The Time I Almost Joined a Japanese Cult
“There is no doubt that the founder of Mahikari saw himself as the returned Messiah found in Christian doctrine also generated an urgency for his followers to prepare for the coming convulsions of nature leading to the destruction of the known world at the end of this millennium.” — Wikipedia entry on Sukyo Mahikari
IT WAS SUPPOSED TO be a short walk through the countryside to get some fresh air and explore the surrounding hills and villages. Instead it ended with me standing in the giant hall of the world headquarters of one of the largest and most bizarre cults on earth, mesmerised by a 30 metre-long fish tank with an unsettling desire to hand over all my money and worldly possessions.
We were on an end of year trip to the Japanese Alps to a town called Takayama in Gifu prefecture. We’d arrived late at night and awoke the next morning to find the entire place covered in a thick blanket of snow. I remember standing at the window of our hotel room, brushing my teeth, and my eyes falling on it almost immediately.
“What do you suppose that is, babe?” I’d asked my beloved, foam in mouth, pointing with my chin. She took a look and shrugged.
“Dunno, looks like some sort of shrine I guess.”
Something was sparkling out at us in the distance, a giant gold structure that seemed out of place amongst the thatched roofs and snow-covered rice fields.
We left our hotel and wandered through the traditional streets. Shops were beginning to open up and we could hear rolling shutters clanging around us. Takayama sits in a valley surrounded by hills with a gorgeous river running through it, and like most places in Japan it is famous for something. The town has two main draw cards: one is hida gyū, a luxury marbled beef often served with miso paste that can cost up to ¥5,000 ($46) for a few small cubes. The other is the historical town centre with traditional streets and wooden buildings dating back to the 1600s. I found a small shop selling nikuman, or steamed buns, and bought two. We ate them as we walked, and before long we’d reached the edge of the town. The golden shrine looked about a 20 minute hike away, so we followed the highway out of town, trudging through dirty snow on the side of the road.
In Japan you tend to see a lot of odd buildings and monuments (Tokyo’s golden turd is a great example), but nothing gives me the chills like remembering the feeling I had walking up to the global headquarters of that place. You can see it a mile away, and at first it looks like a huge martial arts hall painted gold. But the closer you get the weirder things become. Your mind runs in loops trying to work out what it could be. The entrance to an underground bunker? A UFO hanger? Portal to another dimension? These are just some of the possibilities that went through my mind. And that’s just from afar, because when you arrive at the steps, things start getting even creepier. A Star of David peers down at you from the roof—odd enough to find in rural Japan—and then you notice the swastikas on the two totem poles that guard like sentinels the steps leading up to the entrance. Halfway up I looked back, wondering if maybe we had come too far, if we should turn around and go back, but something beckoned me, it felt almost magnetic, and a voice inside my head urged me to continue. One thing truly irked me though: there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Sukyo Mahikari, which translates loosely as ‘universal knowledge of the true light’, has been around since 1978 and was formed by a guy named Keishu Okada. With centres in over 100 countries, the organisation boasts memberships of over one million worldwide. Okada saw himself as the returned Messiah and urged his followers to prepare for the end of days with him by using the ‘light of God’. The only way to do this was to become a Mahikari member, be devoted to the current spiritual leader, and to stay spiritually connected by—you guessed it—paying a monthly membership fee. Thankfully, the more money you donate, the more truly blessed and the more model a Mahikari member you can become. Who said money can’t buy happiness?
For the record, the organisation states clearly that it is not a cult. ‘Members and guests are never coerced into any activity,’ reads a statement on its website. Members should not focus entirely on giving Light without taking time for study, exercise, or rest, and people are free to leave Sukyo Mahikari ‘at any time.’
But according to Mahikari Exposed, a website containing information from ex-members, Mahikari has some pretty out there teachings, including the belief that the Jewish/Christian God Jehovah was in fact a Japanese God called Kuniyorozu Tsukurinushisama, and that Moses went to Japan when he disappeared from Mt Sinai and was trained by Shinto priests. It also teaches that Hitler belonged to the spiritual linage of the Sun Spirit, and that Nazi military aggression in Europe in the Second World War was justified as God was punishing the Jews and other victims for their ancestors’ sins and impurities. But I digress.
We passed through the two giant columns, between the golden gates and under a golden archway adorned with what looked like deer antlers and yet another Star of David, before arriving at a small closed door. In the absence of any guards or signage, we took one last look back before pulling open the door and stepping inside.
I’d love to tell you we were greeted by some oval-eyed grey aliens or that the place was buzzing with reptilians humanoids running about with documents under their arms, but there weren’t. In fact, the place was suspiciously deserted. No guards, no reception staff, no cleaners, just red velvet carpet, stretching as far as the eye could see, and signs signalling ‘No Photography’. We wandered through some corridors, over more and more red carpet, and suddenly I caught a glimpse of someone standing in a white robe, through a window in a door. I couldn’t make out if it was a man or a woman as he or she was too far away. Above the door was a sign that read ‘The Grand Hall’ or something important like that, and so we pushed open the doors and walked through. Two young women were standing on either side of a huge stage, with a pulpit in the middle. The hall resembled the inside of a church with pews arranged in neat rows on either side of the main aisle. The ceiling was incredibly high, and light streamed through the windows in the roof. There was something eerie about the hall, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. It felt as if human sacrifices were carried out there, or at the very least some kind of intra-dimensional teleportation to another realm.
We continued down the aisle; the women (I think they were nuns) ignored us. Built into the wooden stage, running from one end to the other, was what must be the longest continuous fish tank I’ve ever seen. Spanning the width of the entire room but with a height of only 50cm, the tank contained several huge fish that glided from one end of the stage to the other. How they managed to turn around upon reaching the other end remains a mystery to me. It was completely mesmerising. I kept staring at the fish as we walked closer to the stage. What were they doing here? They didn’t look like any type of fish I’d seen before. And the water was so clear, almost glacial.
We’d almost reached the stage when one of the nuns began to move. I saw her coming at me from the corner of my eye and immediately I froze. She stopped. I took a step closer to the stage, she moved closer to me. I took a step back, she retreated. What was going on here, and what was so important on the stage? I dared not find out, so I stood still, in front of the stage in the grand hall and took a breath. The whole thing was terrifying, mesmerising, yet strangely calming. It was so intriguing. What was this place doing out in the middle of nowhere? Who were these people, and what did they know that I didn’t? It was at that moment, standing there in the middle of the grand hall on the red velvet carpet, staring at the glistening fish gliding effortlessly from one side of the hall to the other that I felt a wave of curiosity wash over me, and suddenly nothing mattered anymore, my worries, my fears, my hopes, my dreams, they were all insignificant, and all that mattered was this strange building and the fish. Right at that moment, if the nun had come up to me and said: “Now look here, we’ve got a comet that is due to pass by this planet around 11pm tomorrow night. All you’ve got to do is take this cyanide pill about seven minutes before 11pm and your soul will be taken by the comet and whisked away to another galaxy, much different to this one but similar in so many ways, and there you’ll meet the sun spirit who will show you the art of the true light. The only thing you need to do is give us all your money right now” I probably would have said “Where do I sign?”
Fortunately, before any of that could happen, my beloved tugged on my shirtsleeve and whispered “Let’s get the hell out of here,” and we turned on our heels and walked briskly out of the hall and out of the building without looking back and emerged into the icy Japanese air that greeted us outside.ω
Author’s note: I managed to find a photo of the inside of the church here. You can see the blue fish tank running across the top of the stage.
