Only reason I was curious is that I've heard them described as a cult by a lot of people. In my experience, they seem pretty harmless, and overall pretty friendly, but religion in general makes me... edgy.
But yeah, them being hated by the right-wingers does score them points in my book. :)
Didn't know about Kofuku Jitsugento; care to enlighten me?
This explains who the asshole in the black van was.
Backstory: In Japan, it's pretty common around election season to have politicians rolling around in vans with loudspeakers, asking you to vote for them. You just get used to it after awhile.
But a few weeks ago, when I was walking to the station, a black van with illegible handwriting on the side had the loudspeakers turned up to about ten million. I could hear them literally three kilometers away, and anything less than five hundred meters was painful.
Of course, because they had the volume up so high, the distortion made whatever they had blaring out of their loudspeakers totally incomprehensible.
The other pedestrians, shop owners, and anybody blessed with the gift of hearing all looked pretty pissed.
They are quite a cult but honestly, religion in Japan is very difficult for me to grok. All the members of these "New Religions" that I've met seem to be old/facing mortality, with two exceptions.
As for Kofuku Jitsugen To, you probably know them under their English name.
The HRP is scary because they sincerely believe all of Japan is under existential threat by North Korea and that they need to remilitarize to "take them out". If that sounds normal to y'all, it's because you never read the books by the founder or how Kim Jong Il's "teacher's ghost" supposedly appeared before the founder and told him that NK would destroy Japan for its evil master China.
(On the other hand, they want to have more babies which would be good for Japan, particularly if it resulted in people getting out of the Tokyo area...)
But yeah, them being hated by the right-wingers does score them points in my book. :)
Didn't know about Kofuku Jitsugento; care to enlighten me?