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The Full Gospel Church and Korean Shamanism in Japan-Resident Korean Society

Shamanism as a Universal Foundational Religion

Iida Takafumi

Religion in Japan-resident Korean society is a complex fusion of interrelated facets. It involves, in addition to traditional Confucian rites and Korean shamanism (Jp. fuzoku 巫俗),1 Korean Buddhism, Christianity, and belief in various Japanese religions including Buddhism, Shinto, folk reli-gions, and new religions. Furthermore, among the Japan-resident Koreans (zainichi korian 在日コリアン) there is a considerable difference between the religious faith and practice of the “oldcomers” (the Koreans who came to Japan before World War II and their succeeding generations) and that of the “newcomers” (those who came to Japan from the 1970s and after).

If we categorize these groupings into ethnic-culturally oriented (that is, “assimilation” oriented, zainichi oriented, homeland oriented) and organiza-tional/network (voluntary networking, formal organization network) types,

* Iida Takafumi is a professor in the Faculty of Letters, Department of Sociology, at Otani University. The English translation is by Jon Morris, Tohoku University.

1. Note on the translation: fuzoku has been translated as “Korean shamanism” through-out. Both the English and Japanese terms are used to imply a broad range of traditions, such as Kuh, and typically Korean modes of shamanic behavior in a broad sense. Personal names are given in the Japanese order, with the addition in some cases of alternative (anglicized or Japanese) names which appear in English-language materials.

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we may lay out the various categories as per the table below (from Iida 2002, 58). Within these various groupings, religions that might be described as shamanic or charismatic include the rituals of Korean shamanism and the Full Gospel type churches, among others. Korean shamanistic rituals have been performed among female “oldcomers” of advanced years, particularly among those hailing from Osaka’s former Cheju-do (Jp. Sashūtō 済州島) islander circles. In contrast to this, the Full Gospel Churches mainly attract female “newcomer” believers. Social relationships and connections between members of the two groups are not apparent.

The assertion has been made by Korean theologians that the rapid devel-opment of Korean Christianity has been due to the foundations provided by traditional shamanism. Certainly, the promulgation of Christianity in Asia has been carried out mainly since the modern period, and pre-existing folk-culture traditions of shamanism have survived in abundance. In Japan,

Voluntary Networking

Ethnic cultural festivals

Formal organization type

Japanese New Religions

The Korean Christian Church in Japan, 在日大韓基督教会 (Zainichi Daikan Kirisuto kyōkai)Family Council Cemeteries 親族会霊園 (Shinzokukai reien)

Full Gospel type Churches

Network(primordial, functional)

Japanese Bud-dhism, Shinto, Japanese Folk Religions

Erecting tombstoneszainichi Folk Religions

Korean Buddhism, Korean shamanic rituals, Confucian rituals

Combination type

Cultural orientation

“Assimilation” oriented

zainichi homeland oriented

Table 1. Combinatory Forms and Cultural Orientations of Various Korean Religions among Japan-resident Koreans (Iida 2002, 58).

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shamanism has been relegated to remote or outlying areas (northeast-ern area, southern islands, and mountainous regions). In Korea, however, the religious traditions of Korean shamanism have been richly preserved throughout the various regions; albeit consigned as female culture to a sub-ordinate position to the male culture of Confucianism. According to Yu Don-shik 柳東植, Korean Christianity developed due to, and through, its affinity with the Korean Shamanic concept of hananim (“one god” or “heaven”). Though it thus inherited and took on the characteristics of a dependence on salvation faith (salvation by divine grace as opposed to one’s own works) with a strong emphasis on apotropaic aspects, it was engaged with the issue of moving beyond this set of qualities (see Yu 1975). Summing up the insights of a number of Korean research works, Kim Eungi (2012) has discussed the close relationship between Korean Christianity and Korean shamanism.2 Furthermore, there are research papers that discuss the fast-ing and prayer institutions of Full Gospel churches as a conspicuous point of contact with Korean shamanism (Fuchigami 1994, 2010). In Japan-res-ident Korean society, however, we cannot find human connections which might represent a direct point of convergence and contact between the two religious groups. There are several fasting and prayer institutions attached to Full Gospel churches, and one hears that there is glossolalia and fervent prayer of a different nature to the worship in the churches; but a direct link to the traditions of a Korean shamanic nature has not been confirmed.

Korean Shamanic Rituals in Japan-resident Korean Society

Here, let us interpret “Japan-resident Korean” to mean, for the time being, registered inhabitants of North and South Korea resident in Japan. Among the Japan-resident Korean population, which numbers around 500,000, around half live in the Kansai region, centering on Osaka. The Ikuno 生野 ward of Osaka city is an area with a particularly dense Japan-resident Korean population, the greater part of which is made up of former residents of Cheju-do island. It may be presumed that traditional rituals of Korean shamanism were carried out within the Cheju-do islander net-

2. See the essay by Andrew Kim in this current volume.

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work before the war. After the war, however, such activities took the form of the chōsen-dera 朝鮮寺 (Japan-resident Korean temples) established in the Ikoma 生駒 mountain range (see Iida 1988). These number around sixty institutions, and while to the outside world they appear to be nothing other than Buddhist temples, they have functioned as places for the ritu-als of Korean shamanism. In these rituals, for the purposes of propitiatory memorial services for the spirits of the dead (shisharei 死者霊), divine spirits (kamigami 神 )々 are summoned by a specialist shamanistic medium with spiritual abilities, and the spirits of the dead speak through the medium (kuchiyose 口寄せ). Korean shamanistic rituals, which take place over two or three days to a week and sometimes ten days, are carried out in the temples of Mt. Ikoma. Korean shamanistic rituals of shorter duration were also car-ried out widely in a number of temples in Osaka City’s Ikuno Ward, with its high concentration of Japan-resident Koreans, and the areas around it

Figure 1: Ikoma Shintokuin 神徳院. Standing on the right hand side is the great rod (Ōzao 大竿) which calls down (manekiorosu 招き降ろす) the spirits (kamigami).

Figure 3: A Fusha tearfully gives voice to the words of a spirit of a deceased person.

Figure 2: Husband and wife fusha calling down the spirits.

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(Iida 2002). From the 1990s onward, however, due to generational changes, the activities of the Japan-resident Korean temples on Mt. Ikoma have declined. Korean shamanistic rituals from the Cheju-do island lineage (both the mediums, fusha 巫者, and those who call on their services) are falling, and have ceased to be held with the same regularity as in previous years (Shūkyō shakaigaku no kai 2012).

Furthermore, even amongst those of Cheju-do island descent, female masters of prayer-rites from mainland areas such as Pusan and Seoul called posaru (meaning “bodhisattva”, Jp. bosatsu 菩薩) have been widely accepted and integrated. Though the posaru’s prayer rites involve the chanting of Buddhist sutras, they also include shamanic aspects such as the channeling of messages from the spirits of the dead (kuchiyose) and spiritual inspiration under the influence of spirits (reikan 霊感). Direct human links between the world of the posaru and that of Christianity cannot be confirmed.

The Development of Christian Churches

The Korean Christian Church in Japan

The Korean Christian Church in Japan (Zainichi Daikan Kirisuto Kyōkai 在日大韓基督教会) is a Protestant church that has been active in Japan-resi-dent Korean communities since before World War ii. It was established in 1908 by students from the Korean peninsula studying in Japan, and hav-ing passed through some difficult periods (such as the colonialization of Korea), it now has a hundred churches and mission centers (fukyōjo 布教所) throughout Japan, and has around five thousand followers. It takes on and hosts missionaries from the Presbyterian, Methodist, and other mainstream Korean churches. As an ethnic church (minzoku kyōkai 民族教会), one of the mainstays of its missionary direction is the issue of human rights by Japan-resident Koreans, and the abolition of discrimination toward them.

Within The Korean Christian Church in Japan there are two distinct groups, each with their own leanings. One is a group that gives specific weight to taking on the aforementioned social issues, which we might call the “Society-oriented Group,” and the other group, which we might call the “Gospel-oriented Group,” puts emphasis on salvation from within (Iida 2002, 297). Though in the Gospel-oriented Group there are those who

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emphasize the workings of the Holy Spirit in prayer, this is not to suggest that this group displays the hallmark features of a Pentecostal church, such as the practice of glossolalia.

Perhaps some several thousand Japan-resident Korean Christians belong to the Catholic Church, but the actual figure is unclear. Ethnic aspects of this community are not particularly emphasized, and most members use Japanese names (tsūmei 通名). There may be some in the Japan-resident Korean Catholic community who emphasize, on a personal level, the work-ings of the Holy Spirit; but there are no reports of any organized charismatic activities.

The Missionary Activities of Japan Full Gospel Church

A Korean Protestant group which shows clear Pentecostalist ten-dencies is the highly influential Japan Full Gospel Church, founded in 1958 by Cho Yonggi 趙鏞基 (David [formerly Paul] Yonggi Cho). This group expanded and developed quickly, with the Yoido Full Gospel Church, said to have 700,000 believers, at its center. It carries out missionary activities throughout South Korea and abroad. Pastor Cho Yonggi, who was ill in his teens, was brought into the Pentecostal faith by a missionary from America. After studying at the Full Gospel School of Theology (Junfukuin shingakkō 純福音神学校) he began his own missionary activities in cooperation with Choi Jashil 崔子実, his contemporary at the college who was to become his mother-in-law.

The impassioned preaching and prayers of Pastor Cho Yonggi, the activi-ties of the fasting and prayer institutions under the instruction of Pastor Choi Jashil, and the fervent displays of glossolalia of believers during wor-ship, all show the key qualities of a charismatic faith. Regarding the mission in Japan, Pastor Choi Jashil visited Japan for the first time in 1964 and has continued her yearly missionary visits since then. Pastor Cho Yonggi was cautious at first with regard to missionary work in Japan. He nonetheless made a firm decision to wholeheartedly pursue missionary work in Japan as part of his evangelical activities worldwide. In 1979 he began a movement aiming at “the salvation of ten million souls in Japan” (Nihon issen-man-nin kyūrei 日本一千万人救霊), and with his preaching events and broadcast evangelism, he has rapidly increased the number of believers.

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The Full Gospel Tokyo Church (Junfukuin Tōkyō kyōkai 純福音東京教会) was established in Azabu in 1978, and from that point on churches were set up in various regions in Japan. The group has eighty churches in Japan at present, with a total number of over 3,500 followers. A great many of those believers are “newcomer” females, and a few among them are “oldcomer” Koreans. Around twenty to thirty percent of adherents are Japanese, many of whom are young women, and male members would appear to be the spouses of the female faithful. It is difficult to argue that the mission in Japan among Japanese people and “oldcomer” Japan-resident Koreans has made great progress. Nevertheless, having gained a large number of adherents in a short time, and produced many new churches, the activities of the Full Gos-pel Church group flourish in comparison to the general stagnation in the activities of the Christian church in Japan as a whole. That said, the goal of evangelizing ten million people remains a distant one, and the “charismatic” character of the group would seem to have become somewhat subdued over recent years. In the following section I will attempt to give a summary of my survey notes on the Full Gospel Church group.

Full Gospel Tokyo Church

When I first visited the Full Gospel Tokyo Church (Shinjuku-ku, Ōkubo 1-2-6, Sansēru Shinjuku Building) in October 1988, the Full Gospel Church had seven churches in Japan. The Tokyo church, under Pastor Li Kanfun 李康憲 (better known by the name Mitsui Yasunori 三井康憲) had around 3,500 members on its books. At that time, several dozen female believers in their twenties and thirties would take part in an evening worship session held on Wednesdays.

During Japan’s “bubble” economy years, many young Korean women working in lively areas such as Shinjuku could be seen at the Church. Though there was no pastor present, in the intervals between hymns the worship room was filled with sobbing and glossolalia, each person praying freely in their own way, weeping and fervently speaking in tongues. Boxes of tissues were placed on the edges of the pews, for participants to dry their overflowing tears. On the Japanese-language recording of Pastor Li Kanfun’s preaching, which I bought at the time of that visit, the question of whether or not selling alcohol was a sin was addressed (with women working in lively entertainment districts being the target of that preaching). According

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to the recorded sermon, this was indeed a sin, and those who performed such work did so while suffering in sin. God, however, would take pity on such folk, and save them.

Later, in 1990, Pastor Li Kanfun and many members of his church broke away from the Yoido Full Gospel Church group and established the Tokyo Chūō Kyōkai 東京中央教会. It has made rapid progress, with a new church hall (Shinjuku-ku, Ōkubo 2-18-8) in 1996, and a further four churches estab-lished in the Kanto region. As a result of this breakaway, the Full Gospel Tokyo Church was to lose members, buildings, property and its legal sta-tus (in Japan) as a religious corporation, all at a single stroke. It nonetheless began anew with around two hundred members attending open air services in parks, and set to work rebuilding itself. After using several church build-ings, they purchased the current church hall, a seven-story building (Shin-juku-ku, Kabukichō 2-2-4) in 2002.

At the time of my visit in July 2011, there were eight pastors and around 2500 registered faithful under supervising pastor (tannin bokushi 担任牧師) Daewon Chung (チョン・デウォン, 鄭大垣). The ratio of Korean to Japanese believers was around 7:3. The church has a facility for fasting and prayer in Akigawa 秋川 (Tokyo). The supervising pastor had recently transferred that year from the Full Gospel Osaka Church. Supervising pastors on dis-patch from Korea change posts every three years or so. Sunday services are performed seven times during the course of the day, from morning to eve-ning. The 11 a.m. service (with simultaneous translation and sign language) was attended by around 250 people. The 1 p.m. service was a simultaneous broadcast sermon by Emeritus Pastor (genrō bokushi 元老牧師) Cho Yonggi from the Yoido Full Gospel Church (with simultaneous translation in Japa-nese and English).

The first time I heard pastor Cho Yonggi’s sermons was at the beginning of the 1980s at a preaching event held at Sankei Hall in Osaka. Beginning quietly, and calmly repeating in perfect Japanese, the message of God’s love in easily-understood terms, he gradually became more and more impas-sioned. Those in the audience were carried with him to a climactic high point. Finally, in prayer, stating specific symptoms of diseases and states of ill health one by one, he told the audience that those illnesses would be healed. “Those with shoulder pain shall be healed.… Those with knee pain shall be healed.… Those with headaches shall be healed….” As I listened to

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this prayer and preaching, I had the impression that perhaps a few people among those who had some physical ailment would have some sense of an improvement in that condition, and that it might be an extremely limited number indeed who experienced any notable restoration of health.

When I heard the sermon broadcast simultaneously in Tokyo in 2011, the manner of the now aged pastor Cho was very much more quiet and mod-erate, and the “climax” at the closing part of the sermon was not greatly emphasized. It seemed that a feeling of respect for Pastor Cho, the founder, filled the giant hall of the Yoido church. During the time of prayer which followed the sermon, however, only a very small number of people in both the Yoido church and the Tokyo church showed signs of fervent excitement or spoke in tongues. It seems that the “charismatic” character of the Full Gospel Church is becoming somewhat diluted in comparison with the time of its establishment.

Pastor Cho Yonggi retired as the head of the Yoido Full Gospel Church in 2010 and became Emeritus Pastor. Young Hoon Lee (Yi Yonfun イ・ヨンフン), a

Figure 4. The Full Gospel Tokyo Church

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former supervising pastor of the Tokyo church, has taken over as the head of the Yoido Full Gospel Church.

Full Gospel Osaka Church

The Full Gospel Osaka Church (Naniwa-ku, Settsu Nishi 2-16-11; visited July 2011) was established in 1988. It has 450 registered faithful under Pas-tor Che Chuil (チェ・ チュイル, 崔洙日), 300 of whom have been baptized. The composition of the flock is said to be sixty percent Korean and forty percent Japanese. Seven services are held on Sundays. The main service, the second, was attended by around a hundred or more people. There were many in their 50s and 60s, and a lesser number in their 40s and 30s. The pastor preached in Korean with an interpreter standing beside him translating into Japanese. The words to the hymns appeared on television screens in Hangul script and Japanese.

On asking about the fact that no glossolalia was to be observed during the service, the pastor replied in the following manner: “Someone here for the

Figure 5. Full Gospel Osaka Church.

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first time might well be surprised to see the excitement of glossalalia. There is speaking in tongues at the Wednesday evening and early morning ser-vices. Prayer with fasting is something the believers do of their own accord.” Pastor Che had arrived only two months earlier from the Tokyo church. The previous incumbent Daewon Chung had transferred to become supervising pastor at the Tokyo church after spending seven years at the Osaka church.

The mission worker (伝道師 dendōshi) responsible for first time visitors, a Japanese person we shall call M (68 years old), told me the following: “My household (ie 家) were (members of) the True Pure Land Sect (Jōdo Shinshū 浄土真宗). The reason I joined the church was illness. I had liver trouble and even cancer. Christianity and Buddhism are basically the same—they have the same essence. The main thing to start from is you have to respect your parents. Christianity has spread in Korea because of the respect for parents.”

Full Gospel Kyoto Church

The Full Gospel Kyoto Church (Kamigyō-ku, Yakunin-chō 234-4, visited July 2011) was established in 1990. The church has around a hundred mem-bers including Pastor Che Yohane (better known in English as John Choi). Seventy percent of these members are relatively recent Korean migrants to Japan. Thirty percent are Japanese people and Korean residents of Japan (zainichi). Pastor Che Yohane was born in Korea in 1934 to a family who were members of a Methodist-affiliated church. He first came to Japan hav-ing been invited for the purposes of music instruction. Having heard the preaching of pastor Cho Yonggi his eyes were opened to the struggle against the devil, and he thus joined the Full Gospel Church.

While serving the Tokyo Church he studied at a theological school and, after becoming a missionary, he went on to become a pastor. In his work pioneering new missions, he opened the Osaka church, the Kyoto church, the Kobe church, and the Ibaraki church. The goal was not the construction of buildings as such but to secure places for the faithful to gather in those regions. Pastor Che is not a missionary on dispatch from Korea; he has been, from the outset of evangelization work to the present day, a pastor in the Full Gospel Church in Japan. He will retire next year and become an Emeri-tus Pastor, at which time a newly appointed pastor will come to take over the Kyoto church. There are three services on Sundays. The 11 a.m. service is attended by a little over forty people. The structure of the congregation in

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terms of age would seem to be comprised, in descending order of their num-bers, of those in their 40s, 50s, 30s and 20s. According to Pastor Che,

Today the Full Gospel Group in Japan has 80 churches, 100 missionaries, and over 3,500 faithful. Probably around sixty percent of these are newcomers, twenty percent are Japanese, and twenty percent are old-comers and their descendants. Eighty percent of them are women. There are also some foreign students who are studying in Japan. …Connections between Korean shamanism and the Pentecostal sects? Korean shamanism and the Church are entirely different. This is some kind of rumor, isn’t it!? That [Korean shamanism] is going against God. It is accursed. By the coming of Jesus there shall be no place for Korean shamanism! …Though many churches were formed in a comparatively short space of time, the mission to Japanese people and to Japan-resident Koreans (zainichi) is stagnant. If you want to observe speaking in tongues, please come to the prayer meeting (kitōkai 祈祷会), not the Sunday service.

I visited the early morning prayer meeting (6 a.m.) the next day. There

Figure 6. Full Gospel Kyoto Church

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were five attendees at first, and a further five joined later. Associate pastor (fukubokushi 副牧師) An 安 (female) officiated. There were seven female and three male attendees, of whom six were Japanese. Pastor An’s prayers included speaking in tongues: “orabarabarabaraba….” Among the congre-gation there were those who were swaying and shaking their bodies, those who were wiping away their tears, and others who were constantly murmur-ing words at high speed in a low-voiced whisper. After the worship, a quiet and friendly group breakfast of bread, coffee, and tomatoes was provided.

Other Church Groups

Calvary Church Group

The Calvary Church Group (Junfukuin kirisuto kyōdan 純福音キリスト教団) was established by Pastor Matsudaira Temote 松平題摩太. Matsudaira (b. 1940) is a second generation Japan-resident Korean. He came to the faith due to his contact with Kim Seikō 金聖光, the son of the Korean Full Gospel Church Pastor Choi Jashil, and founded the Calvary Church Kobe in 1976. He later founded the Junfukuin kyokutō seisho gakuin 純福音極東聖書学院 (Full Gospel Bible College of the Far East) and churches in Osaka, Kyoto, Maebashi, Wakayama, Gifu, and elsewhere. He went on to found the Jun-fukuin kirisuto kyōdan in 1984. Though this religious group was established with the strong influence of the Yoido Full Gospel Church, this does not imply that there is any organizational affiliation between the two. At the time of the group’s foundation, the Osaka church had around 200 baptized members, the Kobe church had 120–130 baptized members, and the Kyoto church, which had been founded in the previous year, had 20–30 members, making a total of close to 400 members for the group.

After I visited the Osaka Calvary Church in the summer of 1987, I took part in a three-day summer mental improvement session (shūyōkai 修養会) held at a big hotel in Kyoto. The theme of the meeting was “A gathering of discerning Christians” (haisensu na kurisuchan no tsudoi ハイセンスなクリスチャンの集い). Around 140 people took part, mainly Korean and Japanese women in their twenties and thirties. The speaker was Pastor Kim Myon-nam 金明南, of the Chicago Assembly of God Church. The lecture was a detailed exposition of the tabernacle (Jp. makuya 幕屋, Hb. ןכשמ, mishkan)

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that Moses was ordered by God to build, the accounts thereof recorded in the Old Testament, and its religious meanings. The key theme of Pastor Mat-sudaira’s preaching was “a life of discernment” (haisensu na seikatsu ハイセンスな生活). Living this “life of discernment” was not a matter of withdrawing from the world and living a pure and simple life of poverty, but rather to aim to be a Christian who would be appreciated and envied (urayamareru 羨まれる, a term with positive connotations in this context) wherever they went in the world.

At that time, the movement for the abolition of the fingerprinting regula-tions (shimon ōnatsu kitei 指紋押捺規定) prescribed in the Alien Registra-tion Law (gaikokujin tōrokuhō 外国人登録法) was gathering pace and energy in both zainichi and Japanese society. The General Assembly of the Korean Christian Church in Japan (Zainichi Daikan Kirisuto Kyōkai Sōkai 在日大韓基督教会総会) was energetically engaged in the movement. On asking Pas-tor Matsudaira about the campaigns, his opinion was that such things were

Figure 7. Calvary Church Self-improvement Session. Prayer time with glossolalia and tears.

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not the essential activities of the church, and would do it more harm than good.

It seems that the Calvary Church group (Junfukuin kirisuto kyōdan) had ceased such activities some years earlier.

Kyoto Immanuel Mission Church

This church was introduced to me as a Pentecostalist church in Kyoto (Kamigyō-ku, Shōkokuji Monzen-chō 647-8) by T, a Chinese student who attended a symposium held at Nanzan University on “Pentecostalism and Shamanism in Asia.” T had graduated from the University of Tokyo in Sep-tember of the previous year, and was living in the church until he formally joined the Japanese company at which he had been offered a job. This church

Figure 8. Kyoto Immanuel Mission Church

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is affiliated with the Miami Immanuel Mission Church (Maiami Inmanueru senkyō kyōkai マイアミ・インマヌエル宣教教会), which is under the Presbyterian Church in Korea (Daikan Iesukyō Chōrōkai 大韓イエス教長老会). It began with foundational service that took place in the premises of Kyoto Univer-sity in the year 2000. It is also active in preaching to foreign students and (subsequently) sending them as missionaries to their countries of origin. Though the church is overseen by Supervising Pastor Paiku Moses パク・モーセ, the weekly services are attended by the missionary Lee Aelia (Specially Appointed Professor at the University of Tokyo’s Center for Contemporary Korean Studies (Gendai Kankoku Kenkyū Sentā 現代韓国研究センター), who travels there from Tokyo.

When I visited this church for a Sunday morning in January 2012, there were around twenty participants at the service. Many were foreign students from Korea and China, and others such as Korean or Japanese university professors were also in attendance. There was no speaking in tongues dur-ing the service, at which there was a calm and quiet atmosphere. T under-stands Pentecostalism and shamanism to be entirely different things. In T’s view, Pentecostal activities are the original and fundamental activities of Christians as written in the Bible, whereas shamanism is a superstition (meishin 迷信) associated with evil spirits (akuryō 悪霊), and T would rather the two were not confused. This is very much in accord with what was said by the Full Gospel Kyoto church’s Pastor Che. It would be fair to say that though researchers point to connections between Pentecostal groups, the Korean Full Gospel Church, and Korean shamanism, those involved with the churches themselves generally deny this association.

Furthermore, in addition to the Full Gospel Church and two churches mentioned above, it would seem that there are a number of churches of Korean origin which bear the characteristic features of Pentecostal denomi-nations.

Shamanism as a Universal Foundational Religion

A basis in Korean traditional shamanism has been indicated as a reason for the development and spread of Korean Christianity, particu-larly the Full Gospel Church, in the later part of the twentieth century (Yu 1975; Kim 2012; Fuchigami 1994, 2010). Even in the case of the Full Gos-

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pel Church in Japan, most believers are “newcomer” females, and thus one would not move toward a flat denial of the theory of connections between aspects of these two religions (Christianity and Korean shamanism) relating to their basis in modern Korean society.

Despite this fact, no connection whatsoever could be found between Cheju-do Korean shamanism and the Full Gospel Church in Japan-resident Korean society. I wish to offer here a different hypothesis, one that addresses understanding of the role and significance of shamanism rather than the question of direct links between the two religious traditions. That is, that we might see shamanism not as a superstitious (meishinteki 迷信的) religious custom of some particular region, but as an essential element of the basic and foundational religion that is universal to mankind.

In general, worship is an activity of human subjects performed in response to sacred objects. These acts of worship and prayer are conducted as part of the relationship between human subjects and sacred objects, regardless of the manner in which the object of worship might be expressed (be it as a single god, many gods, a spirit, a totem, or otherwise). Yet, when the human ego undergoes changes when exposed to great strain or crisis situations, the states known as ecstasy or trance may occur. In such states the ordinary ego may have direct contact with the sacred object. That is to say, in such states the distinction between subject and object disappears and the two become one. Eliade, in his categorization of shamanistic phenomena into types such as the ecstasy, possession, inspiration, and control types, classified the ecstatic type of shamanism observed in the Siberian regions a “genuine” shamanism and the other types as parashamanic (Eliade 1974, 316). How-ever, if we define shamanism as religious behavior in which direct contact with a sacred object is established through transformation of the ego—even were it meaningful to attribute patterns and categories to the various types of shamanism—distinguishing one as the “genuine type” should not be of great significance.

The ego (the self) is a psycho-social entity, based on its own name and body, which makes excluding distinctions between itself and other beings. It is a mechanism that is formed, maintained, and developed via social inter-actions (Mead 2005). The ego is a social construction which once formed comes to be maintained through the mutual interactions between oneself and others in daily life. However, in a situation which is extreme or critical

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in relational, psychological, or physical terms, the ego‘s structure becomes difficult to maintain, and the integrity of the ego is shaken. At such a time, the phenomenon of direct contact and of becoming one with various reli-gious symbols and beings becomes more likely to occur (Berger 1979). Should that phenomenon be given a name and attributed with meaning within traditional religion, it (he or she) will be called such things as sha-man, shamanic medium (fusha), spirit medium (reibai 霊媒), prayer healer/exorcist (kitōshi 祈祷師), witch (majo 魔女), or sorcerer (yōjutsushi 妖術師).

Thinking in this way, we may understand shamanism as not so much a reli-gious tradition peculiar to a particular region but rather as one of the universal religious phenomena which may occur throughout mankind in its entirety.

This is not to say, however, that shamanistic changes of the ego may occur to all people unqualifiedly and unconditionally. Once the social ego is estab-lished it is not, for many people, something which may easily be broken down. Those with qualities that allow for shamanistic changes of the ego may perhaps generally number one among dozens of people. Yet many of the participants in Pentecostal worship speak in tongues and display ecstatic behavior. We may suppose that this does not occur due to some rare quality shared by the participants, but is something which in certain situations and conditions may occur among large numbers of people.

This form and tradition of shamanism, which has spread from Siberia through Northeast China, the Korean Peninsula, the Japanese archipel-ago and the islands of Okinawa, to the Indochinese peninsula and even to Southern India has sometimes been called “Southern Shamanism” (nanpō shāmanizumu 南方シャーマニズム) in reference to those places (Sakurai 1983). I. M. Lewis (2003) reports that possession-type shamanic phenom-ena are observed in a variety of contexts, including in the Christian cultural sphere. The occurrence of glossolalia and possession by the Holy Spirit in the early Christian Church is written in the Bible (The Acts of the Apostles), and this is the basis for the doctrines of the Pentecostalist denominations. In the Catholic Church, however, these phenomena came to be seen as histori-cal events which occurred only within the early church, and as something which ought not to occur unwarranted in church history after that point. This stance was taken because, should those people upon whom the Holy Spirit descended speak freely on all manner of topics, it would not be out of the question for the rule of the church to be put into disorder. A further rea-

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son was the notion that, should shamanic religions with no standing in the clerical hierarchy come to wield influence over the people, then there may even be the risk of the clergy losing their authority.

Christian missionaries have over time rejected shamanism as a long-established custom of undeveloped societies (mikai shakai 未開社会) anti-thetical to Christianity, and aimed at its eradication. Even in regions in which Christianity has been propagated such as wide parts of Asia and Cen-tral and South America, however, “indigenous religions” (dochaku shūkyō 土着宗教) have held onto their staying power and in those regions the Chris-tian faith still bears the mark of the indigenous faith. Giving many support-ing examples, Heine (1980 [1853]) has argued that within the Christian faith of various German regions there remain key elements of the pre-Christian religion of the Germanic peoples. I suppose that among those who in the medieval period were subjected to religious trials as “witches” there were perhaps some who displayed shamanistic behavior. This should not be seen as the survival of a particular religious tradition. It is my hypothesis that we may, rather, think of the ubiquity of shamanism on the level of an element of religion universal to mankind present at a foundational stratum.

Here, let us consider that point with the aid of a famous painting: Raphael’s illustration of “The Transfiguration” of Jesus, held at the Vatican Museum.This work is based on the Gospel episode of Jesus with three dis-ciples climbing a high mountain, meeting with the past prophets Moses and Elijah and being transfigured into a shining form, and the following episode in which Jesus, having descended the mountain with his companions, heals a boy with epilepsy (Matthew 17: 1–9, Mark 9: 2–8, Luke 9: 28–36). The usual explanation of this picture is that it depicts the two consecutive scenes one above the other. The overwhelming impression given by this picture is, nev-ertheless, that of the unity of the two scenes. Perhaps we should conclude that Raphael has worked or reworked the scenes so as to express them as a unified whole.

My own understanding is as follows. The picture of the transfiguration of Jesus in the upper section is the image of a vision experienced by the epileptic boy in the lower section, wherein the boy is indicating toward the upper part with the direction of his arm and gaze. Among the people in the lower section, none are looking directly at the upper section. The gaze of the people on the left of the lower section is directed toward the boy. Those

Figure 9. “The Transfiguration” of Jesus, held at the Vatican Museum.

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on the right may be the boy’s family. Already aware of the boy’s epileptic fit, their gaze is not directly toward the boy, but toward those facing the boy. The people on the left are stricken with shock and confusion at the boy’s affliction, and one of the men among them is pointing to the upper section while addressing the boy with a question: “You want to tell us there is some-thing wondrous happening in the world above, don’t you?”

We may consider this boy to be performing the task of the shaman, and as the scene depicted one in which through the boy’s vision the transfiguration of Jesus may be communicated to the people. What is depicted in the lower section of this painting is not Jesus healing the epileptic boy as related in the Bible. My understanding is that within the scene of the boy’s fit which takes place at the foot of the mountain while Jesus is transfigured, the boy’s vision of the wondrous event on the mountaintop and the communication thereof is depicted. The interpretation that the transfiguration of Jesus was commu-nicated to the people via the vision of a shamanistic boy may be one which The Vatican might perhaps consider inappropriate. I would surmise that this picture has continued to be accepted in the Vatican over time due to the avoidance of this “shamanistic” interpretation, via the received explanation that the picture shows two different scenes in its upper and lower sections.

One may also point to similar examples in Japanese culture in which the shaman “sees” a wondrous event and relates it to the people. Let us give the example of the Noh play Aoi no Ue 葵上 (Lady Aoi). A shamaness (fujo or miko 巫女) is called to heal Aoi no Ue, wife of Hikaru Genji, who has been laid low by a serious illness. As the shamaness sounds the catalpa bow (azusa yumi あずさ弓), the spirit of Rokujō no Miyasudokoro 六条の御息女, former lover of Hikaru Genji, appears to the shamaness in a vision. The spirit tells of its vendetta against Aoi no Ue, and attacks her. A high ranking monk from Mt. Hiei is called, and he subdues the evil spirit (akuryō) with prayer. What is of great interest here is that it is only the shamaness who can see the spirit of Rokujō no Miyasudokoro, the principle role at the center of the action on stage. The others on stage, even the high ranking monk, can-not see it directly. The presence of the spirit is believed in only through the words of the shamaness. One might draw a comparison with this situation and that which is illustrated in Raphael’s “Transfiguration.”

If we designate the shaman as one who fulfills some religious role by mak-ing direct contact with the non-ordinary sacred object via changes to the

144 | The Full Gospel Church and Korean Shamanism in Japan

ego such as humans in ordinary states cannot experience, should we not consider such people to exist in almost every society (though they are often seen as heretical in the Christian world)?

Even if we were to accept the influence of Korean shamanistic traditions on the Full Gospel Church in Korea, we need not necessarily understand the primary factor at work in that influence to be of a peculiarly Korean nature. We may see it rather as an instantiation of a fundamental religious factor universal to mankind. Consider cases in which the traditions of shamanism may not be particularly apparent, such as that of the modern American Pen-tecostal movements. I would argue that even there we may see the presence of shamanism, being a fundamental religious factor universal to mankind, in the foundations of the spread and development of charismatic (Pentecos-talist) Christianity.

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