ABSTRACT
As a case study to investigate the consequences of secrecy, this chapter introduces and analyzes Urahōmon, a covert Shin Buddhist tradition in modern and contemporary Japan that has hid from outsiders its teachings, practices, places of meeting, and very existence. Leaders of Urahōmon say their secrecy is necessary to protect the “true” Shin Buddhism from those who would corrupt it, particularly Shin priests, who they say would use it to make money. The chapter focuses on social secrecy, which involves intentional concealment by, for example, silence, prevarication, dissimulation, and physically hiding objects and activities. The chapter demonstrates how secrecy has multiple effects that have conflicting and unintended consequences. To know how secrecy operates and influences social organizations, including religious ones, the chapter argues that we need to understand how secrecy not only does something for a group but also something to it.
