Notes - Religion and Politics in Contemporary Japan - page 225

Notes

Introduction
1 This number is dicult to estimate as more people join than remain active members.
Ocial membership statistics are therefore likely to be higher than reality. Moreover,
membership is counted in households, making it dicult to know the exact number.
2 For a more comprehensive discussion about new religions see, for instance, Earhart
1983; Hardacre 1986; Reader 1991: 194 - 233; Inoue et al. 1996; Shimazono 2004:

234, table 12.1.
3 A discussion on the di

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erences between established and new religions can be found

'

in Edward Norbeck s chapter 3 inMullins et al. 1993; or Hardacre (1986); and Reader

and Tanabe (1998), who argues that in many ways they are not that di erent.

4 Some information is available from the topic Sh - ky -

to gendai ga wakaru hon

[Understanding Religion Today] (n.a. 2008).
5 Gellner argues that Buddhism is about otherworldly concerns and always needs a
worldly religious in order to be one cohesive system. Thus Buddhism,

until the twentieth century, was always accretive.
6 Religions that appeared from the 1970s onwards.
7 Van Wolferen 1989; Campbell 1989; Curtis 1988; Johnson 1995; Hoye 1999;
McVeigh 1998; Stockwin 1999, 2008; Neary 2002; and Scheiner 2006.
8 Ibsen ' s play portrays what happens among individuals who have personal stake in a
newly built health spa when poisonous water is discovered to be the cause of ser-
ious illness among visitors to the spa. For instance, the householders association is
concerned with how this will affect house prices; the investors are worried about
the impact on their returns; the small traders are occupied with how potentially
closing the spa will impact their business when visitors will decrease; and even the
editor of the liberal newspaper becomes concerned more with how breaking this
news will antagonise the paper ' s readers. Thus instead of considering how to take
the necessary steps to prevent the spa from having an adverse effect on the health
of visitors, in the town the problem becomes constructed according to the affect on
stake holders ' interests. The person (the local GP) who discovered and wants to
find a solution or close the spa down to prevent people from falling ill, come to be
seen as ' the enemy of the people ' . He is ostracised from the town by people with a
stake in the business who finds reasons for justifying covering up the problem.
9 It is interesting to ask how I would have approached the study of the political
activities of a di

' partner '

potentially with a lot of suspicion.
10 People who are descendents of outcast communities that were considered tainted
by

erent religious group in Japan -

' '

or ritual impurities in the feudal era because of their professions, such as
butchers or leather workers, and who even in modern times have been living in
secluded communities or ghettos.

death