The Shadow of Faith — Cults and Society

In the previous chapter, we watched religious conservatives and fundamentalists rise onto the public stage of politics in many parts of the world. That faith can unite people and become a force that moves society is, in itself, a theme this series has kept its eyes on throughout. Yet faith has another face. Faith that is meant to support a person and give meaning to their life can sometimes bind them, cut them off from the outside world, and in the end become a tool that wounds society itself.

What this chapter deals with is that shadowed part. At the center of the story stands an event whose facts were established in a court of law — the series of incidents committed by Aum Shinrikyo in Japan in 1995. Alongside it, within what has been reported, we will carefully trace the structures that groups called destructive cults tend to share, the suffering of those who escaped from them and of people raised as the children of believers, and the distance between religion, politics, and society that came to be questioned anew in recent years. Let me state at the outset that what is at issue here is not the content of any particular faith, but methods that strip people of their hearts and their freedom, and how society received them. Freedom of belief is not something to be demeaned.

1995, the Year That Shook Japan

On the morning of March 20, 1995, sarin, a chemical weapon, was released in the Tokyo subway. It was an indiscriminate attack aimed at the morning rush hour; on several lines passengers and station staff collapsed, and according to news reports and official records more than ten people died and the injured numbered roughly six thousand three hundred. Those who carried it out were senior figures of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo. This is what is known as the Tokyo subway sarin attack.

This incident did not come out of nowhere. Tracing the facts established in court, the group had repeatedly committed violence even before this, against people and against a society it regarded as hostile to it. In 1989 a lawyer who had been working on problems involving the group, together with his family of three, was killed, and in June 1994 sarin was released in the city of Matsumoto in Nagano Prefecture, where eight people are said to have died. Then came the indiscriminate attack in the subway the following year.

The group’s founder and senior figures were arrested and, after long trials, were held criminally responsible for the series of incidents. In the end, death sentences were finalized for several of those involved, including the founder, and it is reported that these sentences were carried out in 2018. The shock to Japanese society ran deep, leaving many people with the sense that the ground of an everyday life they had believed to be safe could be torn away in the name of faith.

Mind Control as a Point of Debate

Why do people go so far for the sake of a group? The idea spoken of around this question is that of mind control. The term has been used to refer to a method by which clever influence gradually strips a person of their judgment and leads them to act exactly as the group wishes, all while the person believes they are choosing by their own will.

Yet handling this concept calls for caution. It is difficult to prove a state of mind completely from the outside, and where legitimate faith or persuasion ends and improper manipulation begins is not easy to draw a line between. In fact, it is reported that in past trials a negative judgment was at times shown toward applying this idea directly when assigning responsibility. On the other hand, there remains a strong argument that the concept should serve as a clue when considering relief for those who say they were harmed. Assessments are divided, and there is no settled conclusion.

What matters here, I think, is both not lightly deciding whether someone’s mind was manipulated, and at the same time not turning away from the fact that there are people genuinely suffering. The freedom to believe must be protected. Yet deceiving people and unjustly taking their property, their time, and their relationships is not permitted even when it bears the name of faith. Where to draw the line that reconciles these two is a question society continues to face.

Those Left Behind — The Question of ‘Second-Generation Believers’

When we consider the problem of cults, what tends to be overlooked is the existence of people who escaped a group, and of those born and raised as the children of believers. In recent years such people have begun to speak of their own experiences, and along with the term ‘second-generation believers’ their suffering has come to be known to society.

According to what has been reported, among children raised in households where a parent was deeply devoted to a particular faith, there are those who say their life choices — schooling, friendships, marriage — were greatly constrained by that faith, or that large donations drove their household into financial distress. There are also voices saying that even if they wish to leave a group, they cannot move because it would mean severing ties with family. These are individual cases and do not apply to every believing household. It is also a fact that many second-generation believers inherit their faith peacefully. Even so, that people who voice their suffering certainly exist, and that their voices have until now been hard to hear, must be taken to heart.

The Distance Questioned Once More in Recent Years

The distance between religion, politics, and society is not a matter of the past. From 2022 onward, debate over the relationship between a certain religious group and politics was widely reported in Japan, and this theme drew society’s attention once again. Prompted by the reporting, lively discussion was exchanged over the nature of donations and recruitment, the difficulties faced by believers’ households, and the ties between religious groups and politicians.

Within this current, it is reported that at the end of 2022 a new law was enacted with the aim of relieving people from malicious recruitment and donations. Its pillars were said to be prohibiting improper influence in soliciting contributions, and making it easier for the person or their family to recover from harm. Here too what was questioned was the old yet new task of how to prevent unjust harm while protecting freedom of belief.

There is no single assessment. There is a position that relief for the harmed should be hastened, and there is also a position concerned that regulation might chill freedom of belief and legitimate religious activity. We will not pronounce here, beyond what is publicly known, on existing groups or living individuals. What is certain is that the question of how to keep the distance between religion, politics, and society stands before us still, left open. This chapter, which has gazed at the light and shadow of faith, cannot be closed with a conclusion. To believe both saves people and binds them within a closed group. Carrying both faces at once, how will religion and politics face each other from here? In the next and final chapter, I would like to shift our view to the present age, in which worldwide secularization and re-religionization advance at the same time, and quietly consider what kind of future the ideals of the separation of religion and state and of freedom of belief might draw within diverse societies.