From Japan With Love...Wisdom, Self-Reflection & Progress: Happy Science on Temple & State (Part II)

I’ve just asked the young lady who hosted the event if there is someone I can interview. Her eyes have lit up – she knows just the chap for me, and politely disappears for a few minutes. She comes back beaming and takes me downstairs to the main room in the building, to introduce me to the head of Public Relations at Happy Science. 


More people have heard the Iron Lady out in this nucleus of the temple – clearly where the hardcore crowd is at. But it’s time for them to go too now; a row of hipsters arises and ambles to the exit, nodding their thanks to an elder Japanese gentleman, who smiles benignly and is bedecked by a clerical stole draped over his shoulders. Around his neck there is the – I am realising – ubiquitous gold-tinted pendant bearing the initials ‘R.O.’ for Ryuho Okawa (or ‘O.R.’ to be more culturally accurate).


The PR guy, as you might expect, is a more functionally attired gent – but also one with a prior engagement. I assure them that I have plenty of time, and am in any case keen to pick the brains of the man I saw first, who I guess is the priest.


“Are you a priest of Happy Science?” I venture.


“Yes.” He replies. It’s going well. Time to get down to the nitty gritty. 


“This is your main room for worship?” 


“It depends on the numbers.” 


“Ah of course. How many do you usually get?”


“Not many,” he smiles.


Disarmed by this honesty, I mentally scratch a tally in the ‘probably not a cult’ column. I’ve never known a cult to be self-deprecating. 


I then place one almost immediately in the opposite column, when – after a platitude about how interesting I’ve found the evening - the priest asks: “Do you want to become a member?” 


“Ahh I’m too green, you see. I only heard about Happy Science today.” 


“Ahh yes. Green!” He seems to enjoy this novel line in commitment-dodging.


I honestly see nothing in this man that suggests a purveyor of the Japanese answer to Scientology. He calmly talks me through the HS conception of God, El Cantare. (“Ahh…the singer…?” “No” he gently upbraids. “It’s not Spanish or anything like that.”) and is unequivocal that it is the same God of Christianity, Islam, and the other major religions. It’s something I’m increasingly familiar with; the more fluid, less exclusive understandings of God that characterise the Eastern religions. My first head-on encounter was probably last year, attending an event of the Hindu guru Amma with a friend. I was struck by the devotional prayer cards, booklets and icons featuring Jesus and ‘Mother Mary’ alongside the more expected Vishnu, Ganesh and Kali. I have never seen the any of the latter in a church. A second instance was in Speaker’s Corner, meeting an elderly Canadian practitioner of Baha’i, with its maxim that ‘all religions are one’. 


When I reveal my personal ‘identification’ with Christianity, the priest – with effortless Pauline multilingualism – explains the Fourfold Path with specific reference to Jesus. There is Love – the most fundamental stage, the desire to help one’s fellow man; Wisdom – the realisation that love has its limits, in the sense that one’s love for a child must include the withholding of reward and the gradual bestowal of responsibility; Self-Reflection – in order to combat the judgement that can come with the Wisdom stage e.g. dismissing all the needy as idle or stupid; and Progress, where with all the prior three in alignment, in oneself and in growing numbers in society, society can progress toward an enlightened and happy future. Jesus, I am told, preached only the first stage of Love. 


“There was wisdom in Jesus surely?” I push back. 


Of course, he had personal wisdom, the priest replies. But he only had three years. He had to teach love as a priority, in a world that sorely needed it. 


Perhaps I am too keen for it to make sense, but it does. The young lady – whose name I regret not asking – has returned now and is ready to take me for my appointment. I thank the priest and ask his name. “Hiro.” 


“Yes, you are!” I struggle to imagine a life where I won’t sacrifice journalistic integrity in favour of a brown-nosing pun. 


When I meet Taku Igata, I am instantly struck by the man’s charm and professionalism. I am presented with a business card and, on my request, shown without hesitation into a private room where we can talk (as there is now a small party with refreshments occurring downstairs). Taku sits on the leather sofa, totally upright yet at ease, and I am more aware than ever of the contrast between East and West; my worn-out shoes and T-shirt reeking of BO from the run down Oxford Street earlier that evening, contrasting with his sharp suit and neatly trimmed goatee. 


My main aim here is to grasp the political branch of the Happy Science movement. From my rudimentary research, I know the religion to have taken the unusual step of launching a political party; economically right-wing, assertive on foreign policy and pro-immigration in response to Japan’s existentially troubling birth rate. After a recap on the HS basics, Taku launches at my request into an exposition of the foundational mission of the ‘Happiness Realization Party’.


“The basic idea is that everything such as politics, education…culture, religion; they are inseparable…” (HS also has primary and secondary schools in Japan and is behind the production of several films) “…because religion is the fundamental source of everything. Master Okawa started a political party because “if you want to change the world, you need to have political power as well. Religion is not enough.” The Happy Science objective to bring enlightenment to all the world necessitated entering the political arena. 


He is clear that this mission does not come at the expense of peace “We have no intention to harm other people. Rather we strongly criticize anyone who harms other people.” 


And how does this translate into policy? 


“To make it at the simplest level, HRP was established in order to defeat communism.” Master Okawa wrote The Manifesto of the Happiness Realization Party as a counter to Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. At this point, it takes every fibre of my being to resist leaping up, waltzing Taku round the room and donating my meagre lifesavings to the HRP. Instead:


“And…is it directly responding to Marx?” 


“Yeah. I can give you the book if you’re interested.”


“OK. Thank you.” 

                                            

May the best manifesto win

As Marxist communism denies the life-giving powers of religion, the HRP had no choice but to be “strongly against communism”. This informs its hardline stance against China, but not, he presses, against Chinese people. “For Happy Science, it is very important to maintain the notions of freedom, democracy and faith.” 


The HRP is not a nationalistic but “in a sense, an internationalist party…a counter of the Communist International”. It favours diversity among nations, but this necessitates independence and genuine sovereignty. Margaret Thatcher is suddenly reintroduced to the proceedings (not, this time, in spiritual but merely in intellectual form) as Taku explicitly rejects modern attempts to impose “equality of outcome” in schools and, also, Europe. “That is why we have doubt on the current system of the European Union.” Just as every individual has his or her unique set of characteristics and talents, so do nations and that should be respected. So: equality of opportunity for individuals (he strongly rejects racial and other forms of discrimination), and sovereignty for nations. The Japanese equivalent of the euro-federalist shackles, I later learn, is the pacifist constitution, which prevents Japan gaining true mastery of her affairs. 


“Our vision for diversity is like a lot of kinds of flowers flourishing together, not just one single flower.”


“Ah. Let a thousand flowers bloom.” I proffer. Who said that? MLK? Peter Tatchell? Oh no: Mao…! Thankfully Taku doesn’t notice. 


“But on top of that diversity, there should be some kind of universal truth, for human happiness.” That is where Happy Science’s spiritual mission comes back into play. There doesn’t seem to be an agenda to impose their idea of happiness through political means – unlike their enemies, the Communists. Rather it is to establish the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all peoples, allowing them to stumble their way to the latter, hopefully in its purest enlightened form under Master Okawa’s guidance. That at least is what I take from Taku’s well-presented explication. 


With a copy of the HRP’s manifesto kindly gifted to me by Taku, we return downstairs to the bookshop where I reconnect with some of the young true believers I met earlier. It is here that I am made aware of the full extent of Master Okawa’s prolific status as channeller-in-chief. I have quite forgotten the evening’s central attraction that has drawn me and numerous others to the Temple. By way of reminder, there are two whole bookcases of glossy publications featuring spiritual messages from everyone from Malala Yousafzai to Steve Jobs, all via the gifts of Okawa. Winston Churchill seems to be a favourite, while Kim Jong-un is a recurring bad guy: one transcript with the North Korean kingling is entitled Exposing North Korea’s Menacing Leader. 

There are a few from Jesus Christ, and I find my habitual response to seeing Him out of context (very much along the lines of liberal Catholic bishops’ reaction to The Da Vinci Code: “well, at least people are talking about Jesus”) suddenly displaced by resentment. In a world where millions seek the ear of the Lamb of God through prayer and contemplation, a scientific modernity largely birthed from the efforts to know His mind, and personally as someone who has lately spent time struggling with Christ’s frustrating ‘problem passages’ in the Gospels, something in me rejects the idea that the mind of Our Lord can be tapped into effortlessly by a spiritual guru from a completely separate tradition. But I suppose such sentiments are unenlightened. 


Still, I feel able to part on good terms with Taku and the others, confident that, however I feel about Happy Science’s more extraordinary claims, I have been exposed to some genuine wisdom.

What is the Partridge's final verdict on Happy Science? Be they fools, knaves or speaking God's own truth? And just how big a word count is he going to rack up over this?