‘New Religions’ Rivaling Old Traditions in Japan : Spirituality: Avant-garde movements attract postwar generation as interest in Shinto and Buddhism wanes.

Yuko Higuchi recently quit her high-powered job at an international investment company to work for Kofuku-no-Kagaku, a fast-growing Japanese religion also known as the Institute for Research in Human Happiness.

“I was interested in some sort of movement to improve the world,” the 35-year-old Higuchi said, “but couldn’t find a suitable one.” In her view, Buddhism and Shinto--Japan’s oldest religions--are spiritually exhausted.

“Buddhist temples . . . are for sightseeing. They have no commitment to the modern world, and their teachings are outdated,” she said. “As for Shinto, I couldn’t find any reasonable explanation for what it does. It was just ritual and not applicable outside Japan.”

Higuchi’s views are becoming more widespread in Japan these days.

A growing number of Japanese--many of them urbanites in their 30s and 40s--are seeking spiritual haven in what is called the “New Religion” movement--an amalgam of faiths formed this century--and in “new New Religions” such as Kofuku-no-Kagaku-- that have sprung up in the past 15 years.

Followers of these avant-garde movements say they are on a benign search for meaning and transcendence in a world dominated by conflict and alienation. But the quest has also spawned controversial--and some say sinister--groups that have cast a shadow across Japan’s social landscape.

Consider the Tokyo subway system gassing in March.

Aum Shinrikyo, a secretive Japanese religious group formed in the early 1980s, is the leading suspect in that incident--which killed 12 and sickened thousands--and a series of other gas attacks in Japan. The group, also known as Aum Supreme Truth, has denied involvement.

For Japanese citizens repulsed by the demanding yogic practices and cultish atmosphere of groups like Aum Shinrikyo, yet left spiritually hungry by Buddhism and Shinto, new movements such as Kofuku-no-Kagaku represent alluring options.

In a country of 125 million, 70% profess no religious membership. Yet 10% to 20% of the population is active in some new religion, said Nobutaka Inoue, a professor at Kokugakuin University.

“The biggest change that the new religions introduced was to make (the spiritual) world accessible to the average person instead of knowledge belonging to a religious elite,” he said.

Demographic shifts stemming from rapid economic growth and urbanization dealt a serious blow to Shinto and Buddhist practice. Today, relatively few Japanese are drawn to the daily practice of Buddhism, although most still rely, by force of habit, on Buddhist rituals that memorialize the dead and on Shinto practices for wedding ceremonies.

Many new religions marry the promise of spiritual fulfillment with high-tech wizardry and mass marketing, an attractive draw for a postwar generation weaned on television, video and computers.

Kofuku-no-Kagaku--which claims 9 million members and has centers in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu, Sao Paulo, Paris, London and Melbourne--sells magazines, books and videos with a list of titles that expands monthly.

A glimpse of an event sponsored by Kofuku-no-Kagaku underscores its broad appeal to young and middle-aged Japanese, who are not bound by rigid traditions of the past.

In July, Kofuku-no-Kagaku’s founder, Ryuho Okawa, 38, addressed 50,000 followers at the Tokyo Dome at a $50-per-ticket birthday celebration in his honor. Events included original music, video and theater, all of it relayed across Japan via satellite.

Okawa appeared near the end of the show, rising from a mock flying saucer and dressed in Incan attire with a feather headpiece.

His message was an attractive one for a nation suffering grave economic problems and still sorting out the legacy of its role in World War II.

Incorporating elements of Buddhism, Christianity, Western occultism and world mythology, Kofuku-no-Kagaku claims that its mission is to unify all religions and create a Utopia or a “Buddhaland.”

The cornerstone of that mission is a campaign to eradicate pornography--or “spiritual pollution”--from Japanese society. The group’s English slogan is “Stop the Hair Nude,” a reference to nude photos that show pubic hair and are known as “hair nude” pictures in Japan. Late last year, 60,000 Kofuku-no-Kagaku followers marched against pornography.

Kofuku-no-Kagaku’s growing popularity is surprising in a society that remains, at root, skeptical of religion and quick to accuse religious organizations of harboring money-making desires or clinging to pre-World War II values.

“To be religious in Japan is still synonymous with being weak or strange,” said Kokyo Murakami of the government’s religious affairs division.

Okawa, a Tokyo University law-school graduate who also studied international finance at New York University, quit a job in the business world to establish Kofuku-no-Kagaku and fulfill what he said was a revelation to him that his mission is to save mankind.

Among followers of Kofuku-no-Kagaku, Okawa--whose real name is Takeshi Nakagawa--is revered as a living deity, the reincarnation of Buddha himself.

Members view Kofuku-no-Kagaku as a form of Buddhism, with the doctrines of karma and reincarnation central to its belief system. Present conditions can be explained in terms of past lives, and everyone is entirely responsible for who he or she is in the present, adherents believe.