ABSTRACT
One of Japan's most influential contributors to the study of the religion-psy dialogue, Shimazono Susumu, locates Naikan therapy within the context of Japan's New Religious Movements and their focus upon healing, alongside what he sees as a broader shift in modern Japan from religion towards psychotherapy -'from salvation to healing' as he puts it. Shimazono picks up on the way that, as a 'psycho-religious composite method', Naikan exhibits a certain fluidity, an uncertainty, where its own religious or metaphysical connotations are concerned - this therapy arising as it did out of the personal Buddhist faith, on which he never turned his back, of its founder Yoshimoto Ishin. This chapter Yoshimoto Naikan is explored as an exemplar of the psycho-religious composite movement. The changes in society have caused the evolution from religion to psychotherapy, and from salvation to healing, clarifying what has happened in the relationship between religion and the mind in Japanese society in the late modern period.
