Modern yoga in Japan specializes in certain factors after having experienced three booms in its popularity, including the tendencies of feminization, consumer culture, fashion, medicine, and spirituality. Specifically, feminization is an outstanding characteristic of yoga in Japan as some yoga studios will only permit females to participate. On the other hand, yoga in Japan excludes a religious and/or philosophical element, which is present in yoga practice in other countries. As such, this paper examines how Japanese yoga has been feminized through the elimination of religious factors. For this purpose, this study analyzed the article, autobiographies, and data from the fieldwork. This study found that incidents of religious cults in Japan once damaged the whole yoga community so severely that most yoga studios were banned as a result. One yogi decided to focus on the female population in order to eradicate the stigma attached to yoga, and the social background of “spiritual culture” and “consumer culture” assisted in his arbitrary decision. Finally, the images and the way that yoga is “consumed” in Japan reflect the gender norms of today. Modern yoga in Japan places importance on “healing/relaxing” for beauty, and never mentions enhancing sexual ability like in other countries.
