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The most famous new religion is the Soka Gakkai, a sect based on Buddhism. Its leader is a man named Daisaku Ikeda, who is treated by his followers more like a monarch than a priest. Then there are more obscure figures who claim to have found the secret of universal happiness and peace for all time. Though these leaders may collect a great deal of money from their followers--and though the involvement of the Soka Gakkai in national politics through its own political party, the Komeito, is widely criticized--most of these religions are relatively harmless.
More threatening are the groups that wish to restore the imperial cult. The writer Yukio Mishima collected around himself a band of uniformed young men who shared his passion to make the Japanese--the military forces in particular--once again worship the Emperor. His student followers ended up by worshipping Mishima, and one joined him in his samurai-style suicide in 1970. Even today there are groups of right-wing Emperor worshippers who go around assassinating those they regard as unpatriotic. The mayor of Nagasaki was shot by a right-wing extremist in 1990 after saying the late Emperor Hirohito some responsibility for the war.
The tendency to see the highest virtue in self-sacrifice and violence was also a feature of Japan's left wing. A Japanese United Red Army man raked a crowd of passengers with machine-gun fire at Lod International Airport in Israel in 1972. Revolutionary splinter groups tortured and bashed to death several of their own members. This kind of violence is usually a sign of hopelessness, of desperation, when messianic dreams reach a dead end.
None of this is unique to Japan. Nor do countries where God is proved to be dead automatically fall prey to violence. On the whole, Japan's is a remarkably peaceful society. But a century of wars, natural disasters and political extremism has produced spiritual confusion. Out of this have emerged those self-elected gods and followers who not only destroy themselves but also insist on taking others with them.
Ian Buruma, the journalist and author, has written several books about Asia.