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
Seishin Myōjōkai
Text
A Shinto-derived new religion founded by Fujita Motonari (1903-85), who began to engage in independent religious activities in April 1946 after taking office as the head priest (gūji) of the In'yōseki Shrine in Fukuyama City in Hiroshima prefecture, One of Fujita's grandfathers had been a Shinto priest, and after attending Sankō Higher School (predecessor of Kyoto University's faculty of liberal arts), he went on to graduate from Kokugakuin University.
In 1932, Fujita took office as a priest at the shrine Chōsen Jingū, the central Shinto shrine in colonial Korea. He established shrines inside Korea and in 1945 was drafted as a Shinto chaplain in the Japanese army, but following Japan's surrender that year, he returned to Japan. During his repatriation voyage to Japan he experienced a mystical vision in which he received a message telling him, "There is a shrine called Inyōsekigū in Imazu. You must go there to preserve its sacred stone and save the suffering people."
After taking on the position of head priest at the In'yōseki Shrine he practiced austerities under a waterfall and at the end of 1946 established a religious movement called the Jinrui Fukushikyō (lit., "religion of human welfare") centered on worshipers at this shrine. Its secret transmission includes healing through the use of spiritually charged water, a type of spirit-induced automatic writing, and a technique called jinbungaku ("human studies") which it used to judge the mutual compatibility of husbands and wives based on their dates of birth, and on what it terms "the guidance of spirits ( lit., "souls" konpaku) acting in mutual relation between self and other."
In 1948 it registered as a legally independent religious corporation under the Religious Corporations Ordinance (Shūkyō Hōjinrei), and in 1956 established a branch center in Tokyo and changed to its present name. It instructs its followers to observe the three great practices of worshipping the gods and venerating ancestors (keishin sūso), giving thanks and gratitude to others, and maintaining marital harmony. In 1984, Fujita Motonari was diagnosed with autonomic dystonia, and his wife Chiyoko took his place until his death in 1985, since which time she has assumed office as the group's second leader.
Headquarters: Hiroshima Prefecture.
Nominal membership: approximately 48,000 (M)

— Isooka Tetsuya

Pronunciation in Japanese/用語音声

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