ABSTRACT
Japan has a complex history of millennialism spanning traditional religions in earlier Japanese history and modern religious movements that have resulted from Japan’s modernization and interactions with the West in the past century and a half. Earlier millennial themes can be traced back at least to early medieval Japanese Buddhism, in which notions of an endtime or period of the decline of Buddhism (mappo-the last age of the [Buddhist] law) and beliefs that the future Buddha (Maitreya-known in Japan as Miroku) would manifest on earth in the future on a mission of salvation. However, although there are millennial dimensions to Japanese Buddhism, it has been primarily since the mid-nineteenth century, with the advent of the new religions of Japan, that millennial themes have become particularly prominent in Japanese religious history.
