Shinshūkyō (新宗教) is a Japanese term used to describe domestic new religious movements. They are also known as Shinkō shūkyō (新興宗教) in Japanese, and are most often called simply Japanese new religions in English. Japanese theologians classify all religious organizations founded since the middle of the 19th century as Shinshūkyō. Thus, the term refers to a great diversity and number of organizations. Most came into being in the mid-to-late twentieth century and are influenced by much older traditional religions including Shinto, Buddhism, and Hinduism. Some are syncretic, some share similarities with fundamentalism, and many claim they are not influenced by other religions.
Many regard the Shinshūkyō as cults, and warn against associating with them, as a result of being nervous about their beliefs, their methods and goals, and their methods of persuading others to join them. Modern usage of the terms "cult" or "sect" is usually associated with negative aspects of such groups, so many people have a negative image of organisations labelled as cults or sects. In the West, the best-known Shinshūkyō is probably Aum Shinrikyo, the group which released a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995.
This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License, which means that you can copy and modify it as long as the entire work (including additions) remains under this license.
