現代日本の一宗教教団におけるカリスマ崇拝の構造と条件

抄録

　This paper examines the socio-cultural conditions on which radical charismatism developed in a Japanese newly risen religious cult, Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth). This cult started as a Yoga circle in 1984 with asceticism and traditional technics that could bring a variety of extraordinary sensory experiences. Those experiences during Yoga and ascetic discipline obtained their significance only in man-to-man dialogue with the venerated master Shoko Asahara. Through the dialogues the dogma was associated with each disciple's experiences. The dyad between the master and respective ascetic was a charismatic relations sustained by the followers' one-sided irrational faith and it functioned as a plausability structure of the dogma.
　At the beginning the master formed the dogma and the worldview system to control the experiences' variety in terms of Buddhist transmigration, when he was an exemplary prophet subject to authority of the traditional values. But in competition with his rivals and outer-society he needed to make himself high to the historical supreme missionary prophet. He introduced eschatology to his dogma and identified himself as the Resurrected Christ. Under his own authority he began to introduce various knowledge and technics that derived from different cultural roots, and more efficient modern technics that brought more intense extraordinary sensory experiences and strengthened the plausability structure. Their expressed dogma and worldview appeared unsystematic and incoherent but the followers' faith firm.
　We can see in this case charismatism as an irrational basis of a society alternative to ritual. This paper refers to two (sub-)cultural conditions as promoting and sustaining radical charismatism: first, "experientialism" that puts the source of reality in one's inner experience; Second, " 'sampling' culture" or " 'remix' culture" that com-bines sampled values and ideas to some story and consume it, in contrast to cultivationalism that strives to establish one's own value on which you can systematize more and more values and ideas different through confrontation with them.　For the disciples only the charismatic relationship with the master was reversed from a mere plausability structure into the supreme value itself and they could utilizes the variety of knowledge and thechnics as means in recruiting. But they gathered people with so different interests, and the diversity radicalized the charismatism.