Encyclopedia of Shinto

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カテゴリー1： 8. Schools, Groups, and Personalities
カテゴリー2： Modern Sectarian Groups
Title
Tenshin Seikyō
Text
A new religious movement founded by Shimada Seiichi (1896-1985). Seiichi was born the second son of a farming family in Kazo City in Saitama Prefecture. It is said that Shimada's birth had been prophesied a year before by a kami that had periodically possessed his elder brother since four years earlier. For a long period Shimada worked as a broker selling foreign rice and wheat flour and, at the age of 23, opened a store in Fukukawa. His business stagnated, however, until he received a divine visitation from a kami called Tenshin ōmikami in 1935, which led him to launch his religious activities.
Thereafter, cases of divine possession would occur at each monthly service, and the possessing deity would reveal oracles, even including prophecies of market trends, to the extent that the shop's business recovered and flourished. In 1951 he was urged by those around him to start a religious movement, with the result that the next year he transferred management of his three companies to his subordinates and established Tenshinkyō, changing its name in 1953 to Tenshin Taireikyō. In 1955 the movement established a youth division (seinenbu) and in 1960 completed construction of its new hall of worship. It operates a medical clinic and pharmacy and from around 1961 has carried out spiritual healing through injections of "sacred water" (goshinsui) revealed by the deity.
Shimada retired in 1976 due to old age, and his eldest son Shimada Haruyuki took over leadership and worked to expand the organization. Seiichi died in 1985, however, and the movement changed to its present name in 1988. According to the group's teaching, its central object of worship (saijin) Tenshin ōmikami (Ōkamisama) appeared to Seiichi in a revelation during World War II and told him to "save the world using Christianity as the father, and your religion as the mother." The group claims that this deity is the one that sent Jesus as a kami to this world, and that it extends throughout the realms of kami, spirits and the present, far transcending the ages of Jesus and Moses. The group also proclaims that miracles can be experienced by those who attend the movement's gatherings.
Headquarters: Tokyo
Nominal membership: approximately 210,000 (O)

— Isooka Tetsuya

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