ABSTRACT
In Japan, discussions about the relationship between religions and the media, for the most part, continue to deal with mass media such as television, newspapers and magazines. Topics discussed by scholars of religious studies, sociologists, psychoanalysts, journalists, lawyers and others most typically consist of the following: news about “cult troubles” such as the subway gas attack carried out by the new religious movement Aum Shinrikyō オウム真理教 in 1995; TV programs, special issues of magazines and other publications related to and supporting a so-called “spiritual boom”; and biases such as the tendency to devote a large amount of time and space to news about traditional religious festivals, while assigning little time or space to the social activities conducted by new religions (see, for example, Ishii 2008; Koshiro 2008; Kurosaki, Yoshino and Terazawa 2009).
