Japanese Prayer Below the Equator: How Brazilians Believe in the Church of World Messianity (review)
Research on the Japanese in Latin America has become increasingly specialized during the past decade. While some of this research is becoming redundant, particularly on the experience of the Issei and Nisei generations during World War II, this study by Hideaki Matsuoka provides fresh insights regarding the religious views of recent generations of Japanese Brazilians. Matsuoka, an anthropologist educated at the University of Tokyo and the University of California at Berkeley, conducted the bulk of his research in Sao Paulo during the early 1990s. He argues that new Japanese religions such as World Messianity have arisen during the past century because of crises in Japanese society, especially World War II. These destructive events required spiritual and emotional renewal. One of the most important of these new religions was Omoto, a millenarian belief that proclaimed the need for the complete renewal of the world. World Messianity's founder, Okada Mokichi, drew heavily upon the teachings of Omoto. The early twentieth-century importance of Omoto among a core group of Japanese-Brazilian immigrants laid the groundwork for World Messianity's appeal after World War II in Brazil.