Hiroko Yoshikawa, a 28-year-old office worker, began getting spiritual about a year ago. It started with a notice that caught her eye on an Internet site for enthusiasts of modern dance.
"It talked about an introductory 'experience' lesson in yoga and creative dance for \2,000. The instructor also happened to be a spiritual counselor," she says.
Yoshikawa later signed up for dancing lessons, but eventually found herself spending much of her time at the studio's spiritual-healing sessions.
"I had visited fortunetellers before, but this guy seemed like the real deal. Just his talking was enough to calm my spirit, and my troubles in my work and private life went away."
The other thing that went away was approximately \1.5 million of Yoshikawa's money. When the dancer-cum-guru wasn't offering enlightenment (\4,000 per session), he was peddling such trinkets as "holy water" (\6,000 per vial).
Yoshikawa is part of a growing number of people being taken in by what Spa! calls the "spiritual business."
Their numbers have grown steadily in the last few years. In 2002, the National Consumer Affairs Center of Japan handled 1,839 complaints that fell under suspected violations of a law regulating spiritual activities. Last year, the number ballooned to 2,980. The amount of money involved more than doubled over the same period to around \3 billion.
To be sure, mysticism is nothing new in postwar Japan, which has had its fair share of fortunetellers and new religions. Yet the latest trend is different, in that spiritual counseling and other such services are tied to popular activities.
Yoga, organic cooking, music, dieting and even English conversation are among other such activities. As for the last one, the magazine claims that a surprisingly large number of spiritual counselors in Japan are foreigners, who often open schools as fronts for their spiritual activities.
The problem is not with the spiritualism per se, but that an inordinate number of self-proclaimed gurus are really just fraudsters, no more "spiritual" than the next person.
"I used to be a fortuneteller, but about two or three years ago, I put the world 'spiritual' on my signboard," says one man, whose real name isn't given. "Business has been good."
The phony gurus tend to be a patient lot, whose frauds are played out over long periods of time and rely on slowly accumulated results, according to Masaki Kito, a lawyer who specializes in cult religions.
"They set their prices low to lower the threshold and to increase the scope of their market," says Kito. "But then they will bombard their potential customers with postcards and e-mails."
Tatsuya Yumiyama, a scholar of religious studies at Taisho University, believes that the fraudsters prey on the vulnerabilities of people who are naive and lonely and who feel a sense of alienation.
"Many of the customers haven't had any previous experience with religion and are seeking an easy form of mysticism. I think that's where the danger lies," he says.
Article here
