Honohana Sanpogyo is a New Religious Movement established by Fukunaga Hogen in 1980. As a result of his arrest in 2001, the group was ordered to disband. Fukunaga was born in Yama-guchi prefecture in 1945 with the name Teruyoshi, but took. Hogen as a religious name meaning ‘origin of dharma’. At the age of 19, Fukunaga went to Tokyo to work at the Toshiba company, and is said to have visited Seicho-no-Ie (Tokyo) and Shizen no Izumi (Yama-guchi) in his youth. Both groups are categorized as new religions (see New Religion (Japan)).
After leaving Toshiba in 1968, Fukunaga established a small company, but it failed and he went into bankruptcy in 1978. In deep despair over the business failure, Fukunaga is said to have attempted suicide, but then had a mystical experience. In this experience, he was visited in visions by high ranking Buddhist monks appearing one after another, culminating in the appearance of Jesus Christ. Jesus told Fukunaga to ‘make the flower of dharma blossom among all human beings’. Fukunaga’s followers interpret this message as the experience of a ‘heavenly voice.’
A few months after the mystical visitation, Fukunaga began his new religious activities based on this ‘revelation’. He explained that the voice was truly the voice of Heaven announced through the medium of his body. He also claimed that his movement was a ‘supra-religion’ because it transcended normal religions. Fukunaga published numerous books with the declared purpose of saving all human beings. Most of the books, authored at least nominally by Fukunaga, referred to methods of economic success or recovery from illness. Such titles as How to Become a Millionaire (1992) and Heavenly Power Defeats Illness (1992) are good examples of these tendencies.
In 1987, Fukunaga’s group was registered as a religious juridical person recognized by the governor of Shizuoka Prefecture. The headquarters was located in Fuji City, and the grounds owned by the group were called the ‘Village of the Heavenly Voice’.
In terms of doctrine and practice, Fukunaga’s movement has little connection with traditional Japanese religions, Shrine Shinto or Buddhist denominations. Attracted by its unique teachings and methods of practice, the membership gradually grew, and is said to have reached some several thousands by the late 1990s. In 1986, the group began a new type of initiation which they called ‘the five days’ training’ at the Village of the Heavenly Voice. The most important goal of the training was to modify the initiates’ personalities by eradicating the former old-fashioned self and accepting a new way of thinking taught by Fukunaga.
At the same time, Fukunaga established a stock company called ‘Earth Aid’ in 1990, with the nominal aim of promoting environmental conservation. He has delivered lectures in many places and occasionally has appeared on television to publicize his message. He also divined fortunes under the pseudonym Kokushiin Josho, publishing such books as Sole of the Foot Therapy for Cutting off Disease in 1990 and Mystery of Moon Power in 1991.
Fukunaga taught his followers that all sufferings were the result of one’s own behavior, and that Heaven imposed such sufferings as a means of informing humans of their imperfections. He also claimed that the heavenly voice teaches us the law of the macro-universe, warns us not to drift off course, and that it teaches us our faults without mercy. Moreover, he insisted that the heavenly voice was sometimes incompatible with social norms, since the heavenly law cannot be applied to morals and ethics invented by mere human beings. As a logical conclusion, he ordered members to follow his instructions regardless of whether or not they were compatible with conventional social norms.
In the latter half of the 1990s, however, criticism of the group increased rapidly as entry fees for the initiation seminars gradually inflated from onemillion to over two-million yen. Fukunaga’s ‘sole of the foot therapy’ became the focus of particular criticism because of the way he threatened clients, claiming that they might suffer cancer if they continued living as before, while they would be completely cured by experiencing his five days’ seminar.
In 1996, former members who were of the Honohana group established an association together with other concerned individuals as a means of exchanging information about the its activities. The establishment of this association drew hundreds of inquiries from persons wanting to resolve various problems which they beleived resulted from their involvement with the group. Some ex-members filed legal actions at various local courts, claiming they had been deceived into donating millions of yen to the group.
Against the background of these charges, Fukunaga and leading members of Honohana were arrested for fraud in May, 2000. The religious corporation Honohana Sanpogyo was disbanded in March, 2001 as the group itself and its corporation Earth Aids were recognized as carrying excessive debts.
