Raising Thatcher: a Japanese new religion has an important spiritual message for the UK - via the soul of a deceased former PM (Part I)

It sounded too wonderfully bonkers to resist. A Japanese séance contacting the spirit of the deceased Baroness Thatcher and quizzing her for guidance on Brexit? And on Friday 13th to boot? Yes please. As someone who stresses as much as anyone about the fate of our island nation as we attempt to leave the EU, and, spiritually speaking, as one who has lately oriented East as a means of bolstering his anaemic Christianity. Furthermore as a fan of Louis Theroux's earlier work, that explored deliciously countercultural worldviews as opposed to his more recent rather hand-wringing interest in junkies, convicts and otherwise blameless folk with an addiction to buying pets that might kill them, Happy Science's offer of a spiritual message from the late Iron Lady was an offer I couldn't refuse. In any case, dead or alive, she was bound to be more coherent than Emily Thornbury. 

                                                                                                                            It'd be rude not to.

The trouble was I didn't have much time. Frantically researching, on my way to the Happy Science UK HQ on (where else?) Margaret Street, all I could find was the usual snark from Vice and 'The Daily Dot'. A Vice piece from 2012 calls HS 'the 'the Laziest Cult Ever' based on the lack of effort they put into recruiting its author (which I bridle might be just a tart way of saying it isn't a cult at all) while the Dot piece is more recent, reproducing the predictably amused and bemused reactions from Twitter to the news that Britain's first female PM is due to speak from beyond the grave. But it does draw me to the fact that it isn’t a live séance I’m headed to, but a screening of a video-recorded channelling of Thatcher’s spirit less than 24 hours after she died in April, 2013. 

I arrive still largely cold then, just as a preliminary video is introducing the precepts of Happy Science. The popularity of the event has necessitated the opening of a second room where the same footage will be played simultaneously to that in the main one. A scan of my fellow Johnny-come-latelies suggests an audience motivated largely by curiosity and entertainment, rather than belief: exclusively white, 20 to 30 somethings, probably Vice readers. An intense bearded gentleman at the front with a notepad lends us some gravitas. The only BAME individuals present are the polite Japanese men and women who have shown me in. 

The video introduces us to Master Ryuho Okawa, whose career as a New York banker was disturbed in 1981 by a sudden enlightenment which took on the form of channelling the spirit of a dead Buddhist monk, and founded the Happy Science movement in 1986. At some stage I am delighted to notice among the literature stacked on my seat a pamphlet in support of the Hong Kongers' bold stand against the Communist Party of China. There is also a pamphlet entitled 'The Laws of the Sun' and a very to-the-point questionnaire. 

                                         
                                                            Early signs are good

A second video grounds us in the belief system of Happy Science, central to which is the Four-Fold Path, consisting of Love, Wisdom, Self-Reflection and Progress, as well as the Happy Science take on reincarnation, which involves spiritual progress through 9 dimensions of existence. It’s undoubtedly not your usual Friday night out: two or three lads in their early '20s have barely been in the room 10 seconds before the hilarity of it all causes them a fit of uncontrollable shoulder-shaking. Lightweights. 

Just as I am wondering if I’ve been lured here under false pretences, the young woman running the session announces the main event. She explains that we are going to see Master Okawa channel the spirit of Thatcher and implores us to keep an open mind. She queries: “How many of you like Margaret Thatcher?”

I sheepishly put my hand up. “Only one?” I make a quasi-comedic show of embarrassed throat-clearing as people’s heads turn to this traitor in their midst. I may be a Tory, but I’m damn well going to insist on being a charmingly self-effacing one. In any case, there is now too much anticipation building for political bun-fights. Our host rewards my Lutheran bravery with the information that dear Maggie is definitely in Heaven, before pressing ‘Play’. What follows is quite possibly the most incredible footage I have ever seen. 

The outset is prosaic enough. Master Okawa sits, flamboyantly suited in shocking lavender, at a large desk in what looks like a courtroom. A further three East Asian males, more conventionally attired, sit in a row opposite, in front of an audience. Okawa’s manner belies his striking appearance, speaking functionally in Japanese – “the only part in Japanese”, our host assures us. Suddenly, the prosaic gives way to the extraordinary. Okawa shuts his eyes and intones in a thick Japanese accent: “”Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Come do-own to dis prace.” Within seconds, he is writhing and jolting in his seat, eliciting distressed groans, followed by cries of:

“I’m the Prime Minister! Denis? Denis!?” he cries in bewilderment, eliciting barely disguised sniggers from our audience. 

One of the gentlemen facing him addresses him as Mrs Thatcher and with great sensitivity and excellent English asks: “Can you understand that you passed away last night?” 

“I can’t!” ‘Thatcher’ replies, “I’m still alive!” 

As the dust of this remarkable metastasis settles, Lady Thatcher’s confusion rapidly dissipates and she takes command of the situation in a way that can only be described as Thatcherite, eyeballing the diffident strangers across as if they were Howe, Heseltine and Lawson. “I’m still the Iron Lady,” she declares, and with some of the coquettish sass that she regularly deployed against her (male) opponents. “Not just the Iron Lady, but the Hot Iron Lady.” 

Back in London – and 2019 - those that have been struggling to suppress their mirth permit themselves an open giggle at this zinger from the beyond.

From my fresher's perspective, it is almost impossible to know what to make of the display. I have no idea whether or not channelling is possible but some of my best friends think it is. What I can say is that the Thatcher that is conjured by Master Okawa appears to fulfil several functions. At times she is like an outrageous caricature, the ‘more Thatcher than Thatcher’ stuff of fringe comedy to rival Matt Forde at his best. Her opinions on labour unions (“I hate them!...They love being lazy”) and her reaction to the then incumbent President Obama: “Kill him!”, albeit before the more measured recommendation that he should be “perished” (the subtitles recording this as “banished”) to the polar regions, prove a crowd-pleaser with the London audience (this writer included). The deadpan delivery of her trio of straight-men also deserves plaudits; “Do you like him or dislike him?” one inquires. But it all takes on a more portentous note with her recommendation that Japan buy nukes from the US or the UK. “Are you a man? Really? Are you a man?” she retorts to one of her interviewer’s questioning of her hawkishness. 

Elsewhere she is softer, more reflective; the advertised ‘spiritual message on Brexit’ turns out to be a fairly mainstream eurosceptic take on the travails of the eurozone at that time. There is more detachment in her musings “The EU is destroying…I’ve heard that.” It suddenly becomes very easy to imagine the former PM, in her Chester Square home, beset by age and dementia, a receiver of news from the European theatre where once she had been a maker. Although condemning Germany’s failure to lead in Europe, she passes up the chance to further excoriate the country, as the question of whether German war guilt will ever be truly wiped away is passed to the Almighty. “It’s God’s matter.” A common phrase of the session is the Pilatic “it’s a philosophical matter”. 

It is this tendency that, more than the panto villain sparring, edges me into the sceptics’ camp. The Thatcher we know and universally love wouldn’t have washed her hands of any thorny issue presented to her; she’d have banged the table, hoisted the Union flag over a Challenger tank and won an election over it before supper.

This Thatcher is also suspiciously au fait with matters of Japanese culture and identity. Not that the grocer’s daughter was ignorant, far from it. But there is something in her plea for the Bushido, her adulation of the samurai and her enthusiastic retelling of how the Emperor Showa maintained his position on the Imperial throne post-WWII, that just doesn’t seem ring with the woman from Grantham. And yet, dear reader, this last point is concluded by a moment so eminently Thatcher-esque that I am ready to be convinced all over again that it really is her: 

“How did he survive? Is it a mystery?” she asks rhetorically. 

“I think God blessed Japan,” offers one of the men, to which the one true Thatcher responds only with a derisory “Really?” 

Even the HS members in the room laugh at that.

Even so, the final third of the discussion is not one that will convince the as-yet unconvinced, as it occurs squarely within the very specific HS belief system. We learn that the Iron Lady was the Iron Chancellor von Bismarck in a past life, as well as a David-like leader in ancient Israel followed by a kindly Roman woman who was the first of her kind to become a Christian. There is also the revelation that she had St Michael as her guiding spirit, which provokes admiring incredulity in one of her interlocutors: “ST MICHAEL?!?” If nothing else, I am struck as I have been before, of the depth of Eastern awareness of Western civilisation, and how little it cuts the other way (to say nothing of Western awareness of Western civilisation…). I wonder if there is something even in Thatcher’s misspeak of Michael being her “guardian angel” before being corrected to the less Christian-sounding ‘guiding spirit’; a reflection of Thatcher’s unenlightened condition perhaps, or a clever device by Master Okawa depending on your perspective, or simply time for me to realise I am definitely reading too much into this. 

Sure enough, this contact with the otherworld has failed to cut through to we bovine materialist Occidentals assembled, and our party of approaching twenty has dwindled to four. Our host concludes the broadcast with the summary that the British, whatever we decide over Brexit, to be strong. There are some questions from a bespectacled Northern chap, his geniality and open-mindedness nicely framing his still-obvious scepticism. He’s particularly keen to learn more about the recent channelling of Oscar Wilde for his views on today’s LGBTQIA+-x/ movement. 

The young ladies in attendance answer our queries patiently and passionately. They explain that so enlightened is Master Okawa that he can remain conscious during his channelling, fully aware of what is being said by the guest spirit; furthermore he is so enlightened that we are assured that our fears that his opinions might become (conveniently?) merged with those of the spirit are unfounded. In fact such his is state of enlightenment that he can channel the spirits of those that aren’t even dead: Obama, Trump, Putin and Merkel have all been done. One of the women hopes to get Boris’ insights next. 

The friendly Northerner and his friend leave, thanking the HS women for their hospitality. I, however, have bigger fish to fry. 

Will the Partridge get to the bottom of what Happy Science is and believes? Will he decide it deserves its rep as a totally mad cult? And will he ever get round to filling in his questionnaire? Find out in Part 2...