明治期天理教における「病気直し」の諸形態とその変容

Abstract

Won Beom Lee is seen as the beginner of serious research on Tenrikyo in Korea. He studied Tenrikyo in the context of the New Religions and Popular Religions studies in post-war Japan. He understood it being conscious that it hid in its reverse problems such as that of the colonial period, the defeat in war or the popular consciousness of universality. However, notwithstanding Lee´s purposes, his assertion that “Tenrikyo is the only Japan-related religion that remained in postwar Korean society” exerted enormous influence afterwards on Korean researchers´ view on Tenrikyo. I would say that this kind of position should be removed from the research on modern and contemporary religion as a view of history centered in only one country,i.e. the national history. In this paper I will focus on the “faith healing” practices that were performed in the actual missionary work, leaving aside for the time being the question of the particularity or universality of the doctrine of Tenrikyo. I will focus specially on the “goku”, “tsutome”, and “sazuke”. From our present point of view, these forms of “faith healing” underwent a complete change from a pattern of strong pre-modern religious elements understood as well as a kind of folk medical treatments, to something that was deeply invested with legitimacy in a doctrinal sense. Of course, it goes without saying that the oppressive constraints of the modern State are deeply connected here. The modernization of religions not only involved the adjustment of the religious organization and the doctrinal systems, or the modernization of the methods of propagation. The mechanisms of modernization were working in religions at large and in the “faith healing” practices themselves taken as universal elements. It was in this way that Tenrikyo could become a “modern religion”. Regarding this point, it is also very important to pay attention when thinking about the pre-modern forms of faith in Korea and the changes of the modern period onwards.