, but otherwise seems irrelevant to everyday concerns.
With that as a preface, the scene shifts to the Yamaguchi family, and Mr. Yamaguchi is seen talking about his life. They were married by omiai as the Korean War was ending (c. 1953), and he settled into a lifelong career with a major trading company, with headquarters in the central Marunouchi district of Tokyo. They eventually bought what looks to be an affluent house thirty minutes from Tokyo station.
But Mrs. Yamaguchi was increasingly unhappy. She was from a large, multi-generational family in Kyushu, and here was increasingly desperately lonely. Her daughter was involved in school and her husband with work (“Shigoto! shigoto!”). Her dream was, once a week, for the family to be able to eat together! Both families were Jôdô Shinshû, and his parents sent them a family altar which she was expected to keep up.
Meanwhile, Mr. Yamaguchi was not only busy at work to the extent that his health suffered, but he also took to gambling on the stock market and sustained heavy losses. Note the scenes of Mr. Yamaguchi as section head, night after night getting his subordinates out on “nomikashion” at bars and restaurants, coming home late and drunk, having arguments with his wife, who stayed up with food and complaints. “Do I want to spend my entire life with such a man?” Mrs. Yamaguchi wondered increasingly. [The video has a melodramatic enactment of her loneliness and alienation.] Mrs. Yamaguchi sought help in religion, including Christianity, which she dabbled in for three years.
When she discovered that Mr. Yamaguchi was having an affair, she plunged into enormous despair: “what was the point of life? she reflected.” “Trust was the only tie she had left to my husband, and now even that was broken.” She locked herself in the darkened room that contained the butsudan for forty days, eating little, losing ten kilograms. Mr. Yamaguchi was perplexed–“it was just a casual affair” he protested, and wondered why she didn’t just blow up and be done with it. Instead she retreated within herself, and the video shows her walking a beach, thinking of suicide; she relates that at one point she went into the waves, and paused and retreated only when she heard the voice of Mrs. Abe.
Mrs. Abe turns out to be not only a neighbor but a family friend from Mrs. Yamaguchi’s home town. She finally turned to her for advice: “I don’t want to think about my husband anymore!” Mrs. Abe in turn counseled patience, endurance, and self-reflection. It turned out that Mrs. Abe was a member of Shin’nyo-en, and convened a regular small meeting in her house (katei shûkai).
The video then introduces Shin’nyô-en, which claims a membership of 600,000. It was founded shortly after World War II by Itô Shinjô and his wife. Itô had been a Shingon priest, and started a new sect based on Tantric teachings–especially the Sutra of Great Nirvana. Thus, it is one of the Buddhist-derived sectarian movements, although like most it syncretizes elements from a number of religious traditions. Itô’s wife and (some of) their children died, and Itô teaches that they have remained as Bodhisattvas in this world to help the living. He teaches that present problems result from past actions that remain in the form of karma. The sect uses spirit mediums who communicate with Mrs. Itô and their children. Shin’nyô-en also believes in group volunteer work, particularly to focus the mind and spirit and take one’s attention way from problems. Shin’nyô-en’s membership is divided into some 2,500 small congregations (katei shûkai, or family congregations), like the group that assembles in Mrs. Abe’s home. It skillfully combines the psychological techniques of a mass organization with those of the small group.
The video shows a spirit medium session for Mrs. Yamaguchi by Yonemura, who is seen working his hands through several mudras. His communication with Mrs. Yamaguchi tends to place the blame on her for accusing her husband and threatening the harmony of the family. He urges her to purify her heart of hatred.
The following scene is her late return home, which is said to be an especially frequent occurrence. Mr. Yamaguchi is waiting in the kitchen and scolds her rather abusively. Mr. Yamaguchi, though, apparently wants to know more about his wife’s activities. He sees an article in the newspaper about a telephone consulting service hotline, the Buddhist Information Center, staffed by priests who are concerned that the population misunderstands “real” religion and is absorbed by pseudo-religious beliefs in exorcism and ghosts (yurei/ tamashi). [Note the implied tension between established Buddhist and the New Religions.]
The hotline tells him to contact Professor Kodama Gyôyô, a Buddhist priest-professor who is a member of a reform group within a mainstream Buddhist organization, Jôdô Shinshû. This is Dobo-kai, founded by a country temple priest, Korube, who is seen briefly in the video at his rural temple. Korube wants to return Jôdô Shinshû to Shinran’s original vision. He feels that religion has become a matter of household membership and automatic participation, not of active individual faith. He wants to re-emphasize individual salvation. [I don’t think that this five-minute section really fits in the documentary.]
Kodama agrees to counsel the Yamaguchi couple and is seen coming on monthly visits to their home in Tokyo, commuting via the Shinkansen. He has no direct affiliation with Shin’nyô-en, but he is generally committed to opening up and broadening Buddhist practice. He certainly takes a more tolerant stance toward the New Religions than most Buddhist priests and organizations. [In the aftermath of the Aum Shinri-kyô tragedy, I am not sure if he remains as tolerant of Buddhist-inspired sects as he did when interviewed for this documentary back in 1989.] There is footage of his seminary, Otani Senshû Gakuin.
The documentary includes moments of his counseling sessions, in which he explains that the essence of Buddhism is to understand the nature of suffering and the path to salvation (sounds like the Four-Fold Path). Indeed, he sees the Yamaguchis over a five-year period! He functions in part as a marriage counselor, although Mr. Yamaguchi still does not seem to “get it.” He says at one point that he wants to save his marriage in order to save his career! Still, he does start to accompany his wife and daughter to Shin’nyô-en headquarters, and there is instructive footage of the gaudy, flashy, show-biz-like productions.
The video ends in such an upbeat manner that it sounds like an infomercial for Shin’nyô-en. Note Kodama’s final, very Buddhist comments: it is not enough to know and accept suffering; one must see beyond both pleasure and suffering…
One of the more controversial aspects of the production is its “docu-drama” format. It is in large part a recreation of events of their conversion by the family itself and Dr. Kodama. Hubbard and Bastian did extensive preliminary interviewing to find the Yamaguchis and to corroborate their story before filming it. Hubbard has insisted in conversations with me that the final version, if anything, plays down the tensions and anxieties that they discovered in the Yamaguchi case. Some viewers, however, remain troubled by the retrospective dramatization.
Try to view this documentary in the larger context of next week’s readings and lecture on religion in contemporary Japan. Compare, for example, Shin’nyo-en with Winston Davis’s description of another New Religion, Mahikari. It is also worth noting commonalties with several psychotherapies that have been popular in these decades (e.g., the use of idioms of cleansing–cleaning the river banks and cleansing the soul). And finally, it is important to see the New Religions in the context of what Winston Davis calls Japan Theory, the “civil religion” of postwar Japan.