Did Aum change everything? What Soka Gakkai before, during, and after the Aum Shinrikyō affair tells us about the persistent "otherness" of new religions in Japan

Abstract

Scholars share a broad consensus that the Aum Shinrikyo subway attacks in March 1995 fundamentally shifted prevailing attitudes against "religion" in Japan. However, comparison with the case of Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest active "new religion," complicates this view. In this article, I provide a counter-narrative to the argument that "Aum changed everything" by showing that public officials' strategies against Aum Shinrikyo from 1995 emerged in large part from a sustained anti-Soka Gakkai campaign that intensified immediately before the Aum attacks. Tracking interactions among politicians, the media, and Soka Gakkai before and during the Aum Shinrikyo incident, I outline ways in which Soka Gakkai and Aum Shinrikyo form part of a historical continuity of high-profile "new religions" that public moralists have consistently scapegoated for political gain throughout the modern era. At the same time, I also confirm that Aum Shinrikyo did, in a way, change everything: Aum may have marked the end of religious mass movements in contemporary Japan.© 2012 Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture.