Word: cult
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...some, the sense of dread extends beyond the fear of more sarin, reaching deep into the nature of Aum and the sort of person Aum attracts, whether the cult was behind the killings or not. There is a word for a certain kind of young person in Japan: otaku, which translates as obsessed to the point of being asocial, almost communally autistic. The word describes a whole generation of children for whom family life barely exists: father is always at work, and child is at cram school, preparing for the next exam. The father often does it because he remembers...
...Japanese have never followed only one religion. Shinto, an animistic nature cult, has coexisted for centuries with different Buddhist sects; there is also a Christian minority. But starting in the late 19th cen-tury, an official attempt was made to bring all Japanese under one spiritual roof. The nation was taught to follow the imperial cult, called State Shinto: the belief that the Japanese Emperor is divine, that the Japanese are de-scended from their ancient gods, and that any order from a superior-in the government, in the army, at school-must be obeyed without question. State Shinto turned...
...every Japanese believed in the imperial cult, but for nearly two decades State Shinto monopolized Japan's spiritual and political life. No wonder that when the cult was abolished by order of the Allies after their victory in 1945, it left a lot of confused Japanese behind. What had been inculcated as religious doctrine was suddenly forbidden as dangerous militaristic propaganda. The Emperor could stay on his throne, but had to renounce his divinity. It was, perhaps, the first time in human history that God had to declare himself dead...
More threatening are the groups that wish to restore the imperial cult. The writer Yukio Mishima collected around himself a band of uniformed young men who shared his passion to make the Japanese--the military forces in particular--once again worship the Emperor. His student followers ended up by worshipping Mishima, and one joined him in his samurai-style suicide in 1970. Even today there are groups of right-wing Emperor worshippers who go around assassinating those they regard as unpatriotic. The mayor of Nagasaki was shot by a right-wing extremist in 1990 after saying the late Emperor Hirohito...
...literary agent to whom he submitted his manuscript turned it down, claiming it was too local and uncommercial. "When I was writing it people asked me if I thought it would be a best seller," says Berendt, "and I said, 'Are you kidding?' I thought it would be a cult favorite and a critical success. I didn't think about a big audience...