Paper short abstract:

Gender aspects of the Keihan Christian Incident, as they emerge from a comparison of the activities of the female principals with those of the male principals, as well as other female religionists active outside officially sanctioned religious institutions and female founders of New Religions.

Paper long abstract:

The main figures in the Keihan Christian incident formed two sub-units, one made up of women and the other of men. These did not have direct contact with each other and engaged in different activities. At the time, women tended to be seen as passive and unable to act as principals, whether for good or evil. In this instance, however, the female and male members of the heterodox group were alike sentenced to the heaviest punishment, death by crucifixion, and both official and popular accounts depicted the women as more culpable and dangerous than the males. This paper explores this and other gender-related aspects of the incident.

Whereas intellectual interests were a factor in the male members' involvement in the group, for the women, who came from a background as diviners and Inari mediums, the key motivation was a desire to attain heightened spiritual powers. The female and male members showed different attitudes toward the performance of austerities and observance of celibacy as a premise for gaining access to the powers endowed by the Lord of Heaven. The women, whose practice drew on their experience as Inari mediums, consistently took a more rigorous stance on these points, a factor that perhaps influenced the view of them as more audacious and unrepentant than the men. They also were more concerned to spread their faith to others. To illuminate and contextualize these differences, the paper will compare the female members to other female religious figures active outside the officially sanctioned religious institutions of early modern Japan, such as unordained nuns and female priestesses who collected alms and performed divination in the townspeople's quarters of large cities, and also female founders of New Religions such as Nyoraikyō and Tenrikyō.