Abstract
The present article looks into the multiplication of the new religions in Japanese society. After having shown how these religions were first repressed and kept at the margin in Imperial Japan, the Author sets out to retrace the history of their appearance. The background of this history is furnished by Japan's economic and political evolution. Indeed the formation of these new religions appears as a reflect of the contradictions of capitalist Japanese society, a society in which they respond to an expectation and fill in a void left by the traditional religions.
The development of this religious movement is dominated essentially by three moments : the end of the first world war, the rise of fascism and militarism between the two wars, and finally the American occupation after defeat.
The majority of the new religions find their members among the middle classes of the population, among those who are the first to suffer the effects of capitalist accumulation. The Sōka Gakkai, in particular, has become a political movement professing nationalist and conservative ideas.
The common feature of these religions is their hope in a future world which they anticipate by valuing the goods of this world and by offering miraculous healings. Their doctrines are often syncretic and are nor mally expressed in simple, concrete and very accessible language which has a hold on the masses. Those adhering to these doctrines find in them material advantages as well as a solution to their psycho-social problems.
The Author concludes on the ambiguity of this movement, at one and the same time progressive by its history — which is a struggle against the established religions — and conservative by its ideology.