Pulled Back in Time: Cultivating Emotion in Konkōkyō War Memory Rituals

This paper analyzes emotion, religious cultivation, and pacifism in Konkōkyō war commemoration rituals. Drawing on textual testimonies and fieldwork, I examine how adherents of Konkōkyō—a Sect Shinto new religious movement (NRM) that was both oppressed and privileged in the 1930s and 1940s—create, share, and transform war emotions through memorial rituals. I focus on two rituals: spirit pacification (ireisai) in Konkōkyō peace conferences, and war remains repatriation (ikotsu shūshū) in Okinawa. Konkōkyō participants recall a range of emotions and experiences evoked by the ritual; negative feelings of guilt and suffering are interpreted as opportunities to cultivate gratitude and pacifism. I show how adherents of a marginalized religion grapple with loss, suffering, and responsibility through communal rituals that mobilize war experiences toward goals of self-cultivation and pacifism. My paper theorizes these rituals as pulling participants back in time as a way to cultivate new emotional capacities in the present.