The Doctrinalization of Maruyamakō, 1876-1894

From 1870 through 1895, the Maruyamakō movement spread rapidly through eastern Japan. It was characterized by outsiders as a millenarian movement with secret, subversive teachings. It is often described as peaking at 1.38 million members in 1889. Maruyamakō’s charismatic founder Itō Rokurōbei has been interpreted in the past as reviving an early modern popular morality. My research instead emphasizes the prominence of faith healing in the group’s spread, and explains its history using the concept of "doctrinalization" which emerges in the history of Sect Shinto. I look at several documents published between March and September 1885 which attempted to control the Maruyamakō movement by imposing doctrine on them. These attempts proved futile, but greater administrative oversight allowed Maruyama Kyōkai to establish strict control over the production and copying of Itō Rokurōbei’s messages from 1887 until his death in 1894.