Contrastingly, the French man in his thirties, Mathieu, discussed previously in this chapter was part of the core of this social world. This was evidenced through his social interactions, his presence at various "inner" activities such as the preparations for the TEC Monthly Service held at the center the day prior, and also through the roles he took on at TEC, notably as the head of the Europe Tenrikyo Young Men's Association. Interestingly, Mathieu had a high level of competency in the Japanese language and was highly enculturated with the Japanese culture for numerous reasons, including through having spent a significant amount of time in Japan, which facilitated his ease in the inner sphere of TEC.

Not only was the Japanese language an important contributing factor to one's position in the group, it was also the de facto ritual language of the religion as the sacred songs for the Service were performed everywhere in the world<fnref n="275" /> in their original Japanese versions (excluding Korea<fnref n="276" />). It is important to remain mindful of the fact that these songs are positioned in the faith as one of the three sacred Tenrikyo texts conveyed from God the Parent via the maternal figure of the foundress to humanity. Partially due to the importance placed on these Service songs, to a certain degree, as asserted by Kato (2017a), the Japanese language was conferred in practice with the status of being the sacred language of the religion's liturgical tradition despite no official institutional statement or doctrinal underpinning which declared that the songs must be performed in this language. Although parts of these songs could be difficult for even Japanese people to (fully) understand as they were written in the regional dialect of the foundress at the time she conveyed these songs to her followers between 1866 and 1875 through at times less than direct

<footnote n="275">²⁷⁵ This excludes a few English-speaking contexts in which a newly developed English version of the songs were beginning to be put forth. The new adoption of performing the sacred songs in a language other than Japanese was controversial and only in the initial stages of being developed as a potential practice during my fieldwork in which efforts were being made by a small group American followers to develop an English version of these songs. During my fieldwork in Tenri City, I witnessed the unveiling of a newly developed performable translation of one of these songs in English during the "Tenri Forum" international symposium for English-speaking followers. The development of performable translated versions of these songs is complex due to the significantly different language systems of Japanese and Western languages such as English or French in which creating performable translated versions of these songs for which the translated words match the songs' melody and dance gestures is a difficult and complicated matter that is further complicated by the fact that some of the meanings contained in these songs are difficult to ascertain due to various types of word play present in them.</footnote>

<footnote n="276">²⁷⁶ In Korea, these sacred songs are performed in Korean due to the historical relationship between Japan and Korea that rendered the use of the Japanese language and overtly Japanese cultural symbols problematic.</footnote>
language<sup>277</sup>, their performance in Japanese rendered them more comprehensively available to people fluent in Japanese. This produced a partial divide in their direct accessibility between people who were highly competent in the Japanese language (i.e. mainly Japanese people) and people who were not (i.e. most non-Japanese people).

To mitigate this linguistic barrier which could render these sacred songs incomprehensible to people without a high level of Japanese competency, hymn books with their original Japanese lyrics alongside their French translations were available on a bookshelf at the back of the sanctuary by its entrance. Also available were hymn books in exclusively Japanese for Japanese people, most commonly newcomers to the religion, who wished to read along with the oral performance of these songs. English versions of these hymn books were also available but were often located elsewhere than the readily accessible place on these bookshelves except during events at TEC aimed at bringing together people from multiple locations in Europe for which the English hymn books were made readily available in preparation.

Near the beginning of the Service each month, these books were distributed by a small collection of Japanese followers (the majority of whom were female) who were socially positioned in either a more temporary or permanent manner near the “core” of TEC. They were given to anyone in attendance who was thought to want or benefit from having one of these hymn books to reference during the Service to render the songs more comprehensible. Whom to offer one of these books to without asking was generally based on if an individual in attendance was thought to be a newcomer to TEC and the Tenrikyo faith or, if they were a non-Japanese person who had been coming to TEC for some time, if it was thought that they had a preference for this textual reference or that they would benefit from it. In my observations, some non-Japanese people who had been attending Monthly Services at TEC for significant periods of time still showed a preference to read along in French during the performance of these Japanese songs while other such attendees simply watched and listened to their performance. This preference to have a book, when not automatically met with someone handing them one, was expressed through a brief

<footnote n="277"><sup>277</sup> Often, the words were understandable to Japanese people but their deeper meanings were indicated as more difficult to discern.</footnote>
raising of their hand accompanied by a look to convey this request to one of the people distributing the hymn books.

Several non-Japanese people who routinely opted to follow along with the hymn books had been coming to Monthly Services at TEC, and for most of these individuals also to Monthly Services held at local lineage-based mission stations, for multiple years (in certain cases, ten or twenty years). While it is true that these individuals did not speak Japanese (or had a limited level of the language) and thus did not understand the Japanese words of these songs, they had already read through the translations contained in these hymn books many times and were thus familiar with the general messages contained therein. Yet, they followed along with these books for all or certain parts of the approximately hour and a half performance of the songs. This suggests that such people not only wanted to be aware of the content contained therein, but also desired a semi-regular repetition of the songs' content in a language they could understand so as to deepen their understanding of and relationship to the messages. Contrastingly, I never saw Japanese people born in the faith or who had been followers of it for some time read along with these hymn books during the ritual. Thus, a different relationship and level of access to these sacred Japanese songs that served as a centrally important component of the faith between Service attendees of these two categories was demonstrated.

In the distribution of these hymn books, “core” members of the center who took on the insider role of serving as TEC hosts through making efforts to provide a welcoming, comfortable, and enriching environment for those positioned more at the periphery of the group who have come to TEC was generally filled by Japanese followers born into the religion. More specifically, they were most often either TEC residents, members of local mission station families, or occasionally other individuals who were briefly part of this layer of the group, such as Japanese Tenrikyo young adults who were in France (or occasionally elsewhere in Europe) for self-development purposes. In this, we can see that the majority of non-Japanese social actors who came to TEC, most of whom were not born into the faith, were generally positioned at more of the periphery of the center’s two-tiered social collectivity,

As previously discussed, this social distinction between those positioned at the core of this social group and those at more of its periphery was largely due to the inner-world of TEC being closely
connected to a particular social modality of Japanese-Tenrikyo culture, Japanese culture more broadly, and the Japanese language. Despite efforts to render TEC a multilingual center, because a significant portion of its “inner-world” occurred in Japanese, there was a strong association between competency in this language and access to the inner social sphere connected to this center. While significant efforts were made to expand the path of Tenrikyo to Europe and to bring new people into its wider faith-based community, in practice, newly involved people generally remained at its periphery. This small gesture of offering assistance, largely to non-Japanese people not born in the faith, through the distribution of these hymn books was one of the numerous indicators of the dual-layered nature of this group.

The dual layered nature of TEC that had as an important factor of demarcation whether or not one was Japanese was not unique to this center. This is evidenced, for example, through Kato (2009) noting that at Tenrikyo churches in the San Francisco area where he conducted research, there tended to be a divide between Japanese and American-born followers. Though in the case of his study, the majority of people of both categories were of Japanese origin, with many of the American-born followers being the children of Japanese immigrant parents in which different cultural-linguistic spheres were largely maintained between the two categories (ibid: 55). He furthermore asserted, “Though some of the aspects of the congregations cater to the needs of the American-raised members, the social spaces as well as the structure of the worship service still preserve strong ethnoreligious aspects.” (ibid: 56).

Kato (2009) explained there to be “selective adaptations” in these California-based Tenrikyo churches. Similar to TEC, there were place-based adaptations such as Monthly Services being held on Sundays rather than on an established date of the month regardless of the day of the week on which it fell, the use of English in Services<fnref n="278" />, and the use of chairs, while there were less structural changes overall. Kato partially attributes this to the immigrant generation of Japanese people being in leadership roles in concert with the transnational ties that Tenrikyo communities in general have with Tenrikyo Church Headquarters and their superior churches in Japan. In saying this, he explains that, “The current religious education system largely relies upon educational programs and an appointment system of the Church Headquarters in Japan, and the

<footnote n="278">²⁷⁸ At TEC, the prominent non-Japanese language in Monthly Services was French, not English.</footnote>
organizational structures are rigidly defined by the current church system based on superior-subordinate relationship.” (Kato 2009: 57). As explained throughout this thesis, such features were similarly also at TEC.

Before moving on in my discussion, as a concluding component of this subsection, I include hereafter the current official English and French translations of these Seated Service songs as they were written in the hymn books, along with their original Japanese version and a transcript of this original version written in Latin letters that was included alongside their translated versions in the hymn books. It is chiefly the songs below that were, ideally, performed every morning and evening in Japanese regardless of geographic location. For these songs, as previously noted, the first portion was performed twenty-one times, the second portion once, and the third portion in three sets of these.

It was generally understood that these Japanese songs are incredibly difficult to accurately translate due to the nuances contained therein in which even discerning their precise meaning in Japanese is a highly complicated matter. Translation of these songs is even further complicated once certain concepts are translated into languages based on a significantly different conceptual and communicative system, such as the Western languages of English and French. Whether or not their English and French translations most accurately conveyed their meanings depended on both the individual perspective of a person and the school(s) of thought to which they had been exposed. Despite such complications, the translated versions of these sacred songs were nonetheless readily used and generally regarded as the best way to convey the meaning of these songs to people whose language was not Japanese.
## The Songs for the Kagura

Sweeping away evils, please save us,
Tenri-O-no-Mikoto.

Just a word: Listen to what God says.
I never tell you anything wrong.
Representing heaven and earth
I have created husband and wife.
This is the beginning of the world.

Sweeping away evils, hasten to save us.
All humankind equally purified,
The Kanrodai

## Hymne pour le Kagura

Puissiez-vous balayer tous les maux et nous sauver,
Ô Tenri-Ô-no-Mikoto!

Voici: Dieu a quelque chose à vous dire. Prêtez l'oreille!
Car jamais Je ne vous dis rien d'erroné.
A l'image du ciel et de la terre de ce monde,
J'ai créé l'homme et la femme:
C'est ainsi que fut commencé ce monde.

J'ai hâte de balayer vos maux, J'ai hâte de vous sauver.
Quand sera opérée pour tous la purification,
Alors, le Kanrodaï.

## かぐらの地歌

あしきをはらうてたすけたまへ
てんりわうのみこと

ちよとはなし かみのいふこときいてくれ
あしきのことはいはんでな
このよのざいとてんとをかたどりて
ふうふをこしらへきたるでな
これハこのよのはじめだし

あしきをはらうてたすけせきこむ
いちれつすましてかんろだい

## Kagura no ji-uta

ashiki o harōte tasuke tamae
Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto

choto hanashi Kami no yū koto kiite kure
ashiki no koto wa iwan dena
kono yō no ji to ten to o katadorite
fūfu o koshirae kitaru dena
kore wa kono yo no hajime dashi
(Namu Tenri-Ō-no-Mikoto. Yoshi yoshi)

ashiki o harōte tasuke sekikomu
ichiretsu sumashite Kanrodai

## Embodying Tenrikyo through the vocalization of the Songs for the Service

The Seated Service songs, along with the thirteen other songs of the Mikagura-uta, were
performed at TEC in the same manner as they were at other Tenrikyo sites throughout the
world<sup>279</sup>, thereby encouraging a non-site-specific commonality between dispersed Tenrikyo sites
of worship. As previously explained, six men would play the percussion "men's instruments" on
the left of the stage, accompanied for the Seated Service portion of this ritual (see image
hereafter) by one man charged with counting<sup>280</sup> the number of repetitions of each of the three

<footnote n="279"><sup>279</sup> This excludes small sites that don't have enough performers\ instruments for a full Service performance and the Service as it is performed at the Jiba.</footnote>

<footnote n="280"><sup>280</sup> This was done with a tassel of red cords referred to as a *kazutori*.</footnote>
songs. Three women seated on the right of the stage would play the women's stringed
instruments. Three male dance performers were on the left side of the open central area of the
stage accompanied by three women on the right side (See image hereafter). For the Seated
Service, the designated dance performers, as the name of this portion of the ritual implies,
performed its hand movements in a seated position. For the other thirteen Mikagura-uta Songs,
the ritual performers enacted their prescribed bodily gestures in a standing position. Along with
the dancers and sometimes the instrumental players, it was common at TEC for those in the
audience to take part in singing these sacred songs, which for some was facilitated through the
hymn books, while for others, was by memory.

<figure><img src="image_19.png" /><figcaption>Image 6: TEC Monthly Service men's instrumental performers. Photo: Tenrikyo Europe Centre 2016d.</figcaption></figure>
<figure><img src="image_20.png" /><figcaption>Image 7: TEC Monthly Service women's instrumental performers. Photo: Tenrikyo Europe Centre 2016d.</figcaption></figure>

For both the Seated Service and the other thirteen Mikagura-uta songs, the ritual dance performers faced the altars with their backs to the audience to perform these sacred hand dances. This was done with the underlying explanation that they were performed for God the Parent and the foundress rather than as a performative act for the audience. Often stressed in Tenrikyo religious discourse is that it is of primary importance to perform the Service with a sincere heart rather than to simply perform skillfully but without putting one's whole heart into the ritual. This focus on intention is an important component to understanding the performance of the Service from an emic perspective. Beyond the linguistically conveyed meaning of these songs sung by a significant portion of those in attendance, they also served as transmitters and production models of the sounds that were regularly put forth through them. Although most non-Japanese people in attendance could not understand the Mikagura-uta songs word-for-word, all in attendance were exposed to the sounds produced through their being sung in complement with the instrumental music of these songs. Additionally, it was common for some of those present in the audience area to sing along with them, most often rather quietly, as a way of participating in the ritual. For those who did not, they most often were nonetheless experientially familiar with the production of these sounds through their vocalization in other contexts. Through engaging in the creation of their sound, whether at TEC, other contexts, or both, people not only became familiar with the oratory experience of listening to them, but also to the inner bodily experience of their production.
In relation to this element of the holistic embodied experience of interacting with and the internalization of Tenrikyo, Csordas' (1995) analysis of the embodied experience of vocal utterance via his discussion of glossolalia in which he uses Merleau-Ponty's (1945) work to look at these vocal productions as a phenomenon of embodiment is pertinent. Merleau-Ponty positioned a verbal gesture with immanent meaning as the root of speech rather than firstly as a representation of thought. According to this perspective, the pronunciation of words is in terms of their articulatory and acoustic style as one of the possible uses of the body. Because thought is often only partially formed prior to its spoken (or written) representation, speech does not express or represent thought. Rather, speech is an act or phonetic gesture through which one occupies an existential position in the world.

Csordas (1990) argues in concordance with Merleau-Ponty that all language has this gestural or existential meaning. As glossolalia is understood as a gift from God, the engagement in it is a ritual statement that the speaker inhabits a sacred world. What is particular about glossolalia is that by eliminating the semantic level of linguistic structure, the existential reality of intelligent bodies inhabiting a meaningful world through embodied speech is highlighted. In partially like manner, engagement with the Mikagura-uta songs was also an engagement with the sacred via vocal means. Depending on the particular perspective of the social actor in question, the singing of these Mikagura-uta songs was for some the verbal production of sacred sounds and words conveyed via the foundress after their bestowal by God the Parent. For others who did not believe in the literal truth of the factual details of this religion, it was an engagement with the production of repetitive, melodically hypnotic sounds positioned in this tradition through the frame of sacrality, thereby imbuing them with a special significance, even if this significance was attributed to a social rather than divine source. For the latter type of social actor, although the literal divinely bestowed significance of these songs was absent, their attributed meaning of being special and a centrally important component of the religion often remained intact.

Beyond the attributed significance of these songs, the sounds of the songs themselves were an important component of Tenrikyo practice. The singing of the Mikagura-uta songs was not only meaningful through the messages conveyed through their words, which as explained, most non-Japanese people of the TEC community did not understand word-for-word. It was also through the sounds and vibrations conveyed via their songs in which they were not experienced
exclusively, or even primarily, on the abstract level of thoughts conveyed via language, but in the embodied domain of the sounds themselves. Thus, the embodiment of Tenrikyo included the sound-based component of the vocal production of these sacred songs.

*Enacting hierarchy through ritual roles: the performance of the Seated Service by "important" people*

The Service dances were another means through which the entire beings of followers interacted with the performative and attributed qualities of Tenrikyo, with the Seated Service being its most prominent component. Demonstrative of its particular place of importance was that the role of the six ritual dancers who performed it was associated with hierarchically “important” people. For every TEC Monthly Service that I attended<fnref n="281" />, seated in the center of the six ritual dancers for this portion of the ritual was the male head of TEC and his wife. To their respective sides were two other hierarchically important senior men and two hierarchically important senior women who amongst other prominent roles, usually headed lineage-based mission stations<fnref n="282" />. Generally, when a visiting (most often male) religious actor who occupied a hierarchically important role within the broader framework of Tenrikyo came to TEC, typically for an officially sponsored reason, and was present for the Monthly Service<fnref n="283" />, they would similarly take part in this performative role.

That the individuals performing this portion of the TEC Monthly Service were generally rather “important people” was pointedly brought to my attention, in addition to my own observations of

<footnote n="281">²⁸¹ I attended approximately twenty-five TEC Monthly Services in total.</footnote>

<footnote n="282">²⁸² Throughout my thesis, I often refer to all Tenrikyo sites of worship based on the lineage system, which excludes TEC and a small, organizationally similar site in London (Tenrikyo UK Centre), as “mission stations.” I include in this referential term the only Tenrikyo site of worship designated as a “church” (Bordeaux Kyokai) to avoid excessive wordiness in describing the collection of lineage-based Tenrikyo sites of worship in Europe.</footnote>

<footnote n="283">²⁸³ Or performance of the Service for other, specially designated, reasons, such as for the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the European Tenrikyo Young Men's Association for which Daisuke Nakayama-sama, the acting president of the Tenrikyo Young Men's Association and designated person to next assume the role of the Shinbashira (spiritual and administrative head of the religion) was in attendance and performed in this component of the ritual.</footnote>
this tendency, by one of the key members of the TEC community, Toshie Miyamoto<sup>284</sup>. More specifically, it was brought on by my prompting about her engagement in various parts of the Monthly Service and if she had a favorite instrument or dance to perform. This was a question I occasionally posed as a matter of chit-chat and also for the multiple insights people's responses to this question could provide. After telling me several parts of the Service that she particularly enjoyed performing, she laughed and said that of course she had never performed (or been asked to perform) as a dancer in the Seated Service because it is generally "for people more important than herself." Her comment on her hierarchical position within the group (at that time) was not in any way despondent but displayed a matter-of-fact understanding of her position at that point in her life.

Despite the fact that her parents had previously served as the head and head wife of TEC and at that time were serving in high ranking Tenrikyo roles in Tenri City, as a young person who did not occupy any official position at the center or within the religious organization, her hierarchical position at TEC was relatively low. Therefore, the roles she occupied, including during the Monthly Service, were reflective of her current status. Her normalization of the defined hierarchical organization of TEC that was embodied and displayed through these hierarchically important individuals performing in this ritual role was reflective of the strongly hierarchical structure of the broader Tenrikyo system and also Japanese culture. More precisely, in these closely interrelated hierarchical social systems, one's position was usually strongly based on one's age and the role(s) one occupied<sup>285</sup>.

In the Seated Service, the hierarchically important social position of certain people was evidenced, displayed, and reconfirmed through the location of their physical bodies. At this part of the ritual, it was supposed to be only the designated hierarchically important ritual performers who executed the hand dance gestures of the Seated Service that was otherwise the main component of the twice daily Morning and Evening Services which, in group settings, was

<footnote n="284"><sup>284</sup> Toshie Miyamoto is one of the Miyamoto sisters who lived on TEC grounds as a young adult after her parents, who previously headed TEC, returned to Japan.</footnote>

<footnote n="285"><sup>285</sup> These three hierarchical systems also tend to be gender-based, though in the Tenrikyo system, males and females are explained to be equal, but different, in which ideally there is collaboration between the female role (ideally positioned as the "earth" or foundation) and the male role (ideally positioned as the "sky" or in a broader, overseeing position, such as a "head" position).</footnote>
performed by everyone in attendance. For the Monthly Service, though most people in the audience area of the sanctuary were highly familiar with the Seated Service gestures to the point of their being a kinesthetically imprinted part of their physical bodies through muscle memory developed over time as well as of their spiritual practice and conceptual repertoire, because they were not charged with this designated ritual role, most refrained from their execution in this context. This was because during the Monthly Service, if one was not a designated dancer or instrumentalist for a given portion of the ritual, one's prescribed engagement with it was that of inactive observation. Thus, although the vast majority of those in attendance were highly capable of performing the gestures they were observing, in this instance, ideally, they cultivated in themselves a disposition of respect to one's role that was a common theme of numerous other parts of TEC, the Tenrikyo religion, and also the broader realm of Japanese culture.

The importance placed on the Seated Service component of the Monthly Service that was manifested through the hierarchically important position of the ritual actors who enacted it at TEC was connected with the particular nature of this portion of the Monthly Service performed on the 26th of every month around the sacred point of the Jiba. It is this Monthly Service that was positioned in the religion as the true enactment of the ritual, and in conjunction, the way it was performed differed in relation to how it was performed at every other Tenrikyo site throughout the world. While the other thirteen sacred dances of the ritual which follow this initial component of the Service were performed in like manner regardless of location, including in its “true” version performed at the Jiba, this chiefly important introductory component of the ritual assumed a different form and connectedly also a different soterially-linked significance.

When performed around the Jiba on the 26th of each month, its performance is enacted by five men and five women who occupy centrally important positions within the inner spiritual and administrative sphere of the religion. Each of these specially designated ritual performers enact different gestures imparted by the foundress for this ritual as representations of each of the “Ten Providences of God the Parent.” Importantly connected to this is that these “ten providences” are taught to have been created and put into interaction by God the Parent at the point of the Jiba to bring about the conception of humanity and which continue to be the means through which our bodies and the physical world are enabled to function by God the Parent.
This highly important component of the Service was further explained to be the means through
which the soterial destiny of humanity will be reached at which time there will be no more
physical or social ills, though the precise significance of this latter feature of the ritual was largely
unclear and, in my observations, subject to numerous interpretations. Regardless of the precise
interpretation of this theologically complex element of the religion, it was clear that this part of
the Monthly Service performed around the Jiba was of paramount importance. This attributed
significance and manifested social structure that was enacted through the bodies of these key
religious actors in Tenri City was partially replicated in the performance of the Seated Service
portion of the TEC Monthly Service that displayed its important place in the religion though the
designated ritual actors of this role.

Through exposure to this ritual performed around the Jiba, the hierarchical structure of the
religion that was a component of Tenrikyo contexts elsewhere was reaffirmed. Conversely,
through the regular attendance over time of the Monthly Service at TEC, the hierarchical social
organization within the religion was manifested and reiterated through its Seated Service. Similar
to numerous other instances, a particular social model put forth in Tenri City was also a
component of the social model present at TEC in which exposure to, familiarity with, and
normalization of either of these Tenrikyo contexts functioned to develop and reaffirm a similar
stance toward the other.

This hierarchical role-based social model is highly related to the broader realm of Japanese
culture with which the religion was closely intertwined and influenced by. One's rootedness in
the wider Japanese cultural framework encouraged the normalization of this hierarchical
component of the religion's social organization. Thus, parallel to the conceptual connection
between Tenri City and TEC, one's situatedness in Japanese culture encouraged one's familiarity
with and normalization of Tenrikyo culture, or in like manner, the converse. These paired
references of familiarity and normalization, as mentioned numerous times throughout this thesis,
were an influential factor to the two-tiered nature of the TEC community. In order to be a fully
integrated member of the inner social core of TEC, it was not enough to be knowledgeable about
the religion this center was charged with promoting, one also needed to be familiar with and
embody numerous aspects of the broader cultural realms with which it was strongly connected.
Included in this was a particular model of social hierarchy similarly present in the broader realm of Tenrikyo as well as in Japanese culture.

*Performing unity through the Service songs, executing a harmonious social model*

After the Seated Service, the Service performers would then change positions in preparation for the next part of the Monthly Service: the first half of the thirteen Mikagura-uta songs performed in standing position. Some individuals dressed in the ceremonial hakama suit or kimono would come onto the stage as instrumental or dance performers and some individuals who performed in the Seated Service would take a seat in the audience section. This changing of who occupied each of the performative roles would then occur again after the approximately thirty-minute performance of the first half of these songs during the short break before the second half that otherwise passed melodically from one song to another without marked separation.

These highly choreographed dances were performed by the six performers in unhurried unison to the sounds of the accompanying music played in syncretic accordance. These ritualized songs and dances performed by a collection of individuals who joined together to create a larger melodic whole were at the heart of the faith and also at the heart of the community constructed at and through TEC. As evoked slightly previously, the symbolism enacted through these songs and dances was something that I occasionally heard discussed at TEC and in numerous other Tenrikyo contexts in which the significance of this chiefly important ritual was theorized to exist on multiple levels, each of which positioning harmonious unison between differing contributors as a central theme. Important to the expansive role of this ritual and how it was conceptualized beyond the specific context of its scripted enactment was its metaphorical meaning that I sometimes heard discussed to be reflective of the Tenrikyo story of creation in which the Ten Providences of God the Parent came together to form the first humans in which each providence performed a different role to, together, create a greater whole.

Another theme that I frequently heard regarding the performance of this ritual was that while playing to the best of one's ability and making a sincere effort is important, as noted previously, being a highly skilled individual performer should not be one's primary goal. Instead, what should be of principle importance is harmonizing oneself with the others taking part in the performance of this ritual of multiple parts coming together to create something greater. As
discussed by Houseman (2004), ritual performances are less about an ordered sequence of behaviors, which in the case of the Service ritual are the scripted dance movements and the instrumental sounds they produce in combination with the reverential act of clapping four times at designated moments of the ritual that everyone in attendance takes part in, than they are about the generation of interactive patterns whose systemic qualities generally override the individual irregularities that inevitably occur. Although there may be some variation in how the Service ritual is performed, such as if the officially scripted number of performers are present<sup>286</sup>, if the dance and instrumental performers enact their scripted roles with complete accuracy or if mistakes are made, and the particular style with which each performative role is executed, this does not change its enacted significance. Clearly explained by the head of TEC during an instructional moment of the Tenrikyo European Seminar training program is that more important than whether or not a person skillfully performs a particular ritual role is that the ritual actors are paying attention to each other and aligning their individual performative roles with the performance of others. In this, the interactive patterns were clearly put in the forefront.

In relation to this point, I sometimes heard it specifically mentioned that this collaborative harmonizing aspect of the ritual is excellent training to develop in oneself through the synergetic performance of the Service and take thereafter with oneself into the world. This developmental capacity was largely attributed to the ritual's ability to encourage a close attention to others and a disposition directed towards making efforts to harmonize oneself with others. This highly important monthly event at TEC encouraged this mode of collaborative relational concordance with one another to transcend beyond the ritual to also be present in the dominant mode of sociality of scenes that took place at the center and also in contexts connected to this center that took place elsewhere. While people came together at TEC for the ritual of the Monthly Service, the social model contained therein also emanated out to exist in the participants in a two-directional model of dispositional construction.

<footnote n="286"><sup>286</sup> At the Monthly Services of the Sugimotos' mission station that I attended, there was only a partial representation of the scripted roles due to the limited number of people present.</footnote>
### c. Becoming part of a religious world and the religious world becoming part of the individual

*The holistic approach of integration into the TEC community and the Tenrikyo faith as exemplified through the children's group*

The formative nature of the Monthly Service was not only transmitted to adults, but also to children despite the fact that throughout the majority of the Monthly Service there were very few children in attendance apart from infants and toddlers who added to the familial nature of these gatherings. These infants and toddlers, who were the newest additions to the TEC community, invariably accompanied their parents in the sanctuary and delighted those in attendance with their sounds and as they grew into toddlers, with their often high activity levels that those present communally attended to as they sometimes moved around the room, creating an environment in which many present functioned as the “aunties” and “uncles,” etc. of these new members of the group. This communal tending to these young children that occurred in the sanctuary during these monthly rituals was but one of many examples of how for those born into families closely affiliated with and involved in TEC, the collection of people closely connected to TEC was largely akin to an extended family from the time they were born. Through spending time at the center, and with its connected social actors as part of their early formative experiences, a normalized feeling of belonging at the center and in its connected social world was facilitated. Their being part of this community from a very early age (or for people who later became part of this group, over significant periods of time during which they, too, progressed through different stages of life) was a key foundational contributor to the ambiance of community that was noticeably present at TEC through their creation of a shared history of the group and through their sharing in each other’s individualized histories.

After these young members of the TEC community were no longer toddlers but rather young children, it was possible for them to continue to attend the Monthly Services held in the sanctuary, but most forwent sitting through this lengthy ritual to instead take part in the children's group for those aged 3-14 held one floor below. This group, that was primarily orchestrated by younger local core women of the “TEC community,” was aimed at exposing the children to important aspects of the faith in a child-friendly manner through various religiously focused
activities, such as arts and crafts. It also provided a space of play and socialization for these
young participants through the time they spent with other young members of this social group. By
creating an enjoyable space through which they came to know and form positive relationships
with the faith and with the other children present, their integration into the broader religious
lexical of Tenrikyo, and also into the TEC community, was promoted.

I often heard Tenrikyo parents express the importance of imparting the religion onto their children in a way that would allow them to learn about it at their own pace rather than pushing them too hard at too young of an age, potentially causing the religion to be associated with difficulty or an over-strictness. Instead, these children's activities are hoped to elicit positive feelings such as comradery and joy, thereby encouraging them to become lifelong Tenrikyo followers. This children's group, which was part of the "European Tenrikyo Children's Association<sup>287</sup>," was one of multiple examples of the Tenrikyo emphasis on guiding children according to their development in congruence with the religion's general emphasis on the parent-child model of God the Parent and the foundress (i.e. the original mother of all humans) guiding humans as their children according to their spiritual development. The holistic approach of transmitting the faith and its practice to the forthcoming generation of followers that involved the gradual cultivation of the sensorial, bodily, and moral domains of the individual was largely congruent to the general model of how the faith was transmitted to adults who came to interact with the religion. In this holistic model of gradual cultivation which involved much more than the intellectual domain of the mind, one can better understand why the presence of people coming to this monthly ritual, along with other Tenrikyo contexts, was prioritized, largely regardless of their intellectually-based "belief" in or understanding of the religion.

In the specific context of this children’s group, although they were not present in the sanctuary for the majority of the Service, their participation in this age-based group did not completely eclipse their exposure to this important ritual of the faith. To facilitate familiarity with it without making their attendance excessive for their young ages, the children’s group came up to the

<footnote n="287"><sup>287</sup> Tenrikyo Children's Association is for children up to 14 years old and is one of the three Tenrikyo associations along with the Tenrikyo Women's Association and the Tenrikyo Young Men's Association for Tenrikyo males aged 15-40 years old.</footnote>
sanctuary to attend approximately five minutes of it each month. As a result, they were regularly exposed to a small portion of it, thereby rendering it a familiar part of their known experiences.

When this group would come up to the sanctuary to join in attendance of a short portion of the Service, their presence was discretely included in the back of the sanctuary as they quietly, or at least semi-quietly, entered the room and knelt in a condensed group behind the rows of folding wooden chairs with mostly adults installed on them. Their short presence included clapping softly four times and bowing to begin their participation in this ritual, similar to what the adults in attendance had done earlier. Several minutes later, at the prompting of their teachers, they would quietly clap four times again to conclude this moment, then leave the room to go back downstairs and continue their morning and early afternoon child-focused activities.

At this point, I would like to pause on Bénéi's work on the role of sensorium and embodiment in producing visceral senses of belonging and emotion that was very influential to the formation of my thesis by including a passage from the introduction of her 2008 book which explores the role of embodiment and emotion in the construction of nationalism by looking at how this occurs in elementary education in western India in which she references a previous work (2001) on this topic that she put forth. This passage is directly evocative to the short, but ongoing and regular, exposure to the Monthly Service ritual that these children had as an ongoing component of their being shaped into Tenrikyo people but moreover extends to my broader research population and my exploration of how it was that they together formed a group, and more specifically, a Tenrikyo group.

> I pondered whether the children also get transformed in the process of chanting the liturgies and to what extent. What bearing did singing, chanting, and calisthenics have upon both the students' individual bodies and on the collective school body thus produced and incorporated concomitantly with the national one? I argued then that through this public worship of the nation, children were simultaneously creating their physical and emotional selves and acting and embracing “India” into existence. Children, in other words, were phenomenologically taught to “feel” the nation within their bodies. (Bénéi 2008: 24).

Through the children's group's regularly revisited exposure to not only the sensorially-rich ritual of the Monthly Service itself but also to the enacted bodily disposition that they were experientially taught to assume when interacting with it, they were gradually instilling aspects of
the religion separate from but often connected to the domain of “belief” within this forthcoming
generation of the faith. As we can see, for those born in the faith, this process of socialization
typically began at an early age, thereby strongly anchoring it into the developing selves of these
young religious actors. In this, they were solidly grounded in and influenced by Tenrikyo culture
during this important period of early development in which it became a part of their feeling
selves. This process of solidly anchoring such young people into a high level of experientially
developed familiarity with TEC and Tenrikyo was an important contributing component to the
two-tiered nature of the TEC community by promoting the ongoing inculcation of these up-and-
coming core members, thereby transferring this rootedness to the new generation.

For people who came to know TEC and Tenrikyo later, the level to which they internalized its
numerous elements was dependent on multiple factors, including but not limited to their
familiarity with and internalization of Japanese culture. Similar to this example of the
multifaceted instillation of the religion in these young people that was conducted in a manner
deemed appropriate to their stage of development, its dispersal to and cultivation in adults<fnref n="288" /> was
also positioned as a gradual and multi-faceted process. This formative process was imparted
partially through the Monthly Service, but also through other means of inculcation and
reinforcement that also included its wider, collectively shared “culture” in which through
involvement in such Tenrikyo contexts, one was not only being linked with the “spiritual” side of
the religion, but also with its broader realm.

*End-of-Service sermons that plant seeds of thought into the group*

Near the end of every Monthly Service at TEC after the performance of the Mikagura-uta dances
came to an end, a sermon was delivered by someone who had been requested to do so for the
month. A variety of voices through this rotating oratory position contributed to the underlying
conceptualization of the faith present at TEC. This official point of reference on the faith was
predominately, though not exclusively, represented by males holding official positions within the
religion. Most often, these speakers were male heads of mission stations in Europe, most
commonly those living in the Paris area due to their regular presence at this monthly ritual. Less

<footnote n="288">²⁸⁸ This refers to both “members” and “non-members” as Tenrikyo is regarded as a path of spiritual development rather than a single-step door to salvation.</footnote>
commonly, female mission heads or the wives of the male heads<fnref n="289" /> who were also regarded as
holding an important position in relation to this role, also gave the sermon. Even less common but
still occasionally featured in this time slot were sermons delivered by visiting officials, who most
often were from Japan.

These post-Service talks discussed various topics in relation to the faith and functioned largely as
the enunciated voice of the religion during these important monthly gatherings. This spoken
component of the Monthly Service put forth by a single individual in which specific topics were
discussed through precise language was somewhat in contrast to the Monthly Service ritual itself.
Whereas the sermons were individualized, unique, and based primarily in the realm of the
intellect, the performance of the Monthly Service was communal, reproduced every month in like
form at Tenrikyo sites throughout the world, and strongly based in the realm of the non-concrete
sensorial experience.

The numerous people who delivered these sermons contributed to the overall conceptualization of
the faith amongst followers at TEC both through the direct means of influence that these sermons
had on the people present to hear them directly and also through the circulation of the ideas
conveyed through these sermons that sometimes occurred afterwards. This latter means of
influence to the group was evidenced by the fact that on numerous occasions, I heard similar
explanations pertaining to certain aspects of the faith from multiple members of the “TEC
community” that had first been precisely enunciated in a TEC Monthly Service sermon before
becoming the somewhat communal intellectual property of its connected religious world.
Although the majority of time people spent in the sanctuary of TEC during these monthly ritual
gatherings was dedicated to a non-site-specific reproduction of ritual based on scripted music and
dance, they also expanded to include this more individuated, intellectually based component.
Furthermore, the influence on the group of these monthly ritual gatherings also occurred outside
of the precise ritual that took place in this sanctuary, aspects of which the next subsection
discusses.

<footnote n="289">289 This included the wife of the head of TEC.</footnote>
*The offerings as a connecting factor to the faith, the center, and to others in attendance*

One component of the TEC Monthly Service that extended its presence, in a very tangible way, beyond what occurred in the sanctuary was the bountiful offerings placed in front of these three altars on the morning of the ritual<sup>290</sup>. I will begin addressing this component of the TEC Monthly Service by beginning where the last subsection ended, after the conclusion of the post-ritual sermon, because the period of transition between the ritual that occurred in the upstairs sanctuary and the post-Service meal that occurred afterwards in the large basement-level multi-purpose room was the time at which these offerings were taken down from the three altars and readied for later consumption. While a small portion of those in attendance remained in the upstairs sanctuary after the ritual was concluded for the administration of the Sazuke healing ritual, most present would put their shoes back on from where they were placed at the outer entrance of the sanctuary and disperse to other parts of the building. After leaving the sanctuary, either immediately after the Monthly Service or after the Sazuke healing ritual, Service performers would return to the men's or women's changing rooms to transition out of their ceremonial wear and back into their everyday clothing. Others in attendance would either meander down to where the post-Service meal would be held or elsewhere during this transitional period.

While the Service performers were changing back into their everyday clothes, I would go into the small ground-floor dining room to wait, most often with several young women who were also operating as partial TEC “insiders” by positioning themselves in this room, to help with the organizational preparation of various comestibles. These foods, which we were waiting to start getting ready and arranging, included dessert trays of various cookies, candies, etc.<sup>291</sup> and also fruits from the offerings that we would cut up to put out at the end of the post-Service meal one floor below. They also included the organizational readying of take-home bags of fruit and vegetable offerings that had been placed in front of the altars during the Monthly Service in

<footnote n="290"><sup>290</sup> Although offerings were placed in front of these three altars every morning, the offerings placed there on the day of the Monthly Service were much more copious and also often more diverse and often involved more exceptional items.</footnote>

<footnote n="291"><sup>291</sup> Many of these treats had been brought by followers as gifts and souvenirs from both local and non-local sources. While placing these treats on the trays, it was common to hear comments about the various treats with mention of who and where they were from.</footnote>
relation to the number of people (or families) in attendance which those present would take with them when leaving TEC<sup>292</sup>.

Commonly during my fieldwork, the several other individuals with whom I waited to begin this collaborative task of readying foods were young women on exchange from Tenri University to the Université d'Orléans<sup>293</sup>, with the latter located approximately 125 km south of Paris and the former located in Tenri City. These Tenrikyo born and raised Japanese women often came to TEC for the weekend of its Monthly Services and became partially internal members of the center while there, thereby reconnecting with their Tenrikyo and Japanese cultural habitus on such occasions. During our time posed in this room without very much to do, we casually chatted while waiting for the local forty-something year old female core member of TEC who was informally charged with heading the orchestration of this communal task to arrive and get us started preparing the dessert trays by bringing out the treats for that month for us to arrange on the trays. Usually at about this time, numerous other women who had also served as Service performers arrived to help us with this gendered task after having changed into their everyday wear. The majority of the women who helped with this approximately fifteen-minute task of shared effort were younger<sup>294</sup> and also were Japanese.

Shortly after the treats for dessert were brought out for us to arrange, men, most commonly younger, who had performed in the Service would then arrive with heavy laundry baskets loaded with fruits and vegetables, fresh bread, sometimes along with cookies, candies, etc. that had been included in the offerings placed in front of the altars for the Service for us to prepare for the post-Service meal and the take-home bags of ritualized produce. I will discuss this latter element slightly later in this subsection.

<footnote n="292"><sup>292</sup> Any additional produce was set aside to be used in meals for TEC residents.</footnote>

<footnote n="293"><sup>293</sup> There is an established exchange program between Tenri University in Tenri City and the Université d'Orléans through which approximately five students from Tenri University (who usually but not always are from Tenrikyo families) go to the Université d'Orléans each year. Though not required, during my fieldwork several of these students would come to TEC semi-regularly for Monthly Services and during school vacation periods.</footnote>

<footnote n="294"><sup>294</sup> In this instance, my use of the word “younger” refers to mainly people in their twenties and thirties, or to a lesser degree, early forties, with women older than this often descending to the lower-level multi-purpose room where the post-Service meal was held in accordance with their age-related hierarchically higher position which distanced them from this simple task done by mainly hierarchically lower younger people and also to serve as hosts</footnote>
I would like to pause on the various types of fresh bread purchased from local bakeries included in these offerings which we would slice and place in baskets to serve along with the assortment of other foods included in the buffet style meal held one floor below. The presence of this ritualized bread was particularly interesting in relation to TEC's place-based adaptability that was displayed through this, and often other, offerings and the meals served at this European center. Though in Japan the starch-food most commonly included in the offerings was rice, in the French/European locality in which TEC was situated, fresh local bread was also included. Through this, a simple example of a broader tendency at TEC to integrate components of the local environment which included multiple place-based adaptations while at the same time maintaining a distinctly Tenrikyo, and extendedly Japanese, ambiance at the center was displayed. Although the various types of bread offered and thereafter consumed were not common in Japan, or to the broader realm of Tenrikyo, in both, an interest in and appreciation of local foods and local cultures was present. Thus, the presence of such breads at TEC was in accordance with the primary cultural logic(s) at work, despite the "foreign" character of the bread itself.

Through engaging in the simple preparations of these foods for those in attendance, with lots of smiles, chatter, and laughter exchanged between those taking part in this communal task, we were working to do something for others in a manner typical of Tenrikyo contexts, including the specific locality of TEC. In this, a non-site-specific mode of sociality was reproduced at this center situated in a Parisian suburb. An essential element of this activity, that was similarly present in the orchestration of numerous other tasks at TEC and also in other Tenrikyo contexts, was working together toward the benefit of others with an upbeat and eager-to-help countenance typical of Tenrikyo activities framed as hinokishin.

In complement to our female efforts, the bringing down of these offerings by the comparable male sphere was one of several tasks they were helping with in the sanctuary. While we prepared the food, they engaged in the slightly more physically demanding reorganization of the sanctuary back into its daily layout by putting away the musical instruments for the Monthly Service, rearranging a far fewer number of folding wooden chairs in the audience area than what had been put out for the morning's ritual gathering, and taking down the offerings that had been placed in

<footnote>to people positioned closer the exterior sphere of this social world.</footnote>
front of the altars that morning. Most but not all of which were brought down for us to finalize
preparing for the meal below and the bags of take-home offerings. That it was men charged with
rearranging the sanctuary was in accordance with Tenrikyo and TEC's gendered divisions of
labor in which men generally engaged in manual work involving anything regarded as heavy-
lifting or otherwise requiring significant ("male") strength while women were generally charged
with more intricate, "foundational<fnref n="295" />" tasks, such as cleaning, or in the present case, food
preparation. Though our gendered tasks were different, both contributed to the overall post-
Monthly Service transition, thereby manifesting the Tenrikyo model of gendered two-in-one
relationships.

The individually portioned bags of the offered produce that we were preparing was a component
of the Monthly Service that spanned beyond one's time at the center for this ritual to exist also in
one's home space and the general period of time after the ritual. Regardless of one's level of
anchoredness in the group and the religion, when leaving TEC after its Monthly Service, it was
standard to part with one of these bags, often upon the urging of whatever core member(s) were
seeing them off. In thinking of the multiple layers and degrees of central or peripheral
positionality of attendees within this specific context, and extendedly in the "TEC community,"
offerings had been purchased and prepared to place in front of the altars by core members of the
"TEC community," generally TEC residents. Thereafter, they had been placed in front of the
altars, also by core individuals, which in the publicly displayed placing of the offerings in front of
the altar to God the Parent involved both residential and non-residential core men. (It is
interesting to note that several of these non-residential core men had resided at TEC previously as
residential missionary teachers, before later becoming more permanently implanted in France.)

Somewhat later, these fruits and vegetables had been placed in bags to take home after the
Service by women who generally were positioned closer to the center of this multilayered social
world but not unanimously at its core. Then, they were taken home by everyone in attendance,
including Japanese and non-Japanese people, people who regarded themselves as "members" of
the religion along with people who did not, those who regularly came to TEC Monthly Services

<footnote n="295">²⁹⁵ This is reflective of an important Tenrikyo teaching that men are the sky and women are the earth and thus serve as a foundation for the faith and their families.</footnote>
and were otherwise highly connected to TEC and the broader realm of Tenrikyo in Europe and contrastingly, those who only occasionally came to TEC and were otherwise not very involved in the aforementioned scene, etc. Regardless of one's position in the group or in the religion, though, one was encouraged to take part in this material component of being there.

These bags of ritually offered produce came about largely, though not exclusively, through the efforts of core members of the group which then emanated out to the broader collection of attendees that included both core and more peripherally involved social actors through a multidirectional flow. Although most prominent was the stream of effort from core religious actors out to the broader group which included a significant portion of more peripheral members, this was not the totality of what occurred. Also included in the multistep process that culminated in these bags being brought home by everyone in attendance was the female task of divvying up the offered fruits and vegetables into individual portions, which involved the collective efforts of some more peripheral members along with more core members of the group. Thus, while the most predominant direction of labor was from the core of the group out to more peripheral individuals, also included were the efforts made by some more peripheral members who helped divvy up the fruits and vegetables out to core members who then took them home. Regardless of the specific directional form that these efforts took, their collaborative achievement was in accordance with the general Tenrikyo theme of people working through the orchestration of different roles toward the benefit of the greater group.

These offerings which people took home were generally not regarded as simply fruits and vegetables analogous to what one could commercially purchase from a store but rather as something that was somehow more special, though details concerning what precisely rendered them as such could usually not be exactly explained by people to whom I broached the subject. This lack of definition suggested that the particularities of this attribution had largely not been formulated into precise, conscious thought, and existed rather primarily in the less clearly defined realm of feelings and associations. Despite the lack of clarity regarding what precisely it was that rendered them somehow special, on a very concrete, material level, they were a tangible (and consumable) component of the sacred context of the Monthly Service that attendees took away with them to later ingest, thereby literally becoming part of their bodies. In thinking about these offerings from the perspective of social connectedness, when they were eaten, a connection to
both to the community of people with whom they participated in the ritual at which they were
offered and also to the entities of the ancestors, God the Parent, and Oyasama to whom they were
offered was materially reinstated through their consumption, which I like to emphasize, was
highly sensorial in nature.

Similar to others who attended TEC Monthly Services, when leaving, I was routinely told by
someone seeing me off at the door to take a take bag of these offerings with me. Often, though
not always, I was encouraged to look at the contents of these opaque white plastic bags placed in
a plastic laundry basket to choose the one I preferred as their contents varied. During my
research, I heard two different perspectives on if one should choose the bag of offerings one
preferred or simply take whichever bag one was given or picked up without first looking at their
contents. Both perspectives were similarly based on the “special” quality ascribed to them.

One view on the matter was enunciated to me through a second-hand account from a young
woman solidly positioned as a core member of the group who grew up highly connected to TEC
and its associated community. In a casual exchange between us while sitting together at a large
communal dinner in the basement-level multi-purpose room of TEC (a space which provided
many illuminative discussions throughout my research), she told me about the stance of another
long-time core member of TEC (the wife of a local mission station head who had been raised in a
highly involved Tenrikyo family in Japan) who was opposed to first looking through the bags of
offerings before taking one. Thus, this young woman implied, she did not do this when this
woman was present, but when not under the eye of this likely disapproving woman, she
sometimes did. The referenced woman's opposition to first looking at the contents of these bags
before taking one was because as all bags contained blessings from God the Parent, one should be
grateful for whichever bag one receives rather than picking and choosing what one does and does
not want among them. This view was clearly reflective of her view on other parts of life in
relation to her understanding of the faith's teachings.

Contrastingly, two non-Japanese young women (the previously mentioned Congolese and Korean
women raised in Tenrikyo church families who commonly performed in the TEC Monthly
Service) who both worked long hours and did not have families to cook for in their daily lives
told me that they liked to look through the bags before taking one. They explained this to be
because they wanted to make sure they would actually eat what they took rather than potentially let the food sit in the fridge uneaten until it spoiled. For these young women, the principal expressed reason they wanted to choose which bag to take was not pickiness, but rather a desire to avoid potential waste of this food, particularly due to its “special” nature.

Additionally demonstrative of the significance this young Congolese woman attributed to these offerings was that she specifically requested that the small amount of water offered daily to the three altars in the sanctuary be saved for her. The core social actors of TEC, generally its residents, who attended to these altars did so by pouring the water into a small jar after its removal from the altars each day that she took home with her when she came to TEC, such as for its Monthly Services. In response to my inquiry about what it was about this water that was special, she replied quite simply, “*Ça fait du bien.*” (It’s good for me.) She then further explained that she tried to drink a little of this water on a daily basis when she could and that when sick or on the verge of becoming so, she would make sure to drink some of it and found it to be effective. She did not specify how precisely it helped nor express a need to deeply inquire about what exactly it was about the water that contributed to her well-being or why and instead was rather vague in her highly illuminative response.

This general approach of regarding the offerings as somehow imbued with a special character was common. Precisely what or how, though, was left largely undefined by people with whom I discussed the topic, thereby displaying an absence of an extensively technical analysis of the matter. Regardless of this lack of a highly detailed attributed reasoning, these offerings were a means through which a material component of the Monthly Service was transferred to the more individualized lives of those in attendance. In this, we can see one of many examples that were present in my research context in which, as put forth by Houseman (2012), although ritual acts are undeniably lived by ritual actors, in this case firstly the ritual actors who placed the offerings and performed ritual acts before them, and through association, the consumers of those offerings thereafter, they become partially unintelligible in terms of intentions, representations, and associated feelings. When undergoing ritual acts, often the people engaging in these acts do not know exactly what they are doing, other than engaging in the broadly defined ritual act in the right form. By going beyond the realm of the ordinary, and being held as significant, they acquire
a value in their own right, difficult to define other than by reference to the ritual actions
themselves.

For this young Congolese woman, although the water that had been offered to the divine entities
was perceived to have been somehow transformed through the act, precisely how, why, or in
precisely what capacity was largely undefined. What she did express to hold as evident, though,
was that the ritual act of offering the water to these divine entities, which was referentially
understood to also have included the performance of the Service before it, somehow bestowed a
special, beneficial quality to the water. Thus, while we were preparing the offerings for people to
take home, although generally unsaid, we were understood to somehow be extending the ritual
significance that the offerings had undergone to the attendees lives beyond this ritual gathering or
the center of TEC.

*Breaking bread and building connection: constructing community through behind the scenes moments of laying its foundation via meal preparations*

After we concluded the female task of readying the dessert trays and offerings that those in attendance would consume and take home, we would then descend one level to join the post-Service meal that was, by then, well underway. The inclusion of a communal meal after the orchestration of this monthly ritual was congruent with how Monthly Services were conducted at most other Tenrikyo sites of worship in Japan and elsewhere throughout the world. This meal, which generally lasted several hours, was, in practice, the second half of the broader TEC Monthly Service event during which those in attendance would come together to share an amical moment of less formal togetherness than the highly scripted ritual.

At these post-Service meals, there was a general festive buzz throughout the large, basement-level room where people served themselves food from several buffet tables filled each month with a different delectable assortment of food from various culinary traditions such as French, Japanese, and Southeast Asian cuisines. During these meals, the collectively produced friendly chatter between those in attendance invariably produced a lively hum that resonated throughout the room. Further adding to the ambiance was its jovial social environment that was purposefully recreated every month which contained a generally present conviviality expressed through the liberal exchange of smiles, greetings, and chit-chat between attendees who came into contact with
each other, such as when crossing paths at the buffet tables, and also when seated at the tables which held about eight to ten people each. Usually not too long into our being in the room on such occasions<sup>296</sup>, this ambiance was further amplified by children playing together, such as by gathering around a foosball table (that was later exchanged in the same spot with a pool table), after they had finished their lunch in a much timelier manner than the adults.

The duration of these post-Monthly Service meals usually lasted slightly longer than the religious ritual itself, with this portion of the time spent together often dwindling on as people continued their conversations over coffee. Eventually, a number of remaining individuals (particularly women positioned as core members of the group) would transition to helping with the post-meal cleanup in the kitchen of washing dishes and putting away any remaining food which was usually eaten as leftovers by TEC residents, such as in packed lunches when working during the week at ACFJT. Similar to the Monthly Service ritual and the meal enjoyed thereafter, the post-meal cleanup was also a communal (in this case, largely female) endeavor that contained the same mode of Tenrikyo sociality and which also contributed to the ongoing construction of the relationships between the involved individuals and also of the communal feel of the broader collection of people involved in such moments.

At TEC, similar to many other Tenrikyo sites, such shared amical moments centered around degustation functioned as an important component of community construction between the primarily local people who regularly attended these monthly events. These specific moments rooted in both place and time also contributed to and influenced the wider sphere of this multi-layered and multi-sited community through the construction of a shared social base in this sphere of the broader group. Extendedly, at TEC, communal meals and refreshment breaks were an important component of most other organized gatherings and events, through which the feeling of community was constructed and strengthened between the involved social actors. People who took part in such moments shared more than food; they also shared warm moments of connecting interaction that was a notable characteristic of Tenrikyo events which I observed in numerous contexts in France and also Japan. Both of which included not only local people but also

<footnote n="296"><sup>296</sup> This was generally the case not only at post-Monthly Service meals, but also at a variety of other communal meals included as a component of TEC events.</footnote>
followers coming from numerous other locations, thereby displaying this feature as one based in
the broader realm of Tenrikyo culture rather than a specific singular context. For many who came
to TEC, both for Monthly Services and other events held there, not all of whom were “members”
of the religion, based on comments and behaviors indicating as such, it was largely this warm
atmosphere that was appealing to them (along with for many such individuals, its distinctly
Japanese ambiance) and encouraged their continued participation. Thus, it was not only the
construction of this center’s religiously implicated community, but also its broader social sphere
that included “non-Tenrikyo members,” to which such meals were a key contributing factor.

The socially linking nature of these post-Service meals, and other similar degustatory moments,
primarily facilitated by women was directly reflective of Tenrikyo doctrine that positioned the
character of “joining” as an important feminine characteristic. This was explicitly dictated by one
of five feminine providences of the “Ten Providences of God the Parent,” that of “Kunisazuchi-
no-Mikoto”<fnref n="297" />.” This “joining” characteristic associated with the female was first brought to my
awareness during my initial period of learning in-depth about the religion during my first week of
participation in the European Seminar when I asked a young woman helping with the training
about why the specific instruments played by women in the Monthly Service were positioned as
the “women’s instruments.” She told me that she did not know for certain, and suggested that I
may want to ask a more senior member of the training, but that perhaps it is connected to an
association between these three instruments being stringed and that joining (i.e. linking or
binding together) is associated with women. Although, as she noted, this was simply a
supposition, the symbolic association between the faith’s cosmology and its enacted practice was
illuminative to the prescribed mode of enacting femaleness which contributed to a gendered male
and female collaboration toward the construction of something greater.

These meals, prepared as hinokishin by the center's affiliated women's association the day prior,
were an important foundational contributor to the ambiance of amical communality that came
about during these post-Monthly Service meals. The mode of sociality and social connections that
were encouraged during these moments extended beyond this specific context to also be a notable

<footnote n="297">²⁹⁷ “Kunisazuchi-no-Mikoto: in the human body, the providence of the female organ, of skin and of joining; in the world, the providence of joining in general.” (The Doctrine of Tenrikyo 1993: 31).</footnote>
feature of the broader social world of TEC that was also a commonly present factor in other contexts which involved the broader multi-layered social world of TEC. Through such moments that transpired in the context of a purposeful construction of a particular form of warm and friendly atmosphere present similarly in dispersed Tenrikyo contexts, social relationships were formed and strengthened through which mutual support and positive social interactions were encouraged. Although the orchestration of the ritual itself was generally orchestrated with more of a male than female presence, this secondary component of its overall event, which was a key component of its global experience, was primarily brought about by women. Thus, though often discrete, the foundational role that women commonly assumed in Tenrikyo was a key contributor to the social character of TEC (and other Tenrikyo contexts) that, in this instance, occurred largely the day before.

This pre-Monthly Service gathering the day prior involved the more core component of the religious actors in attendance of the Monthly Service the following day. During the span of approximately one year that I attended these pre-Monthly Service preparatory days, excluding myself, all but one person in attendance was Japanese, with the non-Japanese person being Mathieu, the French core member of the TEC community who spoke fluent Japanese: the language of use during these preparatory gatherings. From a feminine vantage point<sup>298</sup>, these preparatory Saturdays began with the “women’s association<sup>299</sup>” activity of preparing food in the morning for the post-Service meal, followed by a lunch of invariably pasta with bolognese sauce and salad<sup>300</sup> shared with their male counterparts who had been busy during the morning with setting up the sanctuary for the following day. Thereafter, an early afternoon women’s association meeting to discuss the faith<sup>301</sup> while seated around a large table was held, followed by a partial

<footnote n="298"><sup>298</sup> I explain in detail this gathering from a “feminine vantage point” because, as a woman, I participated in the women’s sphere of these days.</footnote>

<footnote n="299"><sup>299</sup> Complete title: “Tenrikyo Europe Women’s Association.”</footnote>

<footnote n="300"><sup>300</sup> This was a standard meal at TEC on such occasions that called for an inexpensive and simple meal for many people.</footnote>

<footnote n="301"><sup>301</sup> These women's association meeting were generally conducted in Japanese, though, on the one occasion that I saw a non-Japanese woman there, who additionally did not speak Japanese, come to one of these meetings, a certain amount of French was used to include her. The majority of people's speech remained in Japanese, though, as they were used to doing in this context. During this meeting, she occasionally looked at me, the only other non-Japanese person present, discreetly signaling her feeling somewhat out of place in this context where she did not</footnote>
rehearsal of the Monthly Service to be performed the following day for which men and women joined together to practice. At these rehearsals, not everyone scheduled to perform would be present. The presence of particular ritual actors and the absence of others corresponded generally with their position as core or slightly more peripheral members of the two-tiered local TEC community. Through this, we can see yet another example of a core Japanese component of this group composed of men and women working in complementary role-based collaboration to facilitate the larger social group that came together at and via this center with a wider group of individuals connected to this center positioned at more of the periphery of the group.

*Varying levels of “being a member” or not amongst those in attendance: the Service as a key unifying event*

Beyond the unifying component of the ritual and the comestibly fostered linkages, the presence of the attendees themselves was the principal means through which they were connected to the social world that was regularly reconstructed at these Monthly Service gatherings. For those present, irrespective of their understanding of their relationship to the faith, they were included in these important shared moments of structured communality. During my fieldwork, I observed two individuals take part in the communal post-Monthly Service meals, and connectedly the shared togetherness of these gatherings, without having first been present at the Monthly Service ritual itself, which is theoretically the main reason for these gatherings. In this, the open-ended nature of taking part in its broader event was demonstrated.

One of these individuals was a middle-aged French man, Antoine<fnref n="302" />, who had married a Japanese woman born in the faith several decades prior. He explained to me that he became a Yoboku around the same general period because of how much it meant to his (at the time, future) wife's family who otherwise accepted him, a French man<fnref n="303" />, with open arms. During the span of this conversation, he also explained to me that he is (a member of) three different religions. He told me he is Jewish because his mother is Jewish, which renders him Jewish as well, to which he

<footnote>understand the majority of what was being said.</footnote>

<footnote n="302">³⁰² Antoine is the previously referenced person who kept honeybees on TEC grounds.</footnote>

<footnote n="303">³⁰³ In saying this to me, he added that although people say that French people are racist, the Japanese are much worse. Thus, he appreciated that he was accepted into this family.</footnote>
added that this is the case even if he doesn't agree with it working that way. He then expanded
that he is Catholic because when he was in school, his mother wanted him to attend a "good
school," which was a private Catholic school, and thus he was baptized Catholic out of
pragmatism. Then, as an adult, as explained previously, he became a Yoboku to please his (soon-
to-be) in-laws, which in his mention of it, inferentially equated becoming a Yoboku with
"becoming Tenrikyo."

He and his wife were both long-term regular presences at TEC, with Antoine being an often present, though somewhat non-typical, member of the long-term, local, core TEC community along with his wife, who was a more standard member of the group. On rare occasions Antoine played a musical instrument in the Monthly Service ritual, but more commonly, he remained downstairs with his dog who he frequently brought to TEC while his wife who usually performed in the ritual, and also often his mother<sup>304</sup>, were in the above sanctuary for the ritual. When this was the case, he would join those in attendance for the post-Service meal. On one such occasion, I expressed surprise to see him at a post-Service meal, which was compounded by learning that he had not just arrived but had been onsite during the entire Service and had simply chosen to not be in the sanctuary during it. In response to my reaction, Antoine jokingly told me that he is a "Yoboku noir," meaning that he is a somewhat atypical "member" through this tongue-in-cheek statement. Based on my observations, this particularity of his was accepted (or at least not often commented on in my presence) by others in attendance.

The second individual who I observed to choose, in like manner, to remain elsewhere on TEC grounds during the Monthly Service ritual, then join everyone in attendance thereafter for its post-Service meal was a young French woman named Julie who I first met at TEC when she came to the center for the first time to help with the spring charity rummage sale. At that time, she was studying Japanese (elsewhere than ACFJT) and had been invited to come to TEC to help with the event by one of the young adult missionaries who she had met when at ACFJT for one of its activities. She and I spoke a good deal at the end of this event, which she expressed to have enjoyed and furthermore told me that she liked the social ambiance of the center and relatedly,

<footnote n="304"><sup>304</sup> His mother never performed in the Monthly Service nor was she qualified to do so. In my observations, her presence seemed to be motivated primarily to simply be present, both for its ritual portion and the time of amical togetherness thereafter.</footnote>
the people there. Shortly thereafter, I saw her again at a post-Monthly Service meal, before which she had chosen to relax outside in the sun on a bench during the ritual, then join us for its communal meal.

The next winter, displaying her increasing inclusion in the multilayered social world connected to TEC, I sometimes saw her at the weekly distribution of hot soup and drinks for homeless people in Paris associated with TEC. My fieldwork ended after the following year's spring rummage sale, after which I remained entirely absent from TEC for one year before returning to again participate in this event the following year. By this time, this young woman was in a relationship with one of the young adult residential missionaries at TEC and had been attending TEC Monthly Services.

During the joyously lively celebratory meal held after the rummage sale event for those who had helped orchestrate it, while seated with the group of French young adults connected to TEC via ACFJT who formed a somewhat distinct social sphere of the TEC community as discussed in chapter three, this young woman talked about maybe attending the upcoming summer's Tenrikyo European Seminar at TEC that was scheduled to be held several months later. She talked about her thinking about participating in it being motivated by a desire to better understand various aspects of Tenrikyo that she did not feel she gained adequate knowledge of simply through watching the ritual. During this conversation, I was additionally surprised to hear a young French man seated by us at the table who I had gotten to know during my fieldwork express similar thoughts about possibly attending the seminar. This was unexpected as he had told me in an interview about a year and a half prior that he did not view his participation in this religious training to be possible for him, a practicing Catholic who, at least at that time, was not open to the prospect of becoming a Tenrikyo follower.

It is interesting that at this point, they were both considering to take part in the seminar<fnref n="305" />. I found the evolution of this young woman's relationship to Tenrikyo highly illuminative in showing, amongst other things, that the approach found at TEC of being welcoming, though not overtly pushy, and allowing for individual flexibility did sometimes bear the desired fruit of spreading the faith to newcomers. Although there was a more defined ideal relationship to the faith and

<footnote n="305">³⁰⁵ Both of these French young adults did end up attending the seminar.</footnote>
connectedly, general way of being put forth and commonly held by at least most of the key social
actors of TEC, an openness to variation and accordingly, a liberal degree of leniency were also
prominent features of this social world. This approach was commonly accompanied with the
underlying idea that through encouraging exposure (i.e. one way of “diffusing the faith’s
fragrance,”) a gradual or partial “conversion” may come about.

As discussed previously, the spreading of Tenrikyo through this less direct method of
encouraging (often passive) exposure was not limited to TEC. It was also commonly present in
other Tenrikyo contexts as well, such as at ACFJT, in which in addition to the missionary goal of
gaining additional “members” of the religion in a relatively timely manner, another goal was to
spread the “fragrance” of the faith through the more subtle method of encouraging certain modes
of sociality and ways of being without necessarily ever even mentioning the name of the religion.
This is reflective of the social fact that, as discussed by Michel (2015) amongst numerous others,
people are shaped by the activities in which they engage repeatedly, thereby rendering frequent
participants of an organization (such as the religious organization of Tenrikyo) likely to embody
the organization’s assumptions and exhibit tendencies that support and reproduce the
assumptions. In this, an important theme present throughout my research is highlighted: the often
discretely existent perspective that through encouraging experiential exposure, its imbuation
may be promoted in some of the involved social actors. To continue this exploration from its
present point, I will next discuss the wider European-based component of the “TEC community”
in the next section.
# Section III: The wider TEC community: TEC as a site of gathering for Tenrikyo followers throughout Europe

## Section introduction

Now that I have discussed three sides of the “TEC community” that involved primarily people living in the same geographic region of Paris that TEC was located in, I would like to broaden my analytic lens to the broader European continent. Although TEC was situated in the Paris area, its social world, and many of its “core members,” spanned beyond this specific location to also include people based in various European locations who came together primarily, though not exclusively, at TEC. Many of them were long-term habitual presences at TEC and significant contributors to the “community” of TEC. This section will help us think about how a place-based social world can, and often does, include people based in locations beyond its specific location through the ebbs and flows of people coming and going from it, coupled with social linkages.

In chapter five, I will discuss lineage-based Tenrikyo sites throughout the European continent which were all connected to TEC as their regional center, with the majority of the families operating them being long-term “core” members of the “TEC community” in which despite many of them not living in the Paris area, they were “local” presences at TEC. Chapters six and seven, then, discuss the annually occurring Tenrikyo European Seminar training program which was held at TEC, but brought together student and staff participants from numerous European locations to form a momentary social world in its own right which also served to form and strengthen social connections with dispersed members of this social world which contributed to the ongoing construction and solidification of the “TEC community.” In expanding my focus from the Paris region discussed in the previous section to the broader domain of followers living in numerous locations of Europe, I wish to show that although this “community” was primarily centered in the suburb of Antony where TEC was located, its participants spanned beyond this precise location.
# Chapter six: Home-based Tenrikyo sites of worship in Europe: the transplantation of a lineage system to a new cultural and geographic context

## a. Transferring a Japanese organizational system to a European context

### European-based mission station families as long-term, core members of the TEC community

A main purpose of TEC was to provide support not only to missionaries<fnref n="306" /> and followers in the Paris area, but to also serve as a source of support and a gathering place for mission stations and followers throughout the European continent. Though my fieldwork was primarily based in the Paris region, and secondly in Japan, the people I got to know at TEC throughout my research also included people living in other parts of Europe who came to this center. One of the numerous contributions offered by TEC to many of the followers who came there was a sense of religious strength derived from its environment of communal faith, in which making efforts for the path of Tenrikyo and enacting its teachings was encouraged. After spending time there, they could then take back with them this socially fostered anchoring in the religion to their respective mission stations (for those affiliated with one) and more generally, their respective lives.

The most prominent segment of this wider European layer of the TEC community were the families who founded and continued to operate the home-based “mission stations<fnref n="307" />” located in eight different European countries. These families had been connected to TEC and its social world for significant periods of time, most often several decades, and provided the substructure of long-term continuity to this social world. Many of the members of these missionary families were present semi-regularly at TEC, such as for special events that drew people to the center from disparate locations. Amongst other purposes, these gatherings effectively served as “family reunions” for this collection of people who largely constituted the long-term core “TEC

<footnote n="306">³⁰⁶ In the Tenrikyo faith, all followers are theoretically missionaries of the religion. In my use of this term, I wish to more specifically refer to people actively operating in this role, such as mission station families and individuals sent to TEC by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters to work at TEC or its affiliated cultural center.</footnote>

<footnote n="307">³⁰⁷ And one site of worship categorized in the Tenrikyo system of organization as a “branch church” (Bordeaux Kyokai) rather than a “mission station” that I include in my general discussion of and reference to “mission stations.”</footnote>
community.” Before moving on to discuss these mission stations and the families who operated them in more detail, though, I would first like to further explain and culturally contextualize the Tenrikyo lineage system.

*The lineage system within the Tenrikyo organizational structure*

In the Tenrikyo system of organization, every person classified as a follower is rooted to and based at a particular site of worship (classified as a “mission station<fnref n="308" />,” “branch church<fnref n="309" />,” or “grand church<fnref n="310" />”) which serves as the person’s “home site.” As an extension, each follower is also organizationally situated in the church lineage (keitō 系統<fnref n="311" />) of their “home site.” Such lineage-based rootedness is determined (generally) by new followers becoming members of the “home site” (and its connected lineage) of the person who introduced them to the faith. The descendants<fnref n="312" /> of this new follower also become, by default, members of the same “home site” and connected church lineage.

This lineage system that is at the core of the lived experiences of being a member of this religion, and of its overall organization, is based on a “parent-child” structure of grand churches, branch churches, and mission stations. Each category must fulfill a number of obligations and receive authorization in order to obtain their classificatory designation as such. For grand churches and branch churches, this authorization must be obtained directly from Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, whereas for mission stations, authorization must only be granted by the “parental” branch or grand church charged with supervising it as a subordinate site of its lineage. Amongst other requirements, branch churches must have a certain number of followers, including specific

<footnote n="308">³⁰⁸ fukyōsho 布教所</footnote>

<footnote n="309">³⁰⁹ bunkyōkai 分教会</footnote>

<footnote n="310">³¹⁰ daikyōkai 大教会</footnote>

<footnote n="311">³¹¹ Church lineages are derived from the grand church from which the lineage descends. Thus, for followers who are based at a grand church as their “home site”, they are exclusively based at this site as there are no supervising churches which are part of its lineage to which they can be connected.</footnote>

<footnote n="312">³¹² When there is a marriage between a Tenrikyo man and a Tenrikyo woman, generally, the woman will become part of the man's church and thereafter, their children are part of this church. This is in accordance with the household (ie) system in Japan.</footnote>
quantities of people bearing the titles of lay minister (kyōtō 教人) and Yoboku. Included in the requirements for a “branch church” to become eligible for the designation of “grand church,” the site must have a specified number of churches which have “branched off” from their church.

Branch churches are connected to the grand church from which they originated. In turn, mission stations are attached to the branch church or grand church to which its founder is connected. During my research, Tenrikyo Church Headquarters directly supervised about 240 churches, the majority of which were grand churches (Kato 2017a: 64). Subordinate and superior churches of the same lineage are considered to be spiritually connected. From a legal perspective, though, each Tenrikyo church is a separate entity. Thus, although their legal status is defined as independent from each other, in practice they are highly connected in numerous ways, including financially, socially, and conceptually (Yamada 2012: 325-28; Morioka 1989: 311-18, cited in Kato 2017a: 64). This organizational structure mirrors the hierarchical relationship common in traditional Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, Japanese new religions, and numerous other Japanese cultural contexts, which I discuss in further detail in the following subsection.

Tenrikyo churches and mission stations, whether in Europe or elsewhere, are generally home-based. They are officially headed by one individual, but in practice are whole family affairs. Notably for married couples, similar to the operation of TEC, efforts for the mission station, branch church, or grand church are most commonly joint endeavors engaged in by both the male head<fnref n="313" /> and his wife, thereby manifesting the important Tenrikyo teaching of two-in-one relationships in which spouses (or others) work together toward a common task or goal, most often through the performance of separate, complementary roles. Children growing up in a lineage-based site of worship are de-facto core members of it, amongst other reasons, because the Monthly Service is hosted in their home and also through the emphasis their families place on the path of Tenrikyo and their site's particular lineage. Moreover, it is commonly anticipated that a child of the family (most commonly the eldest son) will take over serving as its head<fnref n="314" />.

<footnote n="313">³¹³ It is also possible, though somewhat less common, for women to serve as head.</footnote>

<footnote n="314">³¹⁴ In the one instance of this that had already taken place at a French mission station, it was the head of the mission station's parent church in Japan that decided it was time for the approximately thirty-year-old daughter of the acting mission head to take over the position.</footnote>
An important point regarding the categorical difference between “mission stations” (of which there are twenty-two in Europe) and “branch churches<fnref n="315" />” (of which there is one in Europe) is that the establishment of a mission station is authorized by the head minister of the founder’s home church rather than by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, which as previously noted, the founding of a branch church (or a grand church) requires. Additionally, the establishment of a new Tenrikyo branch or grand church is viewed as a much more serious commitment than that of a mission center, as it is positioned as being established by God the Parent via Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, in comparison to the founding of a new mission station, which is positioned as simply a human endeavor. Yet another difference between these two categories is that branch churches generally have larger membership than mission stations.

This highly codified system partially explains why there was only one site in Europe classified as a Tenrikyo “branch church” (Bordeaux Kyokai) during my research, while the remaining twenty-two lineage-based sites of worship in Europe were classified as “mission stations.” Because this latter category has far fewer codified requirements, the existence of these sites during the introductory period of the religion to the European continent during which the presence of long-time followers to any particular lineage site was generally limited was encouraged. It should be noted that Tenrikyo membership, as based on this structural system of organization, is significantly different than the system(s) of religious “membership” of the most common religious traditions of Europe: Catholicism and Protestantism<fnref n="316" />, in which what is of chief importance is the particular religious tradition one belongs to, with the particular site of worship one attends being largely secondary and based primarily in the social rather than spiritual realm. The difficulty this lineage-based system was met with in the broader conceptualizing systems of Westerners in comparison to that of Japanese people is a pertinent subject in the context of my research, which the following subsection discusses.

<footnote n="315">³¹⁵ There are no grand churches in Europe.</footnote>

<footnote n="316">³¹⁶ In Eastern Europe, a significant portion of the population is Orthodox Christian, but there are no Tenrikyo mission stations in the countries where this is a major religion, thus why I omitted including “Orthodox Christian” in this statement.</footnote>
The Tenrikyo lineage system through which the religion is organized is a structure present in numerous other contexts in Japan. It is not an independent invention of Tenrikyo but is reflective, rather, of the broader cultural context in which it came about. The recognition of the similarity between the lineage system of Tenrikyo and that of other organizational systems present in Japan is both something that immediately stuck out to me upon learning of how the religion is organized and also something that I heard evoked by numerous Japanese followers charged with serving as sources of information on the religion in both European and Japanese contexts. Generally amongst such religious actors operating in this role, I heard it explained that because Tenrikyo is something that came about in Japan, it is normal that it follows the cultural logic that was in place at the time (and cultural context) it was developed. Relatedly, in my observations, this lineage-based system of organization was generally much more easily understood and regarded as “normal” in Japan than it was in Western settings, essentially due to the broader culturally-based references that exist within the wider frame of these societies.

I would like to now explore two prominent Japanese organizational systems that are parallel to the Tenrikyo lineage system in order to show it in relation to the wider cultural context from which it developed and continues to most prominently exist, as the vast majority of Tenrikyo followers and sites of worship are in Japan. These two highly parallel and closely related systems are that of the *ie* (traditional household) system and that of the Japanese corporate model. Numerous authors, including several of whom I reference hereafter, have discussed the Japanese *ie* system as an institutional logic for Japanese corporations. Their discussions of these two largely parallel systems can be extended to the Tenrikyo lineage system and thus, inclusion of their insights is highly pertinent to explaining and contextualizing this prominent aspect of Tenrikyo. The similarity between the lineage system of Tenrikyo and the corporate Japanese model is something that I was both struck with immediately when I learned of the Tenrikyo system of organization and that I later heard alluded to by multiple Japanese-American Tenrikyo followers. Relatedly, Tenrikyo's resemblance to the “pyramid”<fnref n="317" /> business model is something I

<footnote n="317">³¹⁷ The “pyramid” business model is a commonly present component of Japanese corporations but similarly refers to the private entrepreneurial model of “pyramid business schemes” that are both commonly practiced and sometimes viewed dubiously in the US.</footnote>
heard evoked, often as a feature of the religion that seemed somewhat strange to certain American followers (or potential followers), generally regardless of their having Japanese ancestry<fnref n="318" /> or not.

The similarity between these two systems is rooted in the greater Japanese cultural context in which they both came about. Nakane’s 1965 discussion of the structural model of Japanese corporations being largely derived from the cultural logic of the traditional *ie* system is appropriate to begin an exploration of this topic. She begins by arguing that the creation of a person’s identity is generally based in one of two systems: either that of common qualification or common membership in a social group. In other words, identity is derived from membership common to all members of a group (which she refers to as “situated position”) or persons sharing the same qualification (which she refers to as “qualifying position”).

For example, membership of a village refers to situational position as the villagers all happen to live in the same locality whereas membership of a clan, or a caste or as landowner or tenant refers to the qualifying position derived only from having a special quality. Taking an example from the field of industry, being an employee of a company refers to the situational position while that of a turner refers to the qualifying position. In the same way, professors, clerks, students all indicate a qualifying position while being connected with a university indicates the situational position of the members. (Nakane 1965: 198).

Nakane (1965) supposes that in any society, an individual belongs through situation and qualification to a social group or social structure and that while it is possible for these two group types to coincide, in almost all cases, “the two are entangled and form two separate groups.” (p. 198). She continues that in Japan, when a Japanese person compares herself to another, she prefers to look at her situational context rather than her specific qualification. In this structure, it is the situation, such as the school or company, that has a strong social function in group formation. Nakane furthermore asserts that this type of group recognition is deeply rooted in Japanese society and can be seen in the *ie*<fnref n="319" /> concept that is found throughout Japan. She views

<footnote n="318">³¹⁸ I note this because I sometimes encountered the impression among Japanese people (i.e. people born and raised from Japan) that people of Japanese ancestry and Japanese physical features remained “Japanese,” when this did not present itself always as the perspective of such aforementioned people.</footnote>

<footnote n="319">³¹⁹ In Bhappu’s 2000 article discussed immediately hereafter, there was no mention of specifically the merchant class.</footnote>
the most fundamental element of the *ie* to be that it is a “community” composed of family members (generally the kin of the household head and possibly others.) In this system, the relationships within the *ie* should be and generally are prioritized before any other relationship. She explains that the group one is part of is deeply connected with the individual sphere of a person’s ideas and ways of thought.

In the Tenrikyo system, this refers on a micro-level to their being members of a specific lineage-based site of worship and its connected lineage, and on a macro-level to their being members of the broader Tenrikyo religion. In the context of my research, we see the situationally based belonging of the majority of the core members of the TEC community as being rooted in their home sites of worship and connected lineages, the broader religious sphere, and also in the “TEC community,” as they also spent time at and were closely linked in practice to this situationally-based context separate from their lineage-based one. Thus, they are rooted in multiple situationally based groups that exist in concert with their involvement in and connection to the faith.

This *ie* structure was largely established during the feudal Edo period of Japan (1603-1868) and was embedded in the broader feudal system (Bhappu 2000, Kitano 1970, Kumagai 1992). Bhappu, in discussing the context in which this structure came about, asserts that the Japanese feudal system was somewhat different than both the Chinese and European feudal systems. This is because it contained some elements of the dominance-submission pattern found in China but also some components of the European conception of rights and duties. “Rights and duties in the Japanese family were learned and practiced as *ko* and *on*, *ko* referring to duty to parents and *on* referring to the reciprocal obligations between family members.” (Bhappu 2000: 410). In Bhappu’s explanation of these terms, she highlights that they have much more concrete meanings than the abstract European concept of rights and duties. Citing Nagai and Bennett (1953: 242-243), Bhappu describes *ko* and *on* as defined specifically for given situations and as such become solidly established rules of family relations. Bhappu then expands that the Japanese concepts of *ko* and *on* become even more clear when contrasted with the Chinese patriarchal concept of *ko* that is a defined component of the Chinese Confucian family system.
“*Ko* , as practiced in China, signifies absolute allegiance to serve and honor one's parents, whereas in Japan it is modified to include *on* , which stresses reciprocity and obligation, rather than obedience. In Japan emphasis is also placed on the equivalence of *ko* and *on*,” (Bhappu 2000: 410). Bhappu further explains that in this system, there was a clear differentiation regarding the balance of *ko* and *on* between the head of the *ie* and each family member in it, which included not only kin but also tenets and servants. In this, we can see the foundational cultural logic for one’s “homesite” of worship at which one is based and rooted to be similarly a family-like sphere to which one is rooted through birth. Generally, according to the largely though not entirely patrilineal and patrilocal system of both the Japanese *ie* system and the Tenrikyo lineage system, only females are not part of the same group from birth until death, most often becoming part of their husband’s group upon marriage.

Bhappu (2000) asserts that the *ie* system of merchants<fnref n="320" /> was the structural precursor of modern Japanese corporations. It was common for merchant households to establish *bunke* (branch) *ie* beside the *honke* (main) *ie* to expand their distribution channels geographically. This structural model also provided a manner through which the “corporate” merchant *ie* could perpetuate itself from one generation to the next. Because only one son could inherit the *honke ie*, the non-inheriting sons would have to leave the *honke ie* to establish *bunke ie*, thereby creating a relationship of *ko* and *on* between the head of the *honke ie* and the heads of the *bunke ie* (Bhappu 2000: 211). The broader Tenrikyo lineage-based system of organization mirrors this merchant *ie* system that is also present in the structural model of Japanese corporations. A difference, though, between the founding of branch sites in the merchant *ie* system and the founding of Tenrikyo sites in its lineage-based system is that in the latter, the founding of a new site is not based on each son needing to have his own site of worship to head. Amongst other reasons, this is due to it being common for sons of Tenrikyo church families who do not assume the role of head<fnref n="321" /> to remain based at their familial church and serve it in other capacities.

<footnote n="320">³²⁰ Merchants were categorically included among the lower classes. The upper class was occupied principally by the
samurai class.</footnote>

<footnote n="321">³²¹ The most commonly followed model is for the eldest son to serve as his father’s successor in accordance with this being the general model in Japanese society, though this is not always the case.</footnote>
The larger structural entity of the Japanese merchant family composed of multiple layers of “parent” and “child” households was centered around the original *honke ie* in which each *bunke ie* was ranked in relation to its genealogical distance from the original *honke ie*. In this system, Bhappu (2000) explains, both the individual merchant *ie* and the expanded structure of multiple hierarchically linked *ie* operated as a corporation with social, economic, and moral aspects characterized by a network of hierarchical ties among people within an *ie* and also within the larger linked system. Both the micro-systems of the individual *ie* and larger macro-level systems of linked *ie* were governed by the principle of *ko* and *on*.

This relationship of *ko* and *on* that was present in the system of hierarchically connected merchant *ie* is also present in the Japanese corporate system and more importantly to the subject of my thesis, in the relationship between “parent” and “child” sites of worship in the Tenrikyo lineage system, such as branch churches and grand churches. As previously noted, in the European context where my research was principally based, excluding one site, this was between mission stations in Europe and their supervising branch churches in Japan. The most obvious forms through which this *ko* and *on* relationship were manifested in this Tenrikyo system of organization was the guidance and assistance offered by the supervising church to its subordinate site of worship, the inclusion and welcoming of members of the “child site” to its “parent church” and their inclusion into the parent church’s wider church family, and the “child site’s” taking council from and making economic donations to their “parent church.”

Further included in the similarities between the Japanese corporate model based on the merchant *ie* system and that of the Tenrikyo lineage system is that this system functioned as a ceremonial group in which the sharing of both spiritual beliefs and attitudes was common and often not limited to the individual *ie* but also present in its broader lineage. The moral character of the larger linked system was marked by participation in common rituals, which reinforced the larger network as a structural entity (Bhappu 2000: 412, Kondo 1990). In parallel, Tenrikyo followers generally only spend time at and participate in the rituals of their “home site” and other sites of the same lineage, most often those of the “parent” or “grandparent” sites of their “home site.”

<footnote n="322">³²² I use the term “grandparent” metaphorically to refer to sites, most commonly grand churches, that are two “generations” removed from one’s “home site”. This is not a term I encountered in my research.</footnote>
Thus, they come to know and embody the ritual along with social and moral components of the group contained and transmitted within this specific lineage-based sphere.

In Nakane’s 1965 discussion of the close, hierarchically defined relationships that occur within “situationally-based groups,” such as those of the Japanese *ie*, Japanese corporations, and Tenrikyo sites of worship, she explains that the “parent-child” relationship of these sites (*oyabun-kobun*) is a common component of their organization. In this structure, the seniority rule develops in which those who have been part of the group for longer generally occupy a hierarchically higher position. Their contact with the group itself serves as social capital which by its very nature cannot be transferred to another group. According to Nakane’s assertion of the seniority rule of hierarchy in this system, it is structurally logical in Tenrikyo that the head of a lineage-based site of worship is the person (or descendant of the person) who has been part of the lineage, and the specific site of worship that they head, the longest, which in most cases is the founding person of the site.

Further evocative of the similarities between the traditional *ie* system, the organizational model of Japanese corporations, and that of Tenrikyo's generally followed model is Bhappu's mention that the role of section head in Japanese corporations is largely analogous to the head of an *ie*, meaning that of a father figure (2000: 213). Correspondingly, as mentioned in discussion of the head of TEC, the person charged with leadership of this European center assumes his role largely through acting as the “father” of the site and the head couple functions as the “parents” of the center. This parental manner of assuming the leadership role of a Tenrikyo site is mirrored in other Tenrikyo sites, both lineage and non-lineage based. This is reflective of both the above-discussed leadership model that exists in other Japanese contexts and also the emphasis placed on the parent-child relational model and the collaborative efforts between husband and wife that are prominent relational models in the Tenrikyo faith and practiced methods of organization.

This system of a seniority-based model of hierarchy which involves *oyabun-kobun* type relationships is also present in Tenrikyo on a more profound level through the conceptualization of the divine entity of “God the Parent.” As this divine entity is positioned in the religion as the original (gender neutral or dual-gendered) parent who existed before all else and brought about the original conception of humanity as its children, there is no entity positioned as the forebearer
of God the Parent, a “God the Grandparent” so to speak. Thus, in a hierarchical model based on seniority, God the Parent is positioned as the ultimate authority. Similarly, the foundress, who is conceptualized in the faith as having the soul of the original mother of all humanity, is positioned as the original human parent<fnref n="323" />, thereby according her through similar logic the status of being the ultimate human authority form<fnref n="324" />, albeit one who currently exists on earth exclusively in spiritual form.

The important presence in the religion of this parent-child structure of hierarchical authority was displayed, among other occasions, through speaking with Yuko Sugimoto: the wife of the head of the mission station to which I was rooted, thereby rendering her responsible for teaching me about the religion and guiding me in it. I somewhat commonly asked her about abstract aspects of Tenrikyo. One example was the seemingly confounding assertion I encountered that Oyasama's soul resides in the foundress' sanctuary in a very real and literal way, and yet also is the healing entity who works through the Yoboku in the administration of the Sazuke and is thus capable of being anywhere at any time (and moreover, in multiple places at once.) To this question, she responded to the best of her ability, but then told me that she knows certain things in Tenrikyo are difficult to understand, and that some things in the faith are difficult for her to completely understand as well. We know that such things are the way they are, though, because they are explained as being as such by Oyasama (our original mother).

To this, I would also like to add that this type of knowledgeable parental authority is also attributed to other trusted sources such as church leaders and elder family members, such as parents and grandparents. In such a model, it is not so much the verifiable quality of the information related through such “parental” sources that renders them as believable, but rather the source of hierarchical authority associated with their seniority. In this, we can see an example of

<footnote n="323">³²³ In the Tenrikyo account of how humans came into existence, there was also a “father” involved in the first conception who thereafter became absent from this story, leaving it unclear if the original father was henceforth irrelevant or if, as I heard relayed as a theory from a core member of TEC, that this original father (who is depicted as a fish in this story) was absorbed into the original mother, thereby interpretively rendering her somewhat dual-gendered.</footnote>

<footnote n="324">³²⁴ During my research, I encountered some theorization regarding if Oyasama and God the Parent remain as two separate entities, or if in fact, when it was accepted for the foundress to serve as the “Shrine of God” at the age of forty-one and/or when she left her physical body (or, in nonreligious terms: died), if she and God the Parent became one. This is a complicated theological topic that is beyond the scope of my research focus.</footnote>
what Sperber 21996:149) referred to as “reflective beliefs,” stating, “Reflective beliefs can be
counter-intuitive-or, more precisely, they can be counter-intuitive with respect to our intuitions
about their subject-matter while, at the same time, our metarepresentational reasons for accepting
them are intuitively compelling.” In instances such as the one evoked above, although the
information regarding what one is told in such contexts is largely outside the realm of verifiability
or in accordance with a person’s greater sphere of knowledge, because the source from which it
came is regarded with confidence, often the information conveyed by that source is also regarded
with confidence.

Interestingly, Nakane (1965) includes in her discussion of the widespread presence of the
*oyabun-kobun* relationship present in a variety of Japanese groups that Japanese new religions<fnref n="325" />
which developed after WWII “depend on the organizational basis of [an] emotional, vertical, and
face-to-face relationship under their leader,” (p. 211). She later expands that such vertical
relationships exist also in “traditional religious groups of long history,” such as the Shin sect of
Buddhism, though in a slightly different way, and is also contained, she specifically notes, in the
organizational system of Tenrikyo. The specific type of relationship she describes that occurs
between the leader (of a site) and the followers (of that site) is an important component to
understanding the wider context of Tenrikyo. Although TEC is not included in the lineage system
discussed as the primary topic of this chapter, the majority of people included in the TEC
community were, as Tenrikyo followers, part of this system which has as a key component this
type of relationship between a follower and the head of their “home site.”

Nakane (1965) contends that the type of relationship that exists between vertically connected sites and also between a particular head and those under their guidance and authority cannot simply be called feudalistic nor can it be easily changed by industrialization or influences from Western culture. “It could be strengthened by the feudal system but not made by it. It should be remembered that it is latent and firmly-rooted in the heart of every Japanese.” (p. 210). This statement made by Nakane strongly underlines the culturally expansive role of emotion apropos this relational structure that is present in and conducive to the hierarchical and lineage-based

<footnote n="325">³²⁵ As a reminder to the reader, although Tenrikyo is classified as a Japanese new religion, it came about in the end half of the 19th century, thus well before the Second World War.</footnote>
structure of Tenrikyo, particularly regarding how it exists amongst Japanese people. Although for
many Westerners the Tenrikyo model of organization may be difficult to understand or embrace,
it is largely in accordance with a structural model present in a variety of other Japanese contexts
and thus, it is a logical and emotionally evocative one to people based in this broader Japanese
framework. The lack of this normalized and emotionally invested relationship in this “parent-
child” structural model amongst people of cultural backgrounds not as marked by this feature,
such as most Westerners, was one of the numerous challenges present in efforts to propagate
Tenrikyo in Europe.

*Lineage-based and regionally based Tenrikyo sites: two separate categories that together
compose the dispersed presence of Tenrikyo*

In addition to the longitudinally based lineage system described above that is constructed through
and based on interpersonal and inter-site connections, there exists a secondary, laterally based
system of organization in Tenrikyo that is location specific. TEC is an example of a site in this
secondary organizational category. A main purpose of TEC and other such regionally based
centers is to facilitate communication and interaction between different lineage-based sites in a
specific geographic region (Kato 2017a: 64-65). In Japan, each prefecture is defined as a
diocese<fnref n="326" /> and is overseen by a diocese office³²⁷ which functions as an administrative office of
Tenrikyo Church Headquarters. Overseas countries are similarly grouped together by geographic
region which are overseen by a “mission headquarters<fnref n="328" />,” “mission center<fnref n="329" />,” or “mission
post<fnref n="330" />,” depending on the size of the Tenrikyo following in the area with which it is associated
(Kato 2017a). The former being associated with that of a larger presence and the latter with that
of a smaller presence. TEC is defined as a “mission center.” Its smaller counterpart of “Tenrikyo
UK Centre” (which I discuss later in this chapter) is defined as a “mission post” (ibid).

<footnote n="326">³²⁶ kyōku 教区</footnote>

<footnote>kyōmu shichō 教務支庁</footnote>

<footnote n="328">³²⁸ Dendōchō 伝道庁</footnote>

<footnote n="329">³²⁹ shucchōjo 出張所</footnote>

<footnote n="330">³³⁰ renrakusho 連絡所</footnote>
Similar to other laterally based sites, TEC and Tenrikyo UK Centre bring together followers from multiple church lineages but cannot serve as a “home site” to anyone. This is an important point of differentiation that was purposefully brought to my attention by multiple key actors of TEC. These lateral overseas sites are administratively supervised by the Tenrikyo Overseas Department<fnref n="331" />. As explained by Kato (2017a: 75), a lineage-based site of worship is “symbolically connected with Tenrikyo Church Headquarters in terms of these two interlacing organizational structures, with the spiritual relationship with its lineage traditionally being the primary source of connection (Yamada 2012: 325-28).”

When I first met Masato Kato during my initial impromptu participation in the Tenrikyo European Seminar (July 2015), in our discussion of the Tenrikyo religion in its international context, he explained that large Tenrikyo populations outside of Japan are generally associated with major waves of Japanese immigration, with their descendants composing the majority of followers in these locations, or countries that had been occupied by Japan<fnref n="332" />. As was also brought to my attention by Kato at this time, the locations of the larger, laterally based “mission headquarters” are directly reflective of these historical circumstances. “Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters of America” (located in Los Angeles, founded in 1934) which is responsible for the continental United States<fnref n="333" /> and Canada, “Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters of Hawaii” (located in Honolulu, founded in 1954), and Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters of Brazil (*Sede Missionária do Brasil*, located in São Paulo, founded in 1951) are largely the result of these regions’ sizable reception of Japanese immigrants. Lateral sites such as Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters in Taipei (founded in 1934) and Tenrikyo Mission Headquarters of Korea (presently located in Seoul, founded in Busan in 1909) are demonstrative of significant Tenrikyo populations outside of Japan whose presence is associated with Japanese colonialism<fnref n="334" />.

<footnote n="331">³³¹ *Tenrikyō kaigaibu* 天理教海外部</footnote>

<footnote n="332">³³² His point is further discussed in Kato 2017a (66-68).</footnote>

<footnote n="333">³³³ Alaska would presumably be included in this group, but as of present, there are no Tenrikyo sites of worship in this state.</footnote>

<footnote n="334">³³⁴ To further offer the reader an insight into Tenrikyo's international presence manifested through these regionally based sites, I would also like to cite smaller Tenrikyo sites charged with overseeing geographic regions outside of Japan³³⁴ to situate TEC (founded in 1970) within the broader global framework in which it exists. The sites listed in this paragraph are affiliated both with regions that previously were subjects of Japanese colonialism and also</footnote>
The figure below illustrates the dual-layered system of organization composed of lineage and regionally based sites in which they are connected to Tenrikyo Church Headquarters through separate channels of connection.

<figure><img src="image_21.png" /></figure>

A Tenrikyo Church Headquarters

B Grand Church

C Branch Church

D Mission Station

E Regional Center (e.g. TEC)

<caption>Figure 2: Tenrikyo dual-layered system of organization.</caption>

The type of relationship between the regionally based site of TEC and the twenty-three lineage-based sites of worship in Europe during my research was an essential component to understanding the multi-layered presence of the Tenrikyo religion on the European continent. TEC was connected to these lineage-based sites not as a parent church or officially supervising entity, but rather as a latitudinal center of support and comradery. These mission stations dispersed throughout multiple countries (depicted in the map hereafter) were all connected to TEC and thus composed an important part of its community. Because the multiple sites in the London and Paris area are not clearly depicted in this map, I would like to note that there were four lineage-based sites located in the Paris area and also four lineage-based sites in the London area. I will discuss these lineage-based sites in further detail later in this chapter.

regions without this history. Other such sites include: Nepal Renrakusho (1966), Mission Center of Columbia (1972), Mission Center in Singapore (1972), New York Center (1977), Mission Centre in Hong Kong (1978), Mission Center in Thailand (1982), Mission Center in Mexico (1985), Indonesia Shutchosho (1985), Mission Center in the Philippines (1985), Mission Centre in Oceania (1977). (In this listing, the word "Tenrikyo" was removed to avoid unnecessary reduncancy.) Tenrikyo UK Centre is the most recently founded geographically based site, officially coming into existence in 2000. (TENRIKYO 2017-2018).
<figure><img src="image_22.png" /><figcaption>Image 8: Presence of lineage-based Tenrikyo sites in Europe.</figcaption></figure>

Most of these European mission stations were quite socially connected with each other, particularly on the part of the families who hosted them. As partially explained previously, their interactions usually took place at TEC or other Tenrikyo sites open to all followers regardless of church lineage, such as certain contexts in Tenri City, rather than at each other's home-based mission stations. Through this, TEC, and extendedly Tenri City, functioned as meeting places for spatially dispersed followers of different lineages.

I include hereafter a simplified depiction of these predominately unidirectional social flows in which people of multiple European mission stations would gather together at TEC, but people from the greater “TEC community” did not gather in local mission stations other than the one to which they were rooted to as their “home site.” As shown in this model, the underlying commonality of all Tenrikyo affiliations is the connection to Tenrikyo Church Headquarters. It should be noted that this diagram only shows an overarching summary of the linkages between
European mission stations, TEC, and the broader Tenrikyo structural system in order to equip the reader with a basic understanding of the social flows between sites and their position within the greater Tenrikyo organizational structure. The actual composition of these inter-site connections was much more complex. Furthermore, while some mission stations perfectly matched the model depicted below in that they were supervised by a branch church, which was in turn supervised by a grand church, this was not always the case. For example, some mission stations were directly supervised by grand churches, and some were supervised by branch churches that were supervised by larger branch churches, which were then in turn supervised by grand churches.

<figure><img src="image_23.png" /><figcaption>Figure 3: Connections and movement of followers between mission stations and general TEC population.</figcaption></figure>

The level of loyalty and rootedness Tenrikyo followers had to their own “home site” and its connected church lineage in comparison to the Tenrikyo faith more broadly was an interesting, though often subtle, culturally linked juxtaposition of perspectives present in multiple contexts of my fieldwork. Often, individuals of European, Latin American, and North American backgrounds, the latter of which were mostly, but not exclusively of Japanese ancestry, tended to attribute less importance to their official “home site” than Japanese people did. My observations
strongly suggested that such a lineage-based system was, in general, more easily conceptualizable to a Japanese person than to a Western person. This differentiation is culturally contextualizable in relation to the presence of this system in the broader realm of Japanese culture in comparison to it not being common in Western contexts. Most often, when discussing my thesis research with non-Tenrikyo Japanese people with limited or no knowledge of Tenrikyo, its lineage system was quickly understood and casually expressed to be viewed as a rather standard potential feature of a religious tradition. In contrast, often in discussions about my research with non-Tenrikyo Westerners that included the lineage component as a prominent feature of the lived experience of being a follower, a much lengthier explanation of this main element of Tenrikyo was needed in order for it to be understood.

This discrepancy in the lineage system being more normalized by Japanese people than non-Japanese people was also discussed by Kato (2009) in his discussion of Tenrikyo churches in the San Francisco Bay area. Kato explained that more than half of the non-Japanese<sup>335</sup> “members” of the three San Francisco area Tenrikyo churches included in his study were uncomfortable with the seniority-based, patriarchal church structure for both decision making and the assignment of leadership roles. The structure was generally associated with the eldest son of the current acting church head minister being the next in line to take over his father’s role, largely regardless of personal choice or capability. Kato further expanded on this by saying, “For these members, who consider individual choice, freedom, and accomplishment as the primary criteria for religious involvement, the structure of the current Tenrikyo community appears to be faced with cultural baggage,” (2009: 64). Several followers Kato interviewed described the lineage system as a block to their religious engagement because it drew boundaries between followers of different lineages, which contrasted with their preference for gathering with followers of the same religion, regardless of lineage. They expressed that this lineage-based mode of operation hindered their creation of bonds and mental support in the broader collection of Tenrikyo followers in the area. Several followers contrasted the separateness of Tenrikyo followers of different churches in the area with a small number of followers coming to each church, and generally not associating with

<footnote n="335"><sup>335</sup> In this instance, non-Japanese means people not born and raised in Japan. Most Tenrikyo followers in the US, including in the San Francisco Bay area, are of Japanese ancestry.</footnote>
followers of other churches despite being in the same area, to what they saw with Christian churches in which many families come together in the same place.

This difference in perspectives is understandable, in addition to the previously discussed system of the “ie” structure, also through other components of the cultural backgrounds to which these American Tenrikyo followers were rooted. As evoked previously, in Christianity, the dominant religion of Western culture(s) that is significantly influential to the naturalized conceptions of normality of people grounded in this cultural framework, adepts are not resolutely or indefinitely linked to a particular site of worship, but rather to a particular dogma and religious tradition that can be exercised in any place of worship dedicated to it. People operating in this system of religious belonging can thus find a religious home at any church of their denomination, and in many cases, personal liking. By contrast, Shinto tends to be a local religion in which devotees are often concerned with their local shrine and its connected *kami* (god/spirit).

*Variability in having or not having a “home site” in Europe*

When thinking of my research context, it is important to bear in mind that Tenrikyo “members” in Europe were not a uniform group in both their personal histories with the faith and also their interactions with TEC and its connected community. Some people in Europe who were categorized as Tenrikyo followers due to being rooted to a specific lineage-based site as their “home site,” and in many cases additionally through having become Yoboku<fnref n="336" />, did not come to TEC frequently or at all. Some Tenrikyo followers in Europe had become followers of this path while in Europe and thus were rooted to one of the multiple lineage-based sites on the continent. Other people in Europe came to be followers of the path themselves or via their ancestors through sites of worship elsewhere (which for most people of this category was in Japan) and thus had their home site of worship outside of the continent<fnref n="337" />. Generally, for such followers, TEC served as a geographically closer Tenrikyo site they could come to for both explicitly religious activities and also, as stated earlier in this chapter, to be socially connected to other followers of the faith.

<footnote n="336">³³⁶ One must be affiliated with a particular “home site” to attend the nine Besseki lectures to become a Yoboku.</footnote>

<footnote n="337">³³⁷ This excludes families who host mission stations in their homes.</footnote>
This latter motive was something that I heard mentioned as a reason to come to TEC from locations significantly outside of the Paris region.

Although the European lineage-based sites were a highly important component of the “TEC community” and the presence of Tenrikyo in Europe, they did not comprise an all-inclusive layer of all the members of this eclectic group. The presence of individuals at TEC for religious and non-religious events did not in all cases signal their “membership” in the religion as this was to a significant extent defined through one’s rootedness to a particular lineage-based site. Multiple people who I regularly saw at TEC Monthly Services and other pointedly religious events held at the center were not technically categorized as “members” of the religion due to their lack of membership to a particular lineage-based site<fnref n="338" /> (and also due to their personally held view of not being a “member”) despite their inclusion in the social world connected to these scenes.

One such member of the TEC community was a Paris-based British woman in her sixties, Christine, who had been connected to TEC, and part of its community, for several decades. She first came to know members of this group, and later the site of TEC, via her participation in Japanese lessons at ACFJT. During the first part of my fieldwork, she related to me upon our first interaction (which took place at a large religious event at TEC that drew followers from throughout the continent) that she sometimes visits multiple mission stations in the Paris area. Upon saying this, she detected my subtle expression of surprise due to having previously been told that while TEC is open to everyone, lineage-based sites are exclusively attended by followers of that particular site. In response, she told me that while she does occasionally spend time at multiple Paris-area lineage-based sites, in general, “they’re sometimes a little funny about going to different mission stations,” meaning that usually people associated with one lineage-based site were not free to attend other lineage-based sites<fnref n="339" />. She then expanded that because she was not a follower, which had already been noted to me by a prominent senior male social actor of TEC

<footnote n="338">³³⁸ These people are nonetheless more closely affiliated with the religion than other previously mentioned members of the broader TEC community whose affiliation with TEC is mainly through “cultural” activities rather than markedly “religious” ones.</footnote>

<footnote n="339">³³⁹ This was an inferential rule. If someone expressly voiced a desire to attend a mission station other than their habitual site, the response they receive would be dependent on numerous factors, such as the people and context involved.</footnote>
when he was explaining to me who she was from across the room before introducing us<sup>340</sup>, she
was somewhat freer to circulate between multiple lineage-based sites in the area whose head
families she has been amicably connected with for, often, multiple decades<sup>341</sup>.

Although there was a tendency for a positional difference within this social group between
“followers” grounded in the religion through a particular “home site” and members of the broader
community not rooted to a particular lineage-based site, this positional differentiation in the
group was principally based on their presence at TEC and their involvement in its social world.
Thus, although Christine was not technically classified as a follower of the religion nor was she
rooted to a particular mission station, her semi-regular presence at TEC in combination with the
long duration of time she had been coming there rendered her a long-term member of the TEC
community.

My own experience was quite different than Christine's regarding our rootedness, or lack thereof, to a particular mission station and lineage. Despite the fact that I attempted to explain to numerous key members of my research context that my involvement with the religion was primarily for my thesis research and that I was not considering an adoption of it as my own faith or religious practice, I was commonly positioned by others as a member of the mission station and connected lineage of Mr. Sugimoto. Given the organizational structure of the religion and my own recently developed involvement in it, this externally asserted positioning of my lineage affiliation was understandable. Because Mr. Sugimoto was the first person to invite me to a TEC Monthly Service and to participate in the European Seminar immediately afterwards which prompted my concentrated involvement with the religion, according to the Tenrikyo system of organization, he was positioned as my “spiritual parent,” and in concurrence, I was rooted to his mission station and its connected lineage. It was this mission station that would categorically serve as the designated site at which I would attend Monthly Services and through which I would be connected to the greater religious whole. I was never invited to spend time at any other mission station in France despite the fact that the majority of their heads (and head families) were

<footnote n="340">340 The main reason she was singled out as someone I should meet was because similar to myself, Christine was a native English speaker.</footnote>

<footnote n="341">³⁴¹ I say “often” because not all of these families had been in the Paris area for multiple decades.</footnote>
aware that I was conducting research on a subject concerning Tenrikyo in France and in Europe. Relatedly, I did not attempt to attend other Tenrikyo mission stations, instead choosing to adhere to the normalized model of only attending “my home site” in accordance with what I assessed to be most appropriate and “normal.”

My being linked with a sole lineage, as is standard in Tenrikyo, rather than being a free-roaming researcher, was demonstrated during my fieldwork in Japan. While there, I expressed an interest to Yuko, who accompanied me throughout the majority of my one and a half months of research there, to visit the supervising grand church of Bordeaux Kyokai, located only a short distance from Tenri City where I spent the majority of my fieldwork in Japan. My interest in going to this particular grand church was primarily because visiting this site was part of the broader experience of going to Tenri City for many people affiliated with Bordeaux Kyokai included in my research population. Most commonly for such individuals, a visit to this grand church accompanied their traveling to Tenri City, primarily for the named motivation of attending the nine Besseki lectures and becoming a Yoboku. I had heard about this supervising grand church from multiple people in France rooted to Bordeaux Kyokai who I became acquainted with during their time at TEC and thus was interested in going to the site myself in order to gain first-hand familiarity with it. When I expressed to Yuko my interest in visiting this grand church when we were in Tenri City, though, I received a response flavored with trepidation that one usually only visits the grand church of one's own lineage, which I was scheduled to do shortly later<fnref n="342" />. Although she did not directly say no, which one rarely does in Japanese culture, particularly in the case of Japanese women, her response made it evident that I should not pursue this request any further.

<footnote n="342">³⁴² Slightly previously, I had spent approximately one week at the familial home and natal branch church of Yuko which, upon marriage, she was longer categorized as a member of its lineage. Although I was not a member of this church or its lineage, I attended Morning and Evening Services held there. During my time staying there, I went with Yuko and members of her family living at this to the supervising branch church of this church to perform the “hinokishin” of ritually cleaning the area of this church on which the altars were located and the Service was performed in a manner largely similar to how this space is ritually cleaned at TEC. Because I was there principally as someone connected to Yuko, who was positioned as a member of this family rather than as a follower of this lineage, my spending time at the church of her natal home and visiting this supervising church was normalized as a happenstantial event. My visiting the grand church of Bordeaux Kyokai, in contrast, would not have made similar sense as I was not with someone closely connected to this site.</footnote>
In contrast to my own experience, it is probable that there were multiple reasons for Christine’s non-fixedness to any singular “home site” and her freedom to circulate between multiple lineage-based sites in the Paris area. It is reasonable to posit that one contributing factor was that she had been part of this social world for a significantly longer of period of time than myself, thereby allowing her expressed position in the religion to be accepted through having demonstrated it to be constant over time. Another contributing factor may have been her significantly greater age than my own<fnref n="343" /> within a Japanese cultural system that strongly associates increased age with an increased hierarchical position, thereby according her more personal authority. (In my own case, I often had the sense that it was thought by numerous followers that although I was not yet an adherent of the religion, because I was still relatively young and new to the path, it was likely or at least possible that I would later come around and become a follower.)

As indicated previously, there were also people I include in the TEC community who came to the center several times a year for non-markedly religious events while remaining absent from expressly religious gatherings. I argue that these individuals, too, were members of the broader “TEC community” due to their social implantation in the wider group and the familiarity with which they functioned in this social world. Their developed connection to TEC and to its mode of functioning, particularly during such events, was demonstrated through the knowledgeable ease with which they operated while there. In this, we can see that although European lineage-based sites were an important contributing component to the presence of Tenrikyo in Europe and connectedly, to the “TEC community,” not all people included in this social collectivity were rooted to one of these European lineage-based sites, or for that matter to any lineage-based site, which was the primary requirement of “membership” in this religious organization.

<footnote n="343">³⁴³ I was in my early thirties during my fieldwork.</footnote>
## b. The official lineage-based presence of the faith in numerous European locations

### Tenrikyo sites of worship in France: local or semi-local Tenrikyo realms that converged to varying degrees with TEC

In France, in addition to TEC, there was also the highest number of lineage-based sites of any country in Europe, thereby dually rendering it the most prominent country of this religion's presence for the continent through both the inter-lineage site of TEC and the intra-lineage sites. More specifically, seven of the twenty-two European-based mission stations were located in France, along with the continent's sole "branch church" of Bordeaux Kyokai<fnref n="344" />. Four of these mission stations were in the Paris region, one was in Strasbourg, one was in Lyon, and one was in Collonges-sous-Salève<fnref n="345" />, with all but one headed by Japanese people<fnref n="346" />.

The heads of the four mission stations in the local Paris area, along with their families, were long-term core members of the "TEC community" who were regularly present at TEC. They served, along with TEC residents<fnref n="347" />, as the primary religious actors who prepared and orchestrated events and activities at the center. These families were prominent members of the wider "TEC community" who were regularly at the center for a variety of other reasons<fnref n="348" /> as well, such as helping with upkeep of the center as hinokishin. Members of these families were a part of TEC in a manner where although they were not residents of the center, they were at home there, serving as "hosts" to less involved individuals who came.

The involvement of local mission station families as core members of the TEC community is dispersed throughout my thesis, with their socially important presence at TEC and in its

<footnote n="344">³⁴⁴ "Kyōkai" (教会) is the Japanese word for "church," which is also used in reference to Christian sites of worship, but not for Buddhist temples or Shinto shrines. "Kyō" (教) is the same kanji as the suffix of religious traditions, meaning "teachings" and "kai" (会) generally translates as "meeting" or "association." Its head minister, Michel Garnier, explained that they used this word rather than its French equivalent of église because of viewing the original Japanese word used in Tenrikyo to better convey what it is.</footnote>

<footnote n="345">³⁴⁵ western France near Swiss border</footnote>

<footnote n="346">³⁴⁶ I heard it mentioned that the mission station in France operated by a non-Japanese person was Laotian, though I never met this individual or heard more information about this site or its head.</footnote>

<footnote n="347">³⁴⁷ The people included in this role are not exclusively TEC residents and local mission station families.</footnote>

<footnote n="348">³⁴⁸ This is apart from the residents who lived at the center.</footnote>
connected social world clearly evidenced. Regarding the level of involvement that “followers” of
these lineage-based sites in France (and people who came to these mission stations but did not
include themselves in this category) had with TEC was dependent on both the individual (or
familial) situation of the follower and also the mission station to which they were rooted. Even in
the Paris area, not all “followers”<fnref n="349" />” who came to these local mission stations also came to TEC.
Notably, there was one large mission station located less than 30 minutes from TEC who I heard
described on multiple occasions by key social actors of TEC, including the head of this mission
station, to constitute a “large, close-knit community,” but whose members were nearly
completely absent from TEC. Conversely, members of another mission station in the Paris area
that also had a relatively sizable membership were regularly present at both Monthly Services of
this mission station and also TEC Monthly Services and other major events held there. Some
members of this mission station did not overly distinguish in their everyday discourse between
their relationship to the mission station to which they were officially rooted and to TEC and were
members of both communities. In my observations, some members discussed the locations as
being roughly equivalent Tenrikyo sites of worship while others displayed more cognizance of
their categorical difference.

Bordeaux Kyokai: a prominent “French” lineage-based sphere of Tenrikyo that intersects
with TEC

As stated previously, the only lineage-based site of worship in Europe to be classified as a
“branch church” was Bordeaux Kyokai, located, as its name implies, in the town of Bordeaux in
south-western France. As the largest lineage-based Tenrikyo site in Europe, its members
represent an important component of the religion’s presence in France and on the European
continent. This church was often depicted both directly and indirectly to be somewhat different
than other lineage-based sites both on the European continent and elsewhere. Most people who
attended it were French as was, more notably, its head minister: Michel Garnier.

<footnote n="349">³⁴⁹ I put “follower” in single quotations to convey that this is how people who attend a mission station with regularity or semi-regularity are generally categorized in the Tenrikyo system, even if not all such people would describe themselves in this way.</footnote>
When this site was founded in 1986, it was initially headed by the brother of the acting head minister during my research (Kato 2017a). Its acting head minister, Michel, was a physiotherapist and a certified reiki instructor. He was also a former judo practitioner who achieved a high level in the martial art. His introduction to the Tenrikyo religion and its sacred pilgrimage site of Tenri City<fnref n="350" /> was through this sport, as it purposefully was for numerous other people as well. In the case of Michel, when he was about twenty years old, he went to Tenri City for a judo training, a sport which the town is renowned for. During my participation in the class of the European Seminar he instructed, he explained that when he initially travelled to Tenri City, he was only there for judo and at that time, was completely uninterested in the religious side of the town. It was only at about the age of thirty, after numerous trips to Tenri City, that he became a follower of the faith. This is yet another example that helps us understand the persistent hopefulness present in the context of my research that through encouraging prolonged contact with the religion, one day, some non-Tenrikyo people toward which these efforts are directed may eventually become followers of the faith.

Michel, along with his Japanese wife who similarly became a follower of the faith as an adult, were core members of the TEC community despite their distance from the center. During my research, their adult son who lived in the Paris area and worked at ACFJT as the principal person charged with the cultural activities of the center was also a core member of this group. In reference to Michel, he was one of several non-Japanese religious actors solidly positioned as a core member of the community through his active and ongoing participation in the efforts and activities of TEC. Furthermore, he was generally regarded as a highly esteemed member of it, in large part for the precise reason that he was not Japanese (and moreover, that he was French in this French setting) in combination with his high level of involvement in this social world and his contributions to the progress of the path in France.

He was attributed a somewhat special status due to his dedication to the faith in combination with what I heard to be regarded as a special ability to convey the teachings to Westerners in a culturally adapted manner that rendered them more understandable and accessible. In addition to hearing this perspective discussed by others as a third person bystander, it was also directly

<footnote n="350">³⁵⁰ Technically, it is the point of the “Jiba” rather than the entire town of Tenri City that is considered sacred.</footnote>
presented to me in relation to my own rapport with the religion. The most direct example of this
took place a little over a year after I began my research on this group. During this time, I had
been to the pilgrimage town of Tenri City, participated in a variety of religious events and
trainings, studied the religion, and engaged in its practice. Yet, I remained openly unwavering in
my perspective that my involvement was as a researcher rather than as a follower or a person
potentially interested in becoming so.

When at the mission station to which I was rooted for a Monthly Service, Yuko told me that she
knew that various aspects of the religion could be difficult to understand, which as indicated
previously, was not the first time she related this emphatically framed perspective of partial
understanding. In her saying this, there was an underlying premise that she regarded this to
perhaps be the case partially because I was coming from a Western cultural background and that
she and her husband were coming from a Japanese cultural background. She suggested that I
speak with Michel, because as she told me, his way of explaining Tenrikyo was often easier for
Westerners to understand. Through this, an example of what was generally regarded in the core
group of the TEC community to be Michel's somewhat unique contribution to the greater group
was displayed in which his uncommon position contributed to the collaborative "music" of the
group in a similar manner to how I heard the music of the Service discussed by multiple
followers, in which different "instruments" come together in harmony to create a greater whole.
Or, as evoked in chapter five, the collaboration between these musical instruments and the ritual
dancers that together enacted this sacred metaphorical representation of the sacred teachings on
the functioning of the world, our bodies, and our ideal mode of social existence.

Members of Bordeaux Kyokai (a site located over 500 km from TEC) were a semi-regular
presence at TEC and were thus also part of the greater "TEC community," though to differing
degrees in relation to their current and previous presence at TEC. As the distance between the two
locations was significant, the journey to TEC from Bordeaux was generally made only for special
events such as the annual European Seminar and the annual followers' reunion. People rooted to
this site were a notable component of the greater "TEC community," albeit on the more
peripheral level of this two-tiered community, thereby further adding to its eclectic diversity and
non-fixed composition. For the annual reunion of followers, a group from Bordeaux usually came
to TEC together in a large van. This both saved them money in comparison to individual train
tickets and also incorporated the shared social activity of a road trip into their overall experience of coming to the center for this gathering of European-based followers. Some members of Bordeaux Kyokai came to TEC semi-regularly for such occasions, others from this site who I met at TEC came with much less frequency, while still others never came to TEC during my two years of fieldwork. In this, differing levels of enacted connectedness to TEC were displayed.

Based on the comments I heard from members of this church, there was a strong sense of community at this site that rendered it a fully separate site of “community” from TEC while simultaneously remaining part of the “TEC community.” While members of Bordeaux Kyokai generally came from Western backgrounds in which one’s place of religious belonging via one’s regularly attended site of worship need not remain fixed throughout one’s life, attendees of Bordeaux Kyokai often expressed a feeling of closeness and community to be a notable feature of this group. Their expressed understandings of the teachings and of the faith were commonly reflective of the site of Bordeaux Kyokai at which they initially learned of Tenrikyo and where they continued to be based. This site-specific concordant particularity was a generally present theme that I also heard evoked by other followers based in both Europe and Japan that was further affirmed through my own observations. In this, a commonly shared similarity between lineage-based sites was their site and lineage specific particularities.

Like other lineage-based sites of worship, in the Tenrikyo system of organization, Bordeaux Kyokai was officially more closely affiliated with its parent grand church in Japan than it was to TEC. In practice, though, although numerous members of Bordeaux Kyokai spoke to me about having visited this parent grand church as part of their experience of going to Japan (primarily for the purpose of their pilgrimage journey to Tenri City), a strong connection to this grand church was usually not expressed. I attribute this chiefly to the geographic distance between Bordeaux Kyokai and its parent grand church in Japan which translated to a limited amount of time spent at it or in other connected locations, such as its followers’ dormitory<fnref n="351" /> in Tenri City where members of this grand church lineage coming from multiple home sites of worship would stay while there. Furthermore, as discussed previously, the broader cultural system in which these

<footnote n="351">³⁵¹ Followers’ dormitories are operated by grand churches and house followers of their lineage during their time in Tenri City.</footnote>
French followers were based did not contain such a lineage-based system as a familiarized and common model of social organization. Thus, their “natural” connection to the parent church of their “home site” in France was not manifestly evident in relation to the broader cultural framework in which they were situated nor was it a culturally-adapted one as Bordeaux Kyokai was.

Not only did the members of this lineage-based site generally lack a strong feeling of membership to its parent church in Japan, but I also heard of the openness of Bordeaux Kyokai to welcoming followers officially rooted to other lineages expressed by numerous people connected to this site. This further illustrated this church’s lack of a strong adherence to a lineage-centric mode of operation. Connectedly, the primary local affiliation of several people involved in my study switched over time in association with changes in where they lived. For these people, during the time they lived in the Paris area, TEC served as their main site of worship and they actively participated in activities held at this center. Later, when they relocated to the Bordeaux area, Bordeaux Kyokai served in this role even though it was not their official “home site.”

For the several non-Japanese followers<fnref n="352" /> who did this, they expressed a view of both locations being roughly equivalent Tenrikyo sites of worship and did not overly differentiate between them based on their official designations. I also did not hear any evidence that would suggest that they viewed themselves to not be full members of the Bordeaux Kyokai community while there. Similarly, I heard from other members of the Bordeaux community that any Tenrikyo follower can come to Bordeaux Kyokai, regardless of one's official church lineage: a sentiment also expressed by its head minister. In contrast, a young French woman who was a member of this church told me about a Japanese Tenrikyo follower raised in a church family in Japan she was close with who was unsure about going to Bordeaux to study or work. This was largely because there was not a Tenrikyo site of his own lineage located there. He had indicated to her that if he came to live in France for a period, it would be better to be in a part of the country where a mission station of the same lineage as his own was located.

To better explain the connection Bordeaux Kyokai had to TEC and also to its own lineage and the central point of the religion of Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, to which all followers are

<footnote n="352">³⁵² More specifically, these “non-Japanese” followers were French and Congolese.</footnote>
ultimately connected, I include hereafter a diagram of the connections between Bordeaux Kyokai, TEC, its grand church in Japan, and Tenrikyo Church Headquarters. The connections included in this diagram are theoretically applicable to all followers linked to Bordeaux Kyokai as their “home site,” though in practice, social affiliations were more complex and varied than what is depicted.

<figure><img src="image_24.png" /><figcaption>Figure 4: Connections between Bordeaux Kyokai and other sites.</figcaption></figure>

*Being guided in the Tenrikyo faith, being rooted in a lineage*

My connection to the mission station headed by Mr. Sugimoto and his wife, Yuko, where I attended Monthly Services on the first Sunday of the month throughout the course of my fieldwork, located approximately one hour from Paris, also included an extended organizational connection to other sites of worship connected to this site via its lineage. Similar to other Tenrikyo lineages, the relational links of this lineage were often more than merely theoretical or thinly constructed organizational ones. The “parent” branch church in Japan of this Paris area mission station where Mr. Matsukawa had been born and raised included numerous multigenerational familial connections. Through my being connected with this mission station and the Sugimoto family who headed it, I was also connected to a broader social collectivity, not only through official lineage affiliations, but also through interpersonal relationships.
At the time of my fieldwork, Mr. Sugimoto had lived in the Paris area for over twenty years. Since his arrival in France as a young adult missionary Japanese teacher, he had been closely affiliated with TEC and its connected community. His wife, Yuko, who arrived somewhat later following their semi-arranged marriage<fnref n="353" />, along with their French-born children were also long-term active members of the TEC community and saw this European-based inter-lineage group with much more regularity than they did members of their own lineage in Japan. Mr. Sugimoto's twenty-year relationship with TEC, though, was much less significant than his family's relationship to the branch church in Japan to which he was rooted, where multiple generations of his family had lived and been key members. This connection included close multi-generational relationships not only with his own family members, but also to other families closely connected to this lineage, notably the other two families with whom he was raised on this church's grounds. One was the head minister's family and the other was a family who, similar to his own, had lived onsite for multiple generations to assist in the efforts made for this church.

It is interesting to mention that sometime before coming to France, Mr. Sugimoto had lived for several years during his early twenties in northern California as a caretaker at a boarding house for Japanese Tenrikyo high school students studying in the US in order to acquire a strong command of the English language for their future Tenrikyo endeavors. Through this experience, Mr. Sugimoto was linked with the broader international, American, and English-speaking social spheres of Tenrikyo. This was demonstrated in numerous ways throughout my research, for example, multiple orators of the Besseki lectures in English that I attended during my time in Tenri City, discussed in further detail in chapter ten, which Mr. Sugimoto scheduled for me were former students that he cared for during their high school years in California. Additionally, Mr. Sugimoto's older brother founded a mission station in the Los Angeles area<fnref n="354" />, thereby creating a close familiarity and lineage-based connection to the location. Mr. Sugimoto's other brother, the eldest of the three, lived in New York City for several years during which time he conducted

<footnote n="353">³⁵³ Older, and higher-ranking Tenrikyo individuals on both sides proposed the two individuals as being potentially a good marital match. Upon meeting, they quickly decided to follow this recommendation and marry, but this choice was not obligatory. Such marriages are rather common amongst Japanese Tenrikyo followers.</footnote>

<footnote n="354">³⁵⁴ This mission station, in accordance with the Tenrikyo system of organization, also had the branch church at which these Sugimotos were raised positioned as its parent church.</footnote>
"classic" missionary activities such as going door-to-door with Tenrikyo flyers³⁵⁵. He financed his stay in New York by working in Japanese restaurants, as is common for Japanese people to do in order to be able to pursue other non-paid pursuits in this city (Sooudi 2014). During his time there, he ended up being eligible for a Green Card by winning the Green Card lottery³⁵⁶, but did not pursue obtaining it and instead returned to Japan. This was because his widowed mother living at their familial church suffered a stroke which she was affected by at a time when all three of her sons were living abroad. The three Sugimoto brothers discussed which of the three of them would return to Japan to be with their mother and it was decided that the eldest would go; this is where he lived at the time of my fieldwork.

I depict hereafter the connections that the Sugimotos' mission station had to other Tenrikyo sites of worship, mainly of its own lineage, but also with the broader European and American Tenrikyo communities. The connections shown in this diagram are but a few of the connections held by this mission station. The principal reason for the inclusion of this diagram is to briefly illustrate that although all mission stations in Europe are connected to TEC, this connection is but one of multiple linkages held by each of these lineage-based sites of worship. Furthermore, the connection with TEC is not the oldest nor the most important connection if looked at from a historical or ecclesiastical perspective. Such multi-directional connections are typical amongst lineage-based sites of worship, including the twenty-three in Europe at the time of my research. Thus, one can see that although the multi-layered and multi-directional community of TEC was the focus of my research, the lineage-based sites which it included also encompassed multi-directional webs of connections beyond the European continent.

<footnote n="346">346 He did not found a mission station there.</footnote>

<footnote n="347">347 US Diversity Immigrant Visa Lottery Program</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_25.png" /><figcaption>Figure 5: Multi-directional connections of Sugimoto mission station</figcaption></figure>

*The presence of Tenrikyo in the UK: an intersecting Tenrikyo sphere across the English Channel*

In numerous ways, the European country outside of France that was most closely implicated in and represented at TEC and the European scene of Tenrikyo was the United Kingdom. Not only was this country the first in Europe to have an official Tenrikyo presence through the four missionaries sent there in 1910, whose efforts were relatively short lived, as discussed in the introductory section, but it also had the second most important Tenrikyo representation in Europe during my fieldwork. Five of the fifteen mission stations in Europe outside of France were in the UK. Like France, the majority of this presence was in or around its capital with four of the five UK-based mission stations located in the London area, and the fifth located in Leeds. Over the span of my fieldwork, I got to know four of these mission station families to varying degrees, mainly through shared time at TEC but also through spending time with numerous individuals from these families in Tenri City, demonstrating the multilocal nature of the construction and presence of the TEC community.
In addition to these lineage-based mission stations, there was also a Tenrikyo presence in the UK
by means of the Tenrikyo UK Centre, located in northern London. This non-lineage based center
opened officially in 2000 and was categorically positioned as being principally analogous to
TEC, though smaller, in that it was open to all, but the "home site" to none. As partially indicated
above, during events held at TEC, it was common to see followers coming from the UK,
including but not limited to people from mission station families, who were also part of the
Tenrikyo UK Centre "community." It was also common for TEC officials (and certain other
members of its "core community," such as the Miyamoto sisters) to go to the UK Centre for
various reasons. Such reasons included to deliver a speech, provide an official presence from
TEC for certain occasions, provide translation assistance (which was the principal reason for
which the trilingual Miyamoto sisters went), and also for special occasions, such as the wedding
reception<fnref n="357" /> of two young adults born into European-based Japanese missionary families in two
different countries for which numerous core members of the TEC community were in
attendance<fnref n="358" />.

Regarding the relationship between TEC and Tenrikyo UK Centre, although followers in the UK
were included under both the TEC and Tenrikyo UK Centre collective umbrellas, followers
elsewhere in Europe were only included under the TEC umbrella but not that of Tenrikyo UK
Centre. Thus, apart from the core members of the TEC community, Tenrikyo followers (or
affiliated individuals) on the mainland of Europe generally did not visit this inter-lineage UK site
because, in contrast to TEC, it did not host gatherings intended for the broader collection of
European-based followers as this was not a defined purpose of Tenrikyo UK Centre.

The UK-based missionary family most frequently represented at TEC during my two years of
fieldwork was the Yagishitas, with one of the three adult sons being the immediately previously
referenced groom. Because of both the prominent role they played in my research context and
also the exemplary qualities that depicted components of their mission station and this family can
illustrate in relation to numerous aspects of the religion and the lived experience of many such
core members of the "TEC community," I include a depiction of this mission station family
hereafter.

<footnote n="357">³⁵⁷ This couple had legally married in Japan almost a year previously due to legal issues they had to navigate.</footnote>

<footnote n="358">³⁵⁸ I discuss this in slightly more detail in the latter part of this chapter in reference to a complication they encountered in relation to their non-European nationalities.</footnote>
The head of this mission station and his wife came from Japan as young adults to establish it in the late 1970s, after the head minister of its supervising branch church chose him to do so at the young age of twenty. This choice, one of his sons later explained to me, was due to his being experienced in and adept at missionary work, which he started doing while in high school. As was generally the case, the connection between this mission station and its parental branch church was not only an organizational one, but also a family-like interpersonal one. This was evidenced, for example, by this son telling me in the same conversation via Facebook messenger in the context of the recent passing of the head minister of this parent church that although they were not related, this head minister had been like a grandfather to him<fnref n="359" />.

The first year I participated in the Tenrikyo European Seminar, all four young adult Yagishita siblings, who had each taken part in this training during their early young adult years, along with their mother, came to TEC to help with one week of the seminar each. The youngest sibling, Masae, was in her early twenties and not (yet) formally trained extensively in Tenrikyo teachings. She assisted with the seminar through a non-instructional supportive role by serving as the organizer and chief “go-to person” for our English cohort during the first week at which time her (non-Tenrikyo) friend from university, who I discuss in further detail later, was in attendance as a student. Her three older brothers, who had each completed a two-year post-graduate seminary program in Tenri City, were there as instructors for one subsequent week each. In addition to bringing to TEC the religious information they acquired through this intensive seminary program for which writing a research-based thesis on the religion was a standard required component, they also brought with them their experience of spending these two religiously focused years in Tenri City, amongst other lived engagements with this religious world. Uncommonly, their father was absent from the seminar that year because he was in Tenri City as an instructor for the English-based three-month Shuyoka spiritual development course<fnref n="360" />. Although his efforts for the path of

<footnote n="359">³⁵⁹ Communication: March 12, 2016.</footnote>

<footnote n="360">³⁶⁰ The majority of participants in the English-based Shuyoka are Americans of Japanese heritage born into the religion.</footnote>
Tenrikyo were not at TEC that year, they were nonetheless aimed at the same ultimate objective through a similar task elsewhere.

The following year, he returned to his routine assistance with the European seminar by serving as an instructor for the English cohort, along with his wife who again served in a supportive role. Through this, the long-term involvement numerous core members of the TEC community had in the ongoing orchestration of important religious events that took place at this European center was demonstrated. Their children, though, did not come to the seminar that year. The three sons could not attend because they were in Japan (principally for Tenrikyo activities), had already used their annual vacation time for this reason, and/or a combination of the two<fnref n="361" />.

Masae could not be at the European Seminar that year there because she was in Tenri City for the two-year post-graduate seminary program that her brothers had previously attended. She then continued her time in this pilgrimage town first through working as an English teacher at a Tenrikyo high school for approximately one year, and then slightly later participated in the commonly attended “spiritual training” program of Shuyoka held there. She had already received extensive training in the concepts covered in Shuyoka through her previous participation as a student in the three-week training of the European Seminar and moreover, through her recent completion of the two-year seminary program. Her participation in this Shuyoka course was to accompany her longtime Korean-British boyfriend not raised in the faith in this training.

The accompaniment of someone new to the faith in their introduction to this religious world was not unique to Masae, but rather a common component of how new followers (or potential followers) were guided into numerous religious contexts. Although I did not take part in the Shuyoka training and thus logically could not be accompanied in doing so, as a newcomer<fnref n="362" />, I was accompanied in various other parts of my delving into this religious world, most often but not always, by my key official and unofficial Tenrikyo contacts of Mr. and Mrs. Sugimoto. Furthermore, the prominent ongoing connection that the Yagishitas had to Tenri City as discussed

<footnote n="361">³⁶¹ As this family is highly implicated in the faith, the line between “family contexts” and “religious contexts” is often blurred, thus in saying that their visits to Japan were Tenrikyo related, it does not imply that they were not also family\social visits as they are, in fact, largely one and the same.</footnote>

<footnote n="362">³⁶² Regarding this, although I was open about my self-perceived status being of that an anthropologist conducting research, this did not negate my often being viewed as a newcomer to the religion.</footnote>
in this subsection was far from unique to this family. Rather, it is broadly illustrative of many
Tenrikyo families highly involved in this religion, such as most core members of the “TEC
community.” Among such individuals, although there was some variation in the precise reasons
for the significant amounts of time they spent in Tenri City, their general presence there and the
type of religiously communal experience it entailed was a commonly shared experience that
anchored them to the religion and to the pilgrimage town in which it is based.

*Two transnational Tenrikyo layers of connection fostered by a singular mission station head*

Another type of inter-site connection that was present in the “TEC community” was that of the linkage between the European lineage-based sites of worship and TEC via the somewhat frequent presence of their heads. In Germany, for example, there were two mission stations: one in Munich and one in Cologne<fnref n="363" />. Both of these mission station families were present semi-regularly at TEC and were part of TEC’s long-term community, though their levels of presence at and involvement with the center differed. The most frequently present representative from these two groups was a lively Japanese man in his late forties named Mr. Tanaka who was the head of the Cologne mission station. Mr. Tanaka was a semi-regular presence at TEC, for example by serving annually as a staff member for one week of the European Seminar<fnref n="364" /> and participating in the annual European committee meetings which united mission station heads from throughout Europe to discuss the present activities and future developments of the path on this continent.

Mr. Tanaka’s wife and adolescent daughter were also familiar presences at TEC, though with
somewhat less frequency. This difference was reflective of a Tenrikyo tendency for men in
official positions to travel more frequently than women and children and more often for official
religious purposes. This occurred, for instance, through their serving as a representative on behalf
of their group for ceremonies and meetings and as a point of reference for religious instruction in

<footnote n="363">³⁶³ The heads of the German missions, along with their families, use Japanese to communicate with TEC and with the greater sphere of Tenrikyo.</footnote>

<footnote n="364">³⁶⁴ During my first year of participation when there were only French and English seminar groups, Mr. Tanaka helped with the instruction of the sacred musical instruments of the Service as this is one of his specialties and also as support staff. The following year when a German-language group was added to the seminar program for the first time, Mr. Tanaka additionally served as an instructor of the theological component of the seminar.</footnote>
official or semi-official contexts, such as delivering sermons at the end of the TEC Monthly Services and as instructional staff for the European Seminar. Women and children of mission station families living outside of the Paris area also came to TEC but globally were significantly less present than their male counterparts. This gender-based contrast, though, was not a set rule. Women coming from mission stations elsewhere in Europe were also a regular presence at TEC, whether as mission station heads or supporting mission station wives, though less numerically represented and also generally less visible<fnref n="365" /> than their male counterparts.

From a theoretical perspective of the system in which these religious actors were operating, this difference in representation could be seen as somewhat irrelevant in terms of the links of social connection fostered through these encounters. Since when the head of a family or of a mission station (who was most commonly male) came to TEC or another official or semi-official Tenrikyo context, they were there on behalf of not only themselves but also of their connected group (meaning their family or lineage-based site). Thus, according to this approach, such social intersections fostered connections not only between the implicated individuals themselves but extendedly also between the groups for which they functioned as a representative social bridge.

Discussion of Mr. Tanaka lends itself not only to providing an illustrative example of intergroup connections fostered through the interaction between their heads, but also to an inclusion of the transnational connection between numerous Tenrikyo cultural centers that was another layer of the complex Tenrikyo network of which TEC was a part. A particularity of Mr. Tanaka was that in addition to serving as the head of the mission station in Cologne, he also was the director of the “Tenri Japanese-German Cultural Workshop” (Tenri Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturwerkstatt) located in the same city and founded in 2006, largely through his efforts. As explained on the cultural center’s website<fnref n="366" />, it put on a diverse range of exhibitions, performances, concerts, lectures and workshops in order to provide opportunities to build bridges between cultures. Also explained on its website was that it was financially supported by the “Tenri Kawaramachi-

<footnote n="365">³⁶⁵ I say “less visible” because women most commonly perform largely behind the scene tasks at TEC, while men more commonly serve in more visible roles of leadership, instruction, and administrative.</footnote>

<footnote n="366">³⁶⁶ Tenri Japanisch-Deutsche Kulturwerkstatt 2018.</footnote>
Daikyokai<fnref n="367" />.” What it did not state, though, was that this was the parent church of the religion’s Cologne-based mission station operated by the cultural center’s managing director. Instead, it referred to this source of financial support in a locally appealing and easily digestible manner by referring to it as “a religious institution of Tenrikyo in Cologne’s sister city of Kyoto” (“... *einer religiösen Institution der Tenrikyo in Kölns Partnerstadt Kyoto, getragen.*”).

In this introductory text of the cultural association’s website, it continued by stating:

> However, no religious activities are carried out in the Tenri Japanese-German Cultural Workshop. It is an open platform for intercultural encounters and open to all people in accordance with its fundamental purpose. The aspiration to promote cultural exchange on equal terms and thus contribute to a peaceful coexistence is in line with Tenrikyo's basic beliefs. In addition to the Tenri KulturWerkstatt in Cologne, Tenrikyo also maintains the Association Culturelle Franco-Japonaise de Tenri in Paris (founded in 1971) and the Tenri Cultural Institute of New York (founded in 1991), which also promote intercultural understanding with their offers.<fnref n="368" />

In this, we can see that the *Kulturwerkstatt* was purposefully associated in a public manner with the older, similar cultural associations of Tenri Cultural Institute in New York City and ACFJT in Paris on its website. This transnational affiliation was used as suggestive evidence of the *Kulturwerkstatt’s* institutional validity in a manner that was sometimes mirrored in how the transnational presence of Tenrikyo was used to demonstrate its importance not only in Japan but also more globally.

*The ongoing expansion of the path through official (and unofficial) means*

The interconnected transnational realm of Tenrikyo was ever-developing, including European lineage-based sites. During the span of my fieldwork, two additional European mission stations were founded: one in Vienna and one in the Amsterdam area. Their establishment was an

<footnote n="367">³⁶⁷ As a reminder, “daikyokai” is a Japanese word which is translated into English as “grand church.”</footnote>

<footnote n="368">³⁶⁸ Original text: In der Tenri Japanisch-Deutschen KulturWerkstatt werden jedoch keine religiösen Aktivitäten durchgeführt. Sie steht als Plattform für interkulturelle Begegnungen ausdrücklich und ihrem grundlegenden Zweck entsprechend allen Menschen offen. Der Anspruch, den kulturellen Austausch auf Augenhöhe zu fördern und damit einen Beitrag für ein friedliches Zusammenleben zu leisten, entspricht den Grundüberzeugungen der Tenrikyo. Die Tenrikyo unterhält neben der Tenri KulturWerkstatt in Köln die Association Culturelle Franco-Japonaise de Tenri in Paris (gegründet 1971) und das Tenri Cultural Institute of New York (gegründet 1991), die ebenfalls mit ihren Angeboten die interkulturelle Verständigung fördern.</footnote>
important contribution to the ongoing construction of this lineage-based layer of the “TEC
community.” The founding of these two mission stations also added to the “official” Tenrikyo
transnational narrative of its presence throughout the world that was a teleological goal of the
faith and served to affirm the religion’s global significance by adding new countries to the list of
where this religion was present. That in some of the countries there was only a very small number
of followers was often not included in the overarching narrative of the numerous countries in
which the religion has a presence.

This could be interpreted in numerous ways. From one perspective, it could be viewed as bordering on a false representation of the religion's actual international following as some of the countries highlighted on this map only had an extremely minor Tenrikyo presence<fnref n="369" />. From another perspective that I heard on occasion from core members of TEC in regard to the present limited expansion of Tenrikyo in Europe in demographic terms, this dispersed international presence could be viewed as the budding foundation of the faith that will later blossom into something more.

Throughout my research, I encountered numerous examples of this perspective through both personal observations and also through discourse offered in more official contexts, such as in Tenrikyo publications and in sermons given at the end of TEC Monthly Services. For example, in reference to my own involvement, followers I met in a variety of contexts expressed significant interest in how I came to be involved with Tenrikyo, and connectedly, present at its functions both in France and in Tenri City. This interest was often present even though I did not express myself to be a follower and often included in these explanations that I was conducting anthropological research on the religion in France and in Europe.

Generally, there were several features of my story that followers in such contexts were interested in. One was that I had first come to ACFJT to study Japanese without having heard of the Tenrikyo religion and that it was the ambiance I encountered the first time I went there that was the main reason I chose this center as my site of Japanese instruction. Another feature of this story that drew interest was that my study at ACFJT later led to me coming to TEC for events

<footnote n="369">³⁶⁹ While I do not have access to the number of followers in many of these countries highlighted, the evidence I was exposed to suggests that some of them only have a small handful of Tenrikyo followers at most.</footnote>
that were not specifically religious in nature, and then later to a Monthly Service there which then
led to my participation in the European Seminar, from which my interest in and prolonged
involvement with the religion and its connected social world developed.

When recounting this story to followers, I was often met with comments about how it was
“amazing” (sugoi). Such comments were frequently accompanied by direct or indirect
expressions that this was evidence that the efforts being made in Europe to spread the faith, which
included the operation of ACFJT where the religion was generally not discussed due to its
“laique” status were proving to be at least somewhat fruitful. This was important as I observed
indications that some core members of the “TEC community” (and also other followers who
knew about ACFJT) questioned if its existence was justified in its present form, as its efficacy at
bringing in new followers to the faith was sometimes regarded as dubious due to its limited
success in doing so thus far.

That the European Seminar played an important role in my story was also often accorded
particular attention. The orchestration of this annual three-week program required significant
effort and resources, but commonly drew very few student participants, thereby raising the
question to some if what was invested in it was justified in relation to the “results” it yielded.
Such “results” could include helping present followers deepen their understanding of the faith,
teaching non-followers about the religion, and of course, as was viewed as a possibility in my
own case, attracting new followers to the path. The underlying common denominator of these
multiple types of “results,” though, was the mere attendance of student participants, which my
own presence was shown to be a recent example of.

As I was told by an American follower of Japanese descent during our joint participation in an
international symposium for English-speaking followers in Tenri City (“Tenri Forum,” which I
discuss in chapter ten), the efforts included in these various steps which eventually led to my
coming to Tenri City and participating in the symposium were done in hopes that they may
produce such an effect. I commented to him that in these numerous steps, significant efforts were
made by a substantial number of people, for example, all the work and resources invested into the
European Seminar for which there were few participants, and that I am only a sole individual. My
comment was made as a casual conversational evocation of a “cost-benefit analysis” of the high
level of investment made for what could be viewed as a low resulting yield if looking at the
number of people who became followers (or otherwise invested themselves significantly in the
religion, as I viewed to be my own case). He replied to me that Tenrikyo is spread by individuals.
This is how the path has expanded over time and that in the religion, they regularly make efforts
to spread and teach others about the faith with the hope that they may draw in even one person to
the religion: I was an example of why they do much of what they do.

Often of interest in such exchanges was that I was originally from Alaska. Apart from the usual
curiosity that my being from this state commonly elicited due to its accompanying image, my
coming from this particular location may have also been of interest because there was not yet a
documented Tenrikyo presence there; creating the possibility that I may transmit the religion's
presence to a new location in accordance with the model of the religion often being spread
through gradual transmission via individuals. It should be underlined that the spread of Tenrikyo
occurred in numerous ways, thus encouraging hope for this to occur through both more and less
structured means. Sometimes its expansion to new locations in the increasingly international
Tenrikyo scene was primarily through unstructured means in which people who became new
followers in principally uncharted locations become rooted to lineage-based "home sites" located
elsewhere. This often occurred through largely happenstantial sharing of the religion rather than
through purposeful and structured expansion by means of lineage-based sites. Often though, the
religion was spread to new locations by means of the purposeful founding of Tenrikyo mission
stations. Such outgrowths, in fact, were at the heart of how Tenrikyo expanded.

One lineage-based mission station founded in Europe during my fieldwork was in the Amsterdam
area. The other mission station founded during my fieldwork was in Vienna, the founding and
more so the founder of which I will discuss. It was founded by Chihiro, a non-married Japanese
artist in her thirties born and raised in the faith at a rural Tenrikyo church in the mountains of
Japan where her father served as its head minister. She had already been living in Vienna for
about ten years when I met her at the three-day annual youth retreat<fnref n="370" />, "Palette," shortly after my
research interest shifted to TEC and approximately a year and a half before this Vienna mission
station was officially founded. Chihiro had originally moved to Vienna, she explained to me, after

<footnote n="370">³⁷⁰ This “youth retreat” is for people aged 15-35 years old.</footnote>