Fear Research Network Seminar – Fear, Legal Victimhood and ‘Fraudulent’ Religion in Contemporary Japan
| Dates: | 11 July 2024 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Lecture |
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| Organiser: | School of Arts, Languages and Cultures |
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| Who is it for: | University staff, External researchers, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public |
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Ioannis Gaitanidis (Chiba University)
In the aftermath of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s assassination, a nearly 40-year-old legal debate surrounding methods of soliciting religious donations was revived in Japan. This led to changes in the law regarding transactions based on claims that are ‘difficult to reasonably verify,’ commonly referred to as ‘spiritual sales’. Since the 1990s, the label of ‘spiritual sales’ has expanded to cover a variety of sales deemed fraudulent. Tracing this history in relation to contemporaneous shifts in consumer legislation, I have found that the emotional state of the consumer has come to occupy centre stage in decisions pertaining to the illegality of certain transactions. Fear is a decisive criterion. Specifically, regulation of ‘spiritual sales’ turns on the fear experienced by clients who are made to feel they have no choice other than to enter into a contract.
In this presentation, I ask how such fear is expressed, taking as an example an infamous case of ‘spiritual sales’ involving a non-religious organisation ordered by the courts to pay damages amounting to several dozen million yen. The discussion is based on my analysis of approximately one hundred damage progress reports associated with the case. These documents are questionnaires that lawyers ask potential victims to fill in to explain how they have been ‘framed’ and how much money they have lost. Like other such documents, they are designed to elicit certain responses that can be shaped into some kind of evidence – in this case, legal proof of fraud – but cannot be wholly controlled (Riles 2006). In helping the client become a legal victim, these documents anticipate the use of certain vocabulary that expresses fear and other negative feelings, yet the victims do not always conform. Spaces are left blank, handwritten letters are attached, or problems unrelated to the issue at hand are described at length. What can these documents tell us about fear and the construction of legal victimhood in cases of ‘fraudulent’ religious practice in contemporary Japan?
This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (grant 22K00070: 2022-2025)
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