Youth culture in Japan now based on weak self, vicarious religion

Japanese youth culture is shifting from embracing spiritual and self-empowerment to stressing a “weak self,” which includes invoking and having relationships with self-created sentient beings, Satoko Fujiwara and Hiroki Miura report in the journal Social Compass (71:2). In analyzing popular youth culture, particularly pop songs, anime, and online sites, especially X, they find references to “tulpas,” an originally theosophical idea derived from Tibetan Buddhism. Tulpas could be considered supernatural entities, but in the youth culture they are also created through one’s own mental power. First emerging on the fringes of Japan’s occult milieu in the 1980s, tulpas have been embraced both in Japan and the U.S. as self-created beings with which youth can have “relationships and [which are] not related to meditation, spiritual awakenings or supernatural powers. The goal of creating a tulpa is no longer to achieve enlightenment or to acquire psychic powers.” Instead of “tulpa-mancers” seeking to achieve their own self-realization and spirituality, “they want their tulpas to grow spiritually and personally,” Fujiwara and Miura write. Thus, the authors see a drive toward “vicarious religion,” where spirituality is projected onto other entities, and objects and practices are valued over beliefs.

Source: Kawaii Journeys (https://kawaiijourneys.com/harajuku-japanese-youth-culture/).

Another feature of Japanese youth culture, especially in fandom or “otaku” subcultures and among young women, is what Fujiwara and Miura call “gendered fetishism,” meaning that some religious objects, such as Buddha statues, are believed to have an affective or even romantic attachment to their devotees. For instance, while traditional spiritual people may regard gravestones or the graveyard as an entrance to the otherworld and may claim to contact the dead, otaku devotees are attached directly to the gravestones themselves. Much of this change started in the era after the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo attack, where youth spiritual ideals changed from those of personal transformation to coping with reality under an economic downturn and emotional problems, such as addictive behavior, low self-image, and experiencing a “multiple self.” In Japan, where there is not a clear line separating religion and secularity, the youth culture embraces both religious and non-religious beliefs and practices, according to Fujiwara and Miura. They add that another part of youth culture today is a disdain for consuming brand items and seeking a sense of belonging, known as “tsunagari.” Non-religious Japanese youth who previously may have expressed a secular spirituality through rituals and visits to shrines on New Year’s Eve, are more likely to express their “inner, subtle religiosity” through favoring pop songs where there are frequent references to people praying (not necessarily to God) and which are about finding belonging rather than romantic love.

(Social Compass, https://journals.sagepub.com/home/scp)