ONE WAY TO DESCRIBE THE MASS POISONING IN TOKYO IS AS a gruesome practical joke. Behind every practical joke is someone trying to play God. The murderous joker remains unseen, deciding the fate of others as though by divine intervention. The more the panic-stricken victims search for the source of their misfortune, the more the killer enjoys the spectacle, reveling in a feeling of omnipotence.
Religious leader Shoko Asahara, who is being sought for questioning in connection with the subway attack, could strike one as such a figure. Of course, the Japanese are hardly the only people to produce mimics of God or apocalyptic cults. Think of Jonestown or Waco. But what is distinctive about postwar Japan is the number of people pretending to be God. The country is riddled with cults and so-called new religions.
The Japanese have never followed only one religion. Shinto, an animistic nature cult, has coexisted for centuries with different Buddhist sects; there is also a Christian minority. But starting in the late 19th cen-tury, an official attempt was made to bring all Japanese under one spiritual roof. The nation was taught to follow the imperial cult, called State Shinto: the belief that the Japanese Emperor is divine, that the Japanese are de-scended from their ancient gods, and that any order from a superior-in the government, in the army, at school-must be obeyed without question. State Shinto turned the Japanese state itself into a cult that reached its most extreme form from the late 1930s until the end of World War II.
Much of State Shinto was invented, but like many religious cults, it was based on traditions. The 20th century Emperors, in their role as commander of the Imperial Japanese Army, cut Napoleonic figures, riding white horses in splendid military uniforms, but they were also the high priests of State Shinto, donning traditional ceremonial garb and communing with the Sun Goddess in ancient shrines. If the forms were sometimes very old, the idea of the Emperor as the apex of a modern state religion was new.
Every Japanese school had a shrine that contained a picture of the Emperor. Every Japanese had to jump to attention at the mere mention of the imperial name. History lessons began with myths told as truth about the divine ancestry of the Emperor and, by extension, the Japanese race. Self-sacrifice was extolled as the highest virtue. When winning the war had become hopeless, the Japanese people were told to prepare for a suicidal last stand.
Not every Japanese believed in the imperial cult, but for nearly two decades State Shinto monopolized Japan's spiritual and political life. No wonder that when the cult was abolished by order of the Allies after their victory in 1945, it left a lot of confused Japanese behind. What had been inculcated as religious doctrine was suddenly forbidden as dangerous militaristic propaganda. The Emperor could stay on his throne, but had to renounce his divinity. It was, perhaps, the first time in human history that God had to declare himself dead.
This made some Japanese permanently cynical: they would never believe anything again. But the spiritual vacuum of the postwar years provided fertile ground for all kinds of new cults and creeds. Most of them were organized around a charismatic figure. It was as though the demise of the Emperor as a god produced many little emperors, all with their own worshippers.