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Paper short abstract

This paper considers Hashimoto Ken's (1924–2007) ideas on psychic phenomena in the long 60s. It argues that through Seichō-no-Ie, he articulated a form of “alternative science” that circulated outside academic institutions and helped lay the epistemic groundwork for the 1970s psychic powers “boom.”

Paper long abstract

One of the most visible elements of Japan’s 1970s “occult boom” was the widespread popularity of psychic powers, often explained in earlier scholarship through the highly publicized 1974 visit of the Israeli psychic Uri Geller. While this narrative captures a significant moment in the popularization of “occulture” in Japan, it tends to obscure the longer and more complex processes through which discourses on psychic powers acquired social credibility. This paper argues that the psychic powers “boom” did not emerge abruptly in the early to mid-1970s, but was grounded in alternative epistemic infrastructures that had already taken shape in the postwar decades.

To illuminate this prehistory, the paper focuses on Hashimoto Ken (1924–2007), an electrical engineer and prolific writer on psychic phenomena whose intellectual activities were rooted in his commitment to the Japanese new religious movement Seichō-no-Ie. Strongly influenced by Anglo-American New Thought, Seichō-no-Ie developed a religious philosophy that emphasized the primacy of mind over matter. According to its doctrine, reality was fundamentally mental or spiritual in nature, and human thought exerted direct causal influence on physical conditions. Illness and misfortune were understood not as fixed material facts but as expressions of erroneous mental states. On this basis, the movement criticized modern science for restricting itself to the material world and argued for a broader understanding of laws that encompassed the realms of mind and spirit.

Hashimoto played a key role in advancing this project. During the 1950s and 1960s, he contributed numerous articles to Seichō-no-Ie’s monthly journal Mental Science, where he investigated parapsychological phenomena and offered “scientific” explanations of their underlying principles. From the 1960s onward, driven by a religious sense of mission, he extended this work by publishing popular books aimed at a wider readership. Through these activities, Hashimoto circulated alternative forms of "scientific" knowledge that challenged the limits of mainstream academia. His case demonstrates how religious ideas contributed to the formation and circulation of alternative scientific discourses, shaping the epistemic conditions that later made possible the psychic powers “boom” of the 1970s.