Between 19 and 22 August 2019, researchers involved in the “Religion and Minority” project met at Toyo University in Tokyo for the Japan leg of the collaborative project. The visit included two workshops, a public event and a series of collaborative fieldwork visits and meetings with a number of different religious communities in the Tokyo metropolitan area. The members of the research group met with representatives of religious traditions from across Japan’s religious landscape including new religious movements such as Shinto-based Konkōkyō and Buddhist lay organisation Shinnyo-en, as well as a community of young Muslims centred around Tokyo Cami’i mosque and an adjoining Turkish culture centre in Shibuya and a Buddhist monk from a Kōshō-in Buddhist temple in Asakusa, who guided us through San’ya, Tokyo’s day-labourer quarters. Expanding beyond our experiences from the UK-based fieldwork conducted in March 2019, our encounters revealed the complexities of people’s lives in “minority” or “marginalised” communities and how these communities are shaped by subjectivities of class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age and language. Our interlocutors were often unambiguous about the factors that defined their religiosity and how it shaped their social reality by sharing with us their varied experiences of belonging to a so-called “new religion”, LGBTQI+ community, ethnic and religious minorities, as well as living with and supporting people experiencing poverty and homelessness in their everyday existence. Amidst the complex intersection of various forms of marginalities, religious identities seemed to play different roles in negotiating boundaries of collaboration and creating spaces for belonging. Religion also appeared to both consolidate and challenge people’s individual and collective sense of identity.     

DAY 1

On the first day, the group met at Toyo University with two priests from Konkōkyō to learn about the new LBGTQI+ support group that developed within the organisation. The meeting brough to our attention the role played by individuals in the inclusion of marginalised members in the organisation. This process is transforming the image of the movement as a whole, even if the change is only happening within a very limited corner of the organisation. First, we learned about Konkōkyō’s history of “marginalisation” within the Japanese society at the time of its emergence and the members’ practices of reaching out to “marginalised” communities ostracised due to, for instance, illness. The latter part of the meeting focused on Konkōkyō’s image as an LGBTQI+ friendly religious organisation. The researchers learnt from the personal story of one of the priests, who identified as queer, that this image stemmed from the priest’s activism informed by his personal struggle to reconcile his faith and sexuality.

The LGBTQI+ support group that the priest leads has been officially recognised by the Konkōkyō headquarters, but, in practice, it mainly relies on his individual efforts to reach out to the members struggling with queer identities. As he explained, those efforts involve provision of training for Konkōkyō priests to support LGBTQI+ members in their local branches and the running of a free of charge telephone support line. The help line also attracts many non-members (including members of other new religious movements) who began turning to the help line for support and advice on how to reconcile their sexual (and religious) identities. Nonetheless, despite the organisation’s official recognition of such initiatives, the priest admitted that the 24/7 helpline is operated solely by himself and most of the activities aimed at supporting queer members is organised through his personal networks. Equally, LGBTQI+ members represent only a minute fraction of the membership.  Konkōkyō’s supposed turn towards LGBTQI+ inclusivity revealed the tensions between personal and institutional solutions to supporting marginalised communities. Although the priest’s activism transformed the image of the organisation, it also revealed the limited scope of this inclusivity. Finally, our encounter with Konkōkyō priests brought to the fore the question over how “minority” religious organisations can become inclusive and develop conceptual and physical spaces to cater for the religious needs of other minorities.     

DAY 2

The following day, we visited Tachikawa City where the headquarters of Shinnyo-en are located. After a detailed introduction to the history and activities of Shinnyo-en by two members of the administration, the researchers had an opportunity to take part in a guided tour of Shinnyo-en worship and community centres scattered throughout the Tachikawa City. Our discussion with Shinnyo-en’s staff and observations of physical spaces for social and religious interaction among its members revealed strict adherence to the teachings with a strong emphasis on the personal story of the founder’s life which emphasised the importance of family, suffering and lay monastic training. It also brought our attention to the intersection of the role of women within the organisation, their access to ordination and leadership roles, and the generational gaps that resonate with the broader demographic challenges in Japanese society.

Although women of all ages constitute the majority of Shinnyo-en membership, we learnt that the path to ordination and advancement up the spiritual leadership ladder in the movement pose some challenges to women’s and elderly participation. For example, priestly ordination is a result of approximately ten years of lay training including three years spent at the Shinnyo-en ordination centre and further volunteering activities designed to help other people through mentorship. As a result, women, despite their majority status as members and administrative backbone of the organisation, tend to remain a minority demographic within the higher echelons of Shinnyo-en. We were also advised that the spiritual advancement within the movement is similarly predicated upon ascetic practices, which for elderly members can prove physically strenuous at times. The organisation is thus aware of a need to develop a more inclusive new training for women after ordination in order to enable them spiritual progression. Current practices also create some further areas of exclusion for older female members who also happen to represent a demographic majority within the group, and whose mentorship often attracts other women to join Shinnyo-en. Gender dynamics within the organisation brought to the fore the question of how doctrinal and ascetic conservatism of religious communities can lead to the “marginalisation” of majority identities, and the need for the development of innovative inclusive practices in line with the demographic demands.         

DAY 3

The third day centred on a visit to Tokyo Cami’i, a mosque and an adjoining Turkish culture centre located in the Shibuya ward. After a morning workshop, the research group had the opportunity to visit the premises and assist to the prayer. A member of staff illustrated the many activities held at the centre – including ceremonies, cultural events and educational activities – stressing how, for Japan’s Muslims, Tokyo Cami’i was not merely a religious site, but also a space to meet people sharing the same language, culture or faith.

The visit was followed by a meeting with a group of second-generation Muslims of both Japanese and foreign descent. These included two representatives of a newly-founded Muslim Youth association called Olive. The main aim of the association is to support young Muslims’ grassroots movements. The conversation offered precious insights into the experiences of Muslim youth in Japan, marked by a complex intersection of transnationality, religious minority and generational gaps. Participants suffered the stigma stemming from the negative public image of Islam. The general perception of Islam as something “foreign” also resulted in a fragmentation of identity for Japan-born Muslims, who struggled to reconcile their being “Muslim” with being “Japanese”. Furthermore, second-generation Muslims often experienced tensions within their family, related to their parents’ expectations regarding their faith and practice. More broadly, most participants saw a gap between the Islam their parents represented and what they sought.

The growing presence of Muslim youth associations could be read as a response to these issues. Olive, for example, strove to promote a more positive image of Islam, and one more suitable to the Japanese cultural context. They also meant to help young Muslims overcome negative self-representations centred on suffering and humiliation by offering them a space to engage in pleasant and fun activities.

DAY 4

The last day of collaborative fieldwork was spent in San’ya, Tokyo’s day-labourer quarters. Rev. Yoshimizu from the Buddhist temple Kōshō-in (Asakusa), accompanied the research group to visit the neighbourhood.

Researchers met with religious and non-religious organisations offering support to the economically disadvantaged and social outcasts living in the area. These included a nursing station (Cosmos), a Christian-inspired hospice (Iyashi no ie), and NPO providing assistance to day-labourers (San’yūkai). The main goal shared by all was to offer material, medical and psychological support to those living at the margins of Japanese society, cut off from family and cut off from family and often struggling to access state-provided assistance due to ineligibility or lack of familiarity with the system. This was not circumscribed to practical aid: these groups strove to nurture a sense of connection and belonging, in both life and death. Groups like San’yūkai offered a safety net to those with no close family, or who had cut ties with their relatives. There, these people could find a place to belong, where they would be cared for and remembered once dead. Besides taking care of funeral arrangements, most groups memorialised the people they assisted and offered them a place to rest. The tour terminated at Rev. Yoshimizu’s temple, which hosted the collective multi-faith graves associated with two of the groups. As he pointed out, their wish was that those who suffered social exclusion and isolation in life could at least find connection (en) in death.

Emphasis on connectedness marked also another leitmotif of the day, namely inter-faith cooperation. Service provision in San’ya rested on the tight collaboration between different groups. Their representatives repeatedly stated the importance of overcoming religious differences to help those in need. Collaborative endeavours took place beyond denominational structures; they appeared tightly related to the individuals involved, whose personal connections and initiatives played a crucial role in creating these networks.

During fieldwork in Tokyo, the researchers appreciated the need for more in-depth investigations of complexities constituting “minority” through interlocking forms of marginality. In our future publications as part of the project, we will aim to investigate the roles of individuals and how their complex subjectivities bridge our understanding of porous boundaries between mainstream and marginalised identities. Our Japan leg of collaborative fieldwork provided a rich opportunity for developing a comparative perspective to the project’s aim to investigate “marginality” and the concept of “minority” in religious contexts, both from the point of view of how minority groups emerge and how they operate within different cultural and social contexts. Interrogating the role of individual actors became crucial to observing how marginalised individuals and groups use religion to articulate their identity vis-à-vis the larger society and to negotiate their place within religious traditions and diverse religious landscape. Our interlocutor’s complex subjectivities revealed that religion often plays a purposeful role in nurturing and overcoming individuals’ and religious organisations’ minority identities.

Aura di Febo and Paulina Kolata

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