other while their children were in class. I observed this most regularly during my first year studying at ACFJT at which time my classes were held on Saturday mornings when many children also had their classes. Usually, I could hear the lively chatter of these mothers in the lobby as I studied before and after my class in the center's adjacent library (and could also often hear the children's classes which sometimes included songs and laughter coming from an adjacent room while in class.)

These classes not only provided a place of language acquisition and social contact with other children of Japanese parents for the young pupils, but additionally also provided a legitimate space of socialization for many of their Japanese mothers. I use the descriptive word "legitimate" because in Japanese culture, though somewhat less than before, there remains an expectation for mothers to invest themselves significantly in the role of mother (and wife), it is often implied with this, in lieu of prioritizing their own individually motivated interests. Thus, in the framework of doing something for their child's upbringing, the time they pass at ACFJT was legitimated to others and to themselves in a way that simply going to a weekly outing for their own enjoyment would, in many cases, not have been.

That these children's Japanese classes also served as a social occasion for Japanese mothers to come together, through which they often benefitted from being with other Japanese women in similar situations, was further evidenced by the mother-toddler playgroup, *niko-niko kurabu* ("smile club") held monthly at TEC. This playgroup was for Japanese mothers and their children aged 0-3 years old. During my participation in this group as a helper for approximately one year of my fieldwork, almost all participants were non-Tenrikyo families. It was explained to me by multiple highly-involved Japanese female members of TEC who helped orchestrate this group as hinokishin (or previously helped, in the case of its founder who had since returned to Japan) that in addition to these Japanese mothers coming to this playgroup for their children to be exposed to the Japanese language in a social context with other children, they also came to socialize with other Japanese mothers in similar situations as themselves. Through coming, they received social support and a place to spend time with other Japanese mothers living in the area.

The playgroup's founder had served in the important "wife" role of the acting TEC head and also as the president of the European Tenrikyo Women's Association during her time in France. I had
the opportunity to meet her initially in Tenri City where she was living with her husband and children during my fieldwork there. I then saw her again several months later at TEC when she was there for a few days during an extended layover on a return trip back to Japan from the Republic of the Congo where she had traveled to assist with preparations for the upcoming fiftieth anniversary of the religion's presence in the country.

At her home in Tenri City, we chatted about the niko-niko club, amongst other topics, over a sumptuous dinner she had prepared for about ten guests, all of whom were Japanese except myself and almost all of whom were visiting from the Paris area or had previously lived there and knew each other through TEC, and for some, also through ACFJT. She explained to me that she became inspired to start the playgroup out of a need she saw for such a group to provide a place where Japanese mothers living in France (and most often married to French men) often experienced difficulties and felt quite alone in their daily lives. The playgroup was mainly to provide a point of sociality and mutual support to such women. This perspective was also expressed by the several other women (Japanese local core members of the TEC community) who helped with the group.

For the orchestrators of this playgroup, the main Tenrikyo goals of making efforts to help others, encourage their happiness, and develop positive social relationships were put into practice through helping with this group. These motivations for hosting the group in which they spread “the fragrance of the faith” via non-markedly religious efforts made for the benefit of others existed alongside the more direct missionary aim of bringing non-Tenrikyo followers to this religious center through which they were exposed to the faith. Similar to non-Japanese, non-Tenrikyo people coming to TEC from the local population discussed in the previous subsection, their work to facilitate the presence of such people was accompanied with the hope, though not the expectation, that some would eventually become followers of the faith. This dual motivational presence of efforts made by Tenrikyo followers to put the faith into practice through working to help others and facilitate their happiness but also potentially bring them into the faith, as mentioned previously, was a common theme that I observed.
*An interview that led to an invitation to a TEC Monthly Service and an unexpected opportunity*

During my fourth semester of studying Japanese at ACFJT which coincided with my second year of doctoral studies, I began conducting semi-structured interviews with a variety of Japanese migrants living in the Paris area about their experiences there. By this time, I had been friends with Kanae for over a year and had already been to TEC for non-markedly religious events on the two occasions discussed previously. Despite the intriguing setting that I encountered there, I was not yet considering to focus my research on the collection of social actors linked to the religious center nor any other religiously related topic. For this fourth semester, I had Mr. Sugimoto as my Japanese teacher for the first time. In retrospect, I can see that this is the first time that my teacher was a Tenrikyo follower, though at the time, this was not something I thought much about. After conducting semi-structured interviews with about ten other Japanese migrants I knew through various contexts, I decided to request an interview with Mr. Sugimoto. To do so, I spoke to him after class about my research and asked if he would be interested in participating in an interview to help with it, which he accepted. This interview was the pivotal event that led shortly thereafter to my research becoming focused on its present topic.

In class, Mr. Sugimoto was outwardly rather conservative and inexpressive regarding his own life and feelings, which is somewhat typical of Japanese people, especially men of his age (fifties) and older. During our semester together leading up to this interview, he often mentioned that Japanese people have “poker faces.” He said this partially as a joke as the Japanized English expression (*pooka feesu*) is rather funny in and of itself, but also to emphasize that Japanese people (from his perspective) do not outwardly express their thoughts and feelings nearly as much as Westerners do. This was said in order to increase our cultural competency when interacting with Japanese people by stressing the difference between Western and Japanese communication styles so as to avoid misunderstandings<fnref n="179" />.

<footnote n="179">¹⁷⁹ Based on my own interactions with Japanese people, I was and am still not in complete agreement that Japanese people do not, in general, facially display their thoughts and feelings, but found his perspective to be interesting, particularly as it reflected a purported Japanese cultural norm.</footnote>
He spoke little about his personal life when teaching our classes and usually responded that he spent his weekends watching television if the question he regularly asked his students concerning what we did over the weekend was posed back to him. I suspected, though, that his life was not actually as uneventful as he indicated. I later came to know that his weekends were often spent doing Tenrikyo religious activities, such as the Monthly Services held once a month at TEC and also once a month at his home-based mission station that I would shortly thereafter attend with regularity for almost two years. His lack of mention of this prominent aspect of his life was reflective of the previously discussed caution Tenrikyo staff working at ACFJT have towards talking about their religion and the religious side of their lives when at the cultural center to maintain the distinction between ACFJT being a center for cultural activities and TEC being one for religious activities.

During this interview, I asked Mr. Sugimoto a variety of questions about his background and current situation using an open-ended questionnaire that served as the standard base of questions for the interviews I was conducting at that time. In addition to these generalized questions, I also posed some unscripted questions about ACFJT, TEC, and the religion of Tenrikyo to him. During the majority of our interview, he remained rather inexpressive and reserved when responding to my standard research questions but became much more animated and engaged once I started asking questions about ACFJT and TEC, and even more so once I started asking questions about the Tenrikyo religion itself. This is reflective of the fact that such moments of expressed interest in the religion are one of the reasons the cultural center exists and relatedly, largely why Tenrikyo missionaries work there.

In addition to the numerous questions I posed to Mr. Sugimoto, he in turn asked me about my own experience of living in France, where I had been residing at that time for the past three and a half years. I shared that I was having a hard time with certain aspects of life there and connectedly, changes that I could sense in myself that I did not view positively. Toward the end of the interview, he invited me to come to TEC's Monthly Service that would take place nine days later on the second Sunday of the month, if I was interested.

It is impossible to know exactly why he extended this invitation to me, but multiple factors likely contributed to his decision. ACFJT was, in principle, largely in existence to create openings, such
as personal relationships formed via this cultural center, through which to spread the faith. Furthermore, Mr. Sugimoto was the head of a mission station in France and thus was tasked with spreading the faith of Tenrikyo and ideally drawing new followers into being rooted to his mission station and extendedly its lineage, though how these goals were interpreted and pursued was largely dependent on a combination of the individuals in question and their family and church backgrounds. In my asking him directly about TEC and the Tenrikyo religion, an opening to share the religion both through teaching me about it there on the spot and by inviting me to attend the ritual of the Monthly Service was facilitated.

Additionally, it is reasonable to posit that his invitation to come to the TEC Monthly Service was also partially due to my brief mention of the difficulties I was experiencing during that point of my life. This conjecture is principally because helping (or “saving<fnref n="180" />”) people experiencing both physical and non-physical problems was a principal component of the religion and was the chief means through which people became followers of the path. Followers were encouraged to seek out people experiencing physical problems which Yoboku could attempt to address through administration of the Sazuke faith healing ritual. For people experiencing emotional or psychological difficulties, followers were encouraged to make efforts to alleviate their hardship through “listening with their innermost heart” and sharing the teachings of Tenrikyo, amongst other possible efforts. In both cases, the sought-after outcome was twofold. Firstly, such efforts were aimed at helping the person in question in a direct sense to alleviate their observable problem. Secondly, such benevolently framed engagements were often accompanied by a hope that they may potentially lead to the people being helped in this way becoming members of the faith.

His invitation to come to the upcoming TEC Monthly Service seemed like an interesting opportunity for my developing research that I was glad to accept and thus I indicated as such. Several days before the Monthly Service, Mr. Sugimoto sent me an email<fnref n="181" /> with information regarding the upcoming Service.

<footnote n="180">¹⁸⁰ 180 The word used in Japanese is *tasuke*, which can translate to “help” or “save” in both mundane and more profound ways.</footnote>

<footnote n="181">¹⁸¹ The original email was in French.</footnote>
Hello Margaret san<fnref n="182" />,

Here is information about the Monthly Service.
This month it will be this Sunday, the 12th from 10:30.
I'll be there this Sunday.

The Monthly Service (Every 2nd Sunday of the month at 10:30 am)

This rite is fundamental to the Tenrikyo religion. Oyasama, the foundress, conveyed this Service in her deepest love, so that together we may work for the salvation of all humanity, for peace and happiness in the world.

Points of this teaching are explained in a sermon after the Service. This celebration is open to all.

http://www.tenrikyo.fr/fr/events/annual.php

<figure><img src="image_15.png" /></figure>

Although I had already been to TEC twice, this would be my first time attending a Monthly Service or participating in any markedly religious Tenrikyo activity. When I arrived at TEC for the Monthly Service about ten minutes before the indicated start time of 10:30 am, I was greeted at the building's entrance by Mr. Sugimoto dressed in his ceremonial Tenrikyo *hakama* pant suit. He greeted me warmly and took me upstairs to the sanctuary that Kanae had shown me a little over a year previously. He said that I had come on a very good day because there was a woman visiting from Hawaii who would be giving a talk in English¹⁸³. He also explained that there was a religious seminar coming up for which a visiting group from Bordeaux was sitting together in one area and a small group from England was sitting in another and invited me to sit with either group. I chose to sit in the "England" area where there was an open space between a young British woman, who I would learn the next day to be named Stephanie, and a young Japanese

<footnote n="182">¹⁸² “San” is a gender-neutral honorific suffix similar to “Mr.” or “Ms.”</footnote>
man with bright orange hair, who I would learn the next day to be named Kenta and that he had spent the past six months in London to improve his English.

As this was my first time to attend a Tenrikyo ritual, I attempted to take in as much information as I could. There were about thirty to forty people in attendance. Almost everyone was dressed in black “Japanese” ceremonial clothing. My first impression of the clothing protocol was that Japanese people wore the more elaborate and difficult-to-wear ceremonial garb of a kimono or hakama and non-Japanese people mainly wore the much less complicated *happi* coat over their normal clothes. Although this hypothesized initial assessment was largely accurate of the scene I was observing, I did not yet understand the reason for the presence of these two types of Tenrikyo clothing. I later learned that the formal kimono or hakama was actually indicative of who was performing in the Service ritual rather than purposefully associated with national origin. In practice, though, the two categorical distinctions were often one and the same because Monthly Service performers at TEC were predominately Japanese despite efforts to include more non-Japanese people in these ritual roles<fnref n="184" />.

In many ways, this July TEC Monthly Service resembled other Monthly Services held there throughout the year that I attended afterward. There were also some particularities of that month, though at the time, I didn't have anything to compare it with to recognize these differences. Most notably, as Mr. Sugimoto indicated to me when I arrived, the annual Tenrikyo European Seminar was beginning the following day. Thus, a significant number of people attending the ritual did not live locally and were not usually present at TEC Monthly Services. Additionally, this particular Monthly Service coincided with being only several days before the “Children’s Pilgrimage to Jiba” festival in Tenri City. Consequently, many children and their accompanying parents (mainly mothers) were in Japan for this festival and to visit relatives and friends over summer

<footnote n="183">¹⁸³ This talk was simultaneously translated into Japanese and French, made available to attendees through headsets, as talks given at this multilingual site often are.</footnote>

<footnote n="184">¹⁸⁴ In order to be a performer in the TEC Monthly Service, one must have undergone the rite in Tenri City to become a Yoboku, or, under the current head of TEC, I occasionally observed a special allowance to be made for people who had participated in the three-week seminar at TEC or a similar program elsewhere (such as in the Republic of the Congo) through which one is exposed to much of the same information as the series of nine-identical Besseki lectures given exclusively in Tenri City required to become a Yoboku. Additionally, one must be capable of performing in the Service, either through correctly playing one of the Service instruments or performing the intricately choreographed dances.</footnote>
vacation. Largely due to their being away for this important annual event in Tenri City that is a
prominent part of the global Tenrikyo scene that encourages children to develop a rootedness in
the religion at an early age, my first impression was that TEC Monthly Services were mainly
attended by adults. In fact, they were entire family affairs that included a lively presence of
children, most of whom spent the majority of the ritual time in a separate children's group, then
later joined the main group for the communal lunch shared downstairs.

The Service began, as it did every month, with the strangely powerful sounds of *gagaku* music;
chapter five is dedicated to a more in-depth exploration of the TEC Monthly Service and
discusses this in more detail. As it played, the procession of men wearing black hakama pant suits
and rectangular paper masks largely reminiscent of medical masks passed the offerings from one
ritual actor to another before placing them in front of the central altar dedicated to God the
Parent. I wanted to understand as much as I could of the powerful ritual scene that I was seeing
for the first time and thus asked the orange-haired young man to my left in a whisper why they
were wearing masks. He hesitated, trying to find the words in English to respond to my question,
then whispered back, "So they don't breathe on God." His simple explanation contained within it
a connection to the wider Japanese cultural repertoire present in many aspects of Tenrikyo, in this
case being one in which one's breath can be seen as contaminating<fnref n="185" /> and thus something which
should not be directed toward the highly respected realm of the divine.

At the end of the Service, it was announced that there was still room in the English group of the
seminar if anyone wished to join. At that time, I did not know what the seminar was, nor did I
know much about TEC or the Tenrikyo religion. Thus, I did not even consider the possibility of
participating in the seminar that was starting the next day when I heard this announcement since I
assumed that it was meant for "members" of the religion, and not for someone such as myself as I
understood the motivation of my presence being anthropological curiosity rather than a personal
religious quest.

<footnote n="185">¹⁸⁵ Such as Japanese people who are ill, for example with a cold, and thus wear a medical mask to avoid potentially contaminating others.</footnote>
After the Service ended, everyone went downstairs to the basement-level multipurpose room for lunch, which that month was Japanese curry. I sat with Mr. Sugimoto and his wife, Yuko<sup>186</sup>, who I had met for the first time slightly earlier when she came over to me and introduced herself at the beginning of the Service. In the Tenrikyo model of organization, should I become more involved in the Tenrikyo faith, it would be the Sugimotos who would serve as my “spiritual parents,” or from a stricter perspective, Mr. Sugimoto who would serve as my “spiritual parent” as he was the head of their home-based mission station which would shortly thereafter become my “home site of worship” for the next two years. At the time, though, I did not even know that such mission stations existed.

After discussing the Tenrikyo faith for a while with Mr. Sugimoto and Yuko and asking a variety of questions about different aspects of it, to which they were actively engaged and able to respond, Mr. Sugimoto mentioned that there was still space in the English-speaking seminar group and that I would be welcome to join if I was interested. Though I didn't realize it at the time, similar to most other missionary families, spreading the faith to others was positioned as one of their main goals and attracting new followers through their mission station, which as stated above, I was positioned as potentially becoming a member of should I enter into this religious world, was accorded high value.

He explained that the seminar was a three-week program, but that I would only have to commit to one week of attendance at a time and could decide later if I wished to attend only one week or all three. He added that I could stay at the center if I wished. Short-term residency at TEC during the seminar was actually a standard component of it despite his phrasing it simply as a possible option. I asked if it would be alright for me to attend the seminar even though I was not a follower of the religion as I was unsure if it would be appropriate for me to do so out of what I regarded as an academic rather than “spiritual” interest. Mr. Sugimoto reassured me that this would be fine.

<footnote n="186"><sup>186</sup> Throughout my research, I referred to Mr. Sugimoto as “Sugimoto Sensei” (“sensei” an honorific suffix similar to “san” which literally means “teacher”) and to his wife through the less-formal nominal reference of her first name with the standard honorific suffix attached (“Yuko san”) which she used in first introducing herself to me and was the name she was most commonly referred to with at TEC. This is largely reflective of the fact that Japanese men are often referred to by their more formal surnames while Japanese women are more commonly referred to by their less formal first names.</footnote>
His offer was unexpected but seemed like a potentially good opportunity for my research that I could take advantage of as I had recently quit my part-time job and had no other upcoming commitments other than the general goal of somehow progressing my thesis research. Though I was unsure what the seminar would be like, what I would learn from it, or what it may lead to, it seemed to hold potential to somehow be a fruitful participatory experience. Thus, I accepted Mr. Sugimoto's invitation to attend at least the first week of it.

Upon this impromptu decision, I filled out a short registration form and Mr. Sugimoto showed me around TEC a little more, introducing me to a blur of people who would shortly become familiar faces included in the multiple layers and spheres of the “TEC community.” I then returned home via a several hour commute on public transportation that would become a familiar journey traversed many times over the span of my fieldwork and packed a bag for the upcoming week. The following morning, I returned to TEC to begin what would prove to be a much more intense but also much more important week than I had expected which would steer the next several years of my life and my thesis research in an unanticipated direction. I will later return to my experience of participating in the Tenrikyo European Seminar in chapters seven and eight. First, though, I will focus on the everyday side of TEC in the next chapter by discussing the site as a place where people live.
# Chapter four: Residential life at TEC: the re-creation of a Tenrikyo residential model in a French location

## a. The ebb and flow of TEC residents: an ongoing production of a Tenrikyo social model

### *The continuous sociality and ever-changing composition of people in the residential sphere of TEC*

As previously indicated, to understand the “TEC community,” one must consider multiple spheres of this social collectivity. Closely connected to the sphere of ACFJT discussed in the previous chapter was the residential world of TEC. Included amongst the people who resided at TEC was the head of the center and his family, the young adult residential missionaries (most of whom worked as Japanese teachers at ACFJT), and sometimes other young adult Japanese followers who were socially, and often economically, sponsored by a Tenrikyo organizational body in Japan. These residents lived onsite together in a social model largely based in a broader Tenrikyo culture that was present at many other Tenrikyo sites. The residents of TEC were a central component of the “TEC community,” among other reasons, because it was these residents who were most often at the center and they who usually functioned as hosts to people who were not core members of this social world. It was the general presence of such residents, though, rather than the individuals themselves, that was a constant component of the center’s social composition.

The precise composition of this residential world was regularly in flux through the semi-regular introduction of newly arriving young adult “missionaries” from Japan who most often stayed at the center between one and four years. Although some of the individuals sent from Japan to TEC as residential missionaries did end up staying in France after the expected duration of their assignment had passed, the intended trajectory of their coming to France (and to TEC) was a temporary one. Generally, their time of living at TEC and being in France was positioned as part of their young adult personal formation before they married and settled into a more established “adult” life.
Similarly, the leadership of this center, that was categorically non-lineage-based, was also less permanently fixed than at lineage-based Tenrikyo sites of worship, a category which includes “mission stations,” “branch churches,” and “grand churches” that I discuss in further detail in chapter six. Although the position of TEC head is not permanent, it was generally significantly longer than that of the young adult missionaries. For the local social world of residential TEC life, it was fundamentally the center’s overall social structure and traditions rather than the individual social actors involved that constituted its mode of sociality. The acting head of the center, along with his wife, also played an important role in shaping the day-to-day life of this site as it was they who were charged with most of the details involved in running the center and with providing supervision and guidance to the young adults who lived there.

Through both the directive role of the center’s head, which was supported and strengthened through his family, and the ongoing presence of young adult residents who were inculcated with Tenrikyo and TEC cultures<fnref n="187" />, the latter of which was transmitted to new residents by those who had already lived there for some time, a social and cultural constant was maintained throughout the ebb and flow of individual residents. Furthermore, the continuation of a broader Tenrikyo (and Japanese) cultural ambiance was brought about not only through the residents who were themselves the conveyers of its presence, but also through the materiality of the center. Though halfway across the world from where both the religion of Tenrikyo and the residential members of the TEC community were from, a close connection to their country and culture of origin was maintained, thereby rendering this site a place of familial grounding amidst the broader French landscape in which it was located.

As noted by Dubucs (2009: 21), using the example of a businessman going from a Sheraton hotel on one end of the world to a Sheraton on the other, travelling far does not guarantee “depaysement.” Similarly, residential life at TEC was much like residential life at Tenrikyo sites of worship in Japan, albeit with certain differences, particularly in comparison to lineage-based sites. At TEC, in the more private and familial realm of residential life, the language of usage was Japanese, as was the mode of social interaction. Furthermore, even the materiality of the site was largely Japanese. For example, the hand soap dispensers were from Japan even though those

<footnote n="187">¹⁸⁷ “TEC culture” and “Tenrikyo culture” was largely, though not completely, synonymous.</footnote>
available in France for purchase were essentially the same. While the residents of TEC were
away from Japan, their homelife remained largely congruent to such a site in Japan, particularly if
living at a Tenrikyo site there. In this, similar to as is the case of many other migrants, they
continued to be largely “at home” in their private home-life and “abroad” when in more public
contexts. Their place of residence being a place at which they remained “at home” while abroad
was somewhat complexified, though, through the site of TEC also serving as a public site which
regularly welcomed people from the broader Parisian, French, and European contexts in which it
was geographically based.

*Looking at a social world through the presence and spatial organization of its participants*

Though generally not the focus of the majority of events that took place at TEC, the composition
and spatial organization of the TEC residents was highly illuminative of its social world. While
most TEC activities took place in its main building which housed its sanctuary and primary
communal spaces, there were also several other buildings on TEC grounds which housed, in a
very literal sense, important components of the “TEC community.” These buildings included a
structure directly adjacent to the main building where the acting head of TEC, his wife, and any
children they had living at home resided. (The acting head couple during my fieldwork had no
children. Previous heads of the center all did.) Slightly further away on the gated premises were
two other residential buildings which principally housed the young adult missionaries from
Japan. Male missionary residents stayed in one, female residential missionaries stayed in the
other.

An illustration of the spatial layout of TEC grounds is shown hereafter.
<figure><img src="image_16.png" /><figcaption>Figure 1: Spatial layout of TEC grounds</figcaption></figure>

The building which housed the males was the more public of the two buildings. It was a three storied structure in which these young men lived communally in dorm-room type fashion on the top floor. During my fieldwork, this top floor was inhabited by a young man who served as the secretary of TEC and two young men who worked as Japanese teachers at ACFJT, each of whom held these positions and lived in this space for several years. The first and seconds floor of this building functioned as housing for short term guests (including myself) who stayed at TEC for various events, either as a standard component of the overall event, such as during the European Seminar, or an optional component, such as for the charity rummage sale.

Slightly out of sight from the general area of the TEC grounds and separated by a low wooden fence with a gate was the other building. The second floor of this building was occupied by the female counterparts of the young male residential missionaries. During the majority of my fieldwork, these female residents included a young woman who worked as a Japanese teacher at ACFJT for several years, the secretary of ACFJT<fnref n="188" />, and two young women sent to France by their church in Japan where they were both living in order to provide assistance to it

<footnote n="188">¹⁸⁸ About halfway through my fieldwork, the young woman who had been serving in this position returned to Japan and another woman sent from Japan assumed her position.</footnote>
(hinokishin)<fnref n="189" />. The reason for their stay in France for what was initially anticipated to be one year, then extended approximately one additional year, was that their church in Japan had recently extended their missionary efforts to the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo<fnref n="190" /> through mission stations under its supervision. In order to be able to welcome and communicate with these Congolese followers when they came to this church in Japan<fnref n="191" />, its leadership wished to have French speakers there. These young women were assigned to fill this need<fnref n="192" />. Thus, it was arranged for them to come to France and study the language at a private language school in Paris<fnref n="193" />, during which time they stayed at TEC and participated in center life as staff members.

The ground floor of this building housed the young adult children of a previous TEC head couple<fnref n="194" />: the Miyamoto sisters. The living space of these two, and for a time three, sisters was comprised of their individual bedrooms, a bathroom, and an open space that held a kitchen and modest “living room” area. Though they were not categorized as visiting missionaries themselves, their connection to TEC and their residential position there was connected to the general pattern of long-term residents of the center being composed of people sent by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters (or a close organizational entity) from Japan to TEC for official “missionary” purposes.

<footnote n="189">¹⁸⁹ Neither of these young women were raised at this church. One of them, who was quite passionate about Tenrikyo, was there based on her own personal volition. The other young woman explained that her going to live at the church had been largely the choice of her mother who thought time spent in the feminine role of performing domestic work at this church would be good preparation for her future married life, which in Tenrikyo, particularly in more traditional Japanese contexts of it, is sometimes regarded as the projected life trajectory of women.</footnote>

<footnote n="190">¹⁹⁰ Tenrikyo first came to the Republic of the Congo in 1966, but the presence Risa and Mayuko's church lineage was a recent development.</footnote>

<footnote n="191">¹⁹¹ In Tenrikyo, it is important for followers to make pilgrimages to Tenri City (if they are able to do so). When coming from overseas, it is common for followers to visit not only Tenri City but also the lineage-based parent churches of their “home site”.</footnote>

<footnote n="192">¹⁹² One of these Japanese women told me about a Congolese roommate they had at this church, implying that this church was already welcoming, at least to some degree, followers from Congo.</footnote>

<footnote n="193">¹⁹³ They did not study French at ACFJT even though it offered specialized French classes for Japanese people.</footnote>

<footnote n="194">¹⁹⁴ The building in which the Miyamoto sisters and several other young female TEC residents lived did not usually welcome short-term guests. Occasionally, though, it did when the other guest space was full due to a particularly</footnote>
These sisters were born and raised at TEC as the children of a previous head couple of the center.
When the two elder of these three sisters were in high school, their parents, along with their
brother and younger sister, returned to Japan after their father's term as head of TEC ended, after
which he assumed other Tenrikyo-related responsibilities in Tenri City. Because they were in
high school at the time, it was deemed better for them to stay in France than to change countries
at that point in their lives. Thus, they continued to live at the center under the guidance and
supervision of the two TEC head couples who occupied this centrally important position for a
number of years after their parents returned to Japan.

During my research, their younger sister, who had been in middle school when she left to Japan
with her parents, came back to France (her country of birth, though not nationality), initially on a
one-year "working holiday" visa after graduating from Tenri University, then again slightly later,
initially to pursue graduate studies in Paris. While the Miyamoto sisters maintained more
independent individualized lives than those of the young adult missionaries who lived at TEC,
they also constituted an important contribution to this center's residential world. Furthermore, as
they had lived at the center throughout the better part of their twenty-something year lives, they
functioned as a living account of the center's history.

During the latter part of my two-year period of fieldwork, the three Miyamoto sisters moved out
from TEC to a private two-bedroom apartment located directly behind the center. At TEC, these
three young women were generally models of ideal Tenrikyo conduct through their contributions
to the functioning of the center and how they got along harmoniously with others. When I saw
one of them almost a year after my concentrated period of fieldwork had ended at a small
goodbye dinner for one of the young adult residential missionaries, I learned that she had just
moved out of the apartment she shared with her sisters and into a studio apartment. Her recent
move, she explained, was because the three of them living together in what she described as a less
than adequate amount of space was proving to be difficult and thus, it was decided that it would

<footnote>high number of people coming to TEC for an overnight event at which time the sisters opened their rooms to
younger short-term female guests they knew. During my fieldwork, I stayed with them on one occasion.</footnote>
be better for her to move elsewhere. She told me this in a matter-of-fact way which framed her move as a positive one<fnref n="195" />.

In my naivety, her move and her accompanying explanation was unexpected and revelatory in showing that even amongst these sisters, the Tenrikyo dispositional model of social harmony and grateful acceptance with what one has and one's present situation that was espoused in religious discourse and a notable part of Tenrikyo trainings and other gatherings did not translate automatically to their shared living arrangement being without difficulties that were deemed best to address pragmatically. My surprise was largely based on a combination of these sisters' displayed closeness and the communal style of living that was commonly part of and encouraged in Tenrikyo settings in which one shares one's living space and life closely with others. As they had been heavily involved in Tenrikyo contexts throughout their lives via both their personal histories, and extendedly also through their family that was prominently positioned in the religious organization, I had assumed that such a communal lifestyle would be a normalized part of their habitus. Such a presumed "Tenrikyo habitus," I thought, would discourage such difficulties from arising and encourage them to work to overcome whichever ones that did. The difficulties they encountered in living together in close quarters without much space and their method of addressing this problem demonstrated that the lives of the religious actors included in my study were complex and spanned beyond a simple enactment of the teachings without consideration to social and material realities.

In looking at these residential changes as expressions of the fluidity in the physical and social positions of members of the TEC community, it is interesting to note that this Miyamoto sister's move into a studio apartment in Paris was followed sometime later by a subsequent move to Tokyo, where she had found work<fnref n="196" />. This second move was facilitated by the fact that her parents had chosen for all four of their children to have Japanese, rather than French, citizenship. (Japan does not allow dual citizenship. In my observations, most young adult children of

<footnote n="195">¹⁹⁵ Paris is a city where rent prices are often quite high and apartments can be difficult to secure, thus her expressed positivity in acquiring a relatively inexpensive apartment in a central location of this city was likely associated with this.</footnote>

<footnote n="196">¹⁹⁶ In France, she had been employed for several years in a professional capacity.</footnote>
Japanese Tenrikyo missionary families in Europe have Japanese rather than European citizenship due to their parent's choice, which I will further discuss in chapter six.)

Also included at TEC amongst its residents, though less apparent, was a collection of honeybees<fnref n="197" /> housed in a wooden hive installed discretely behind a small gated area with an old shed in the front yard. These bees belonged to and were cared for by a fifty-some year-old French man named Jacques: a long-time member of the TEC community who lived in the Paris area and came to know the faith through his Tenrikyo born and raised Japanese wife. Jacques had somewhat recently become involved in beekeeping and in addition to working on a honey farm, also had his own collection of honeybees. As Jacques and his wife lived in an urban apartment with no outdoor space of their own and TEC, at which he quite evidently felt at home, had space available for him to use, his honeybees came to be included in the center's long-term residents. I include mention of these bees because they serve as an example of the strong sense of familial belonging that numerous members of the TEC community had to this center in which although they did not live there, it functioned as a secondary home of sorts, which often entailed both responsibilities via contributions to the center and also a comfortable sense of belonging.

*Fluidity and consistency as coexisting features of TEC*

The fluidity and non-fixedness of the composition of residents who together constituted this constructed familial context and influenced its operation was an established feature of TEC. In contrast to positions held in lineage-based sites of worship, such as church head minister, which were often hereditarily based and permanent, TEC staff positions were neither hereditary nor permanent. The visiting young adult Japanese teachers applied to serve in this position, which was generally for a fixed period<fnref n="198" />. The head of TEC was a role nominated by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters for durations of time that were generally not predetermined<fnref n="199" /> but understood not to be lifelong engagements.

<footnote n="197">¹⁹⁷ These honeybees are in accordance with the title of this section; although they are not human, they, too, are social actors.</footnote>

<footnote n="198">¹⁹⁸ The predetermined amount of time visiting young adult “missionaries” spent at TEC was occasionally extended.</footnote>

<footnote n="199">¹⁹⁹ This was a generally followed model, but not a prescribed one in the Tenrikyo religion.</footnote>
In the non-fixed nature of the role of TEC head, a variety of perspectives and modes of operation were correspondingly brought to the center with each change in its leadership. Each TEC head couple had their own slightly different way of running the center and understanding the religion. Thus, with each of the four head couples who served in this position, a variety of accompanying subtle differences in how the center was operated accompanied their presence. Additionally, as humans generally do not remain cognitively static as they progress through life, changes in how they orchestrated the center also came about during each subsequent head's leadership period. Although my two-year period of concentrated observation did not permit me to personally see changes that came about over longer periods of time, I did see evidence that how I was observing TEC to exist at present was not indicative of how the center had always operated nor necessarily how it will always be operated in the future.

One notable example was who precisely could serve as a ritual performer in the center's chiefly important ritual of the Monthly Service, to which the next chapter is dedicated. In general, to serve in this ritual role, one needed to have attained the status of being a Yoboku. The acting head during my fieldwork, though, was somewhat open to case-based allowances for people who had not acquired this status, that was only attainable in Japan, to also be able to serve in this important ritual role at TEC. This was brought to my attention through an instance of being encouraged myself to perform in the TEC Monthly Service despite not having attained this status.

At this point, I had twice attended the three-week Tenrikyo European Seminar held at TEC and had also attended seven of the nine Besseki lectures in Tenri City required to become a Yoboku. I had also performed in the smaller Monthly Services held at the Sugimotos' home-based mission station each month, for which the status of Yoboku was not a requirement. Despite my familiarity with and involvement in this religious context, I continuously chose to abstain from certain religious engagements in accordance with what I viewed as being correct for me to do as an interested researcher and person connected to the religion who did not self-identify as a follower of it. When it was suggested to me that I perform in the TEC Monthly Service, I cited that I was not a Yoboku with the hope that this reason would suffice for why I could not do so.

I was told by Mr. and Mrs. (Yuko) Sugimoto, though, that Mr. Kawakubo could allow me to perform in it anyway because I had completed the European Seminar. They explained that a
young Congolese follower I knew from her frequent presence at TEC had been allowed this exemption because she had expressed a desire to do so and had participated in both the European Seminar and a similar training in her country of origin but had not (yet) acquired the status of Yoboku in Tenri City. Thus, Mr. Kawakubo deemed it acceptable that completion of the seminar could substitute for having the status of Yoboku in this instance. The Sugimotos told me that a similar allowance could be made for myself. (I declined because I did not feel it would be appropriate for me to perform in this ritual because I did not view myself to be a follower of the religion.) The allowance for non-Yoboku being able to perform in the TEC Monthly Service was a new adaptation deemed appropriate by its acting head, Mr. Kawakubo. As this was the center's chiefly important ritual around which other parts of TEC operated, this subtle change in who precisely could be eligible to serve as a ritual performer in it impacted who was positioned as an "insider" in this regard and why.

This is just one instance of how not all dynamics at TEC were fixed. Some changed over time in relation to its involved actors, including the center's acting head couple and others living on site at TEC. Beyond the acting head and his family, the other residents were also, and to a greater degree, a transitory component of the center's residential "family," thereby influencing how the center existed at any given moment. The fluidity of their composition was influential to the center's sociality and was encouraged through the two-way flow of individuals coming to and leaving the center. Though all residents were Japanese and from Tenrikyo backgrounds, they sometimes differed significantly regarding the particular Tenrikyo backgrounds from which they came, along with various other factors related to their personal backgrounds and personalities.

During the two years of my focused fieldwork at TEC, a similar ambiance and mode of operation was maintained despite the changing composition of its specific residents. Other than the head couple, the center's secretary, and one male missionary teacher, the entirety of individuals living at the center when I began my two-year period of concentrated fieldwork was different than those at the end of this duration. Despite the ongoing change in its residents, the overall practices and micro-culture of residential life there remained similar throughout my fieldwork. In this, the social continuity at the center that expanded beyond the precise composition of its residents was demonstrated. This consistency in the structure of the center, which was influenced by all residential missionaries sharing in a general Tenrikyo and Japanese habitus despite their
numerous differences, promoted an ongoing mode of sociality at the center. Its steadily present Tenrikyo culture encouraged, amongst other things, a familial sense of community for these residents which then emanated out to others who interacted with them, largely though not exclusively at TEC. For some of these residents, their influence to the broader group after their time of living at TEC came to an end was primarily through their memory and impact during their period of residency, while for others who remained elsewhere in France thereafter, they remained active members of the TEC community, though in a different way than during their residential time at TEC.

*Young adult missionaries who end up staying in France: a transferal from the residential TEC family to the long-term TEC community*

The distinction between the young adult missionaries who resided at TEC and the “long-term core TEC community” was in certain instances less separate than is suggested through my referring to them with two separate categorical titles. Not only did these young adult residential missionaries significantly contribute to the character of both TEC and ACFJT during their several year assignments in this capacity, but the more long term, core community of TEC was also importantly influenced by individuals who first came to France and to TEC in this capacity and then continued to live in France thereafter. During my fieldwork, there were four such men<fnref n="200" /> who were key long-term core members of the TEC community. Their influence in the composition of this group was further extended by the women they subsequently married, all of whom moved from Japan to France upon marriage, and the children that three of these four couples had.

These families were regularly present at TEC events and were closely implicated in its inner sphere that included both its social world and the orchestration of a variety of tasks at the center, such as helping with events and gatherings that took place there. This demonstrates that while the visiting missionaries discussed in this chapter initially came to France for a determined period of time, and their local participation in TEC life was regarded as most likely temporary, sometimes their presence transitioned to one that was more permanent. With their increased duration in the social world of TEC, their role changed from one situated in the shorter-term and hierarchically

<footnote n="200">²⁰⁰ My language exchange partner, Kanae, was the first female to come as a missionary teacher to TEC.</footnote>
lower social position of a young adult residential missionary to that of a higher status, long-term member of the TEC community. In addition to their hierarchical status changing in accordance with their increased longevity in the group, it was also due to their increased age and heightened level of responsibilities.

The familiarity and belonging that these young missionaries who ended up staying in France developed with TEC during their initial years in this country while living at the center was not only maintained, but also later transferred to their new family members. This was reflective of the collective lineage system of both Tenrikyo and Japanese society more broadly in which by being a member of a household (or lineage-based site of worship), one was also linked to the connections of that household (or lineage-based site of worship). Throughout my research beyond this specific categorical instance of belonging via social connection, being linked to others through intermediary connections was an important contributing factor to the existence of the “TEC community.” This included multiple layers and degrees of connection beyond personally linked individuals to be extended to the broader interconnectedness of the wider group.

Three of the young adult missionaries who ended up staying in France later founded home-based mission stations in this country as part of their respective church lineages that were categorized as “child sites” of the churches in which they were raised that were charged with the supervision of these offspring sites. Although these supervising sites and church lineages were not directly included in the social world of TEC, their important connection with those who were shown the multiple Tenrikyo spheres that were intermeshed to varying degrees. Included among these three young adult missionaries who later founded lineage-based sites was Mr. Sugimoto.

The fourth such person who had previously served as a young adult residential missionary, then transitioned to becoming a more-long term part of the TEC community was Mr. Kawakubo. After initially living at TEC as a temporary Japanese teacher, he later returned from Japan to again live at the center after he was nominated by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters to serve as its head. His return to TEC in the capacity of this leadership position included, amongst other changes, a move in housing from the communal dorm-type living arrangement of the young adult missionaries to the more autonomous and spacious living quarters positioned closer to the main building that was reserved for the acting TEC head and his family. I mention this change in housing because it is
materially illustrative of the non-fixed positionality of key social actors of this site and its
connected community in which the structure remained largely fixed, while there was movement
and change regarding the people involved.

Another example of a residential role change that occurred at TEC from that of a young adult
missionary to the longer-term role of TEC head that is accompanied with an increased age, a
higher hierarchical status, and a longer envisioned presence at the center that was echoed during
my fieldwork there was that of Mr. Miyamoto. I use the word “echoed” because although Mr.
Miyamoto and his wife had already moved back to Japan approximately a decade prior to my
spending time at TEC, their daughters, as stated previously, continued to live at TEC during the
majority of my fieldwork. Furthermore, Mr. Miyamoto<sup>201</sup> also remained at TEC through his
lasting memories and influence that endured among many members of its community well after
he returned to Japan. His continued “presence” often transcended individual memories to exist in
the wider TEC community’s collective understanding of and approach to the religion and also its
communal long-term history. It is interesting to note that in both Mr. Kawakubo and Mr.
Miyamoto’s changing roles at TEC, they later came to occupy the quasi-parental role of TEC
head to the young residential staff after they had first come to stay at the center in the
hierarchically subordinate young adult role of several year missionaries. In this, one can see this
change as being akin to a “son” later becoming a “father,” thereby manifesting the familial
lifepath that is largely considered ideal in Tenrikyo, though in this case through non-permanent,
non-kin roles.

A more recent and somewhat different development in the growing number of TEC missionaries
who ended up staying in France, becoming long-term, core members of the TEC community, was
a female missionary teacher named Ayuka who lived at TEC during the majority of my
fieldwork. Several months after ending her scheduled term of service at TEC, she married Genji,
a Martinican born and raised Franco-Japanese son of a Japanese Tenrikyo woman and a French
man who came to know the faith through his wife. Ayuka first met Genji at TEC when he came
to the center, combining trips to France for work with visits to TEC, a site with which he had a
familial connection as Genji’s parents initially lived as a couple in the Paris area, at which time

<footnote n="201">201 And his wife, Mrs. Miyamoto, though I heard about her much less frequently.</footnote>
they were active members of the TEC community. Later, they moved to the French island of Martinique where they founded a mission station and later, a small cultural center and Japanese language school at which Ayuka would later work as a Japanese teacher after already having gained experience of doing this at ACFJT.

Although the island of Martinique is located almost halfway around the world from TEC, as part of France, the mission station of Genji's family was connected with TEC. The connection between TEC and this Caribbean site was evidenced, for example, by occasional mentions of it appearing on news posted on the TEC bulletin board in the main hallway of this building and also by the occasional treat of Martinican chocolate brought as a gift from someone of this family visiting from the island<fnref n="202" /> that was included in refreshments offered at the center. The enduring relationship between this Martinican-based family and the TEC community, particularly its core long-term members, was also evidenced in other ways. For example, through the publicly viewable exchanges between Genji and core members of the TEC community living in Europe on social media that evidenced the interconnectedness between the microcosm of Tenrikyo on the island of Martinique, principally through Genji's family, and that of the social world of TEC.

Through Ayuka's marriage to Genji, which relocated her to this French island, Ayuka's precise position of inclusion in the TEC community shifted but it did not end. Instead, she became a more permanent, though less-local, member of it. In this example of the fluidity of this social collectivity, the ever-changing composition of its involved social actors and the precise role that the implicated individuals played at a particular time in the construction of the broader group was manifested. Ayuka becoming a more permanent part of the small Tenrikyo presence in Martinique after she had previously been a core residential member of TEC and a teacher at ACFJT transported her close connection to, experiences at, and knowledge of TEC and ACFJT to this Caribbean-based Tenrikyo site, further strengthening the connection between these contexts and adding to the complexity of their relationship.

<footnote n="202">²⁰² In Japanese culture, it is common to bring gifts of specialty foods from the location from which one is coming. A common reminder of the connections that TEC had with other sites was through the foods brought from various places throughout Europe, and also from overseas locations such as Japan, the US, and Congo.</footnote>
While the construction of the broader, multi-layered TEC community occurred through multiple forms, it was often such links between individuals (and extendedly, their families) that functioned as social glue through which the broader social world of the “TEC community” was formed and solidified. Its fluidity was a key factor in its construction and maintenance which included these young adult residential missionaries who sometimes became longer term members of this social collectivity. Because this social group was not fixed to a set composition of people nor to the occupation of particular roles by particular people who together comprised the group, it was sustained continuously over time despite various changes in its composition. Despite this fluidity, two notable features of the residential sphere of TEC were its familial nature and the inhabitance of roles that were reflective of a broader Tenrikyo sociality. The next part of this chapter is dedicated to this component of life at the center.

b. The “residential TEC family”: inhabiting familiar roles in a Parisian context

*The structurally hierarchical model of the residential “family” of TEC*

According to Tenrikyo teachings, on a very profound level, all humans are equal. In practice, whether at TEC or in other Tenrikyo contexts, hierarchical differentiation was an influential factor in the roles that were assumed and in the social interactions that occurred. This factor's prominent presence in Tenrikyo contexts was largely in accordance with the hierarchically structured social model present throughout Japanese culture in which such differentiations are an influential feature of the overall social organization of the group and of the social interactions that occur between the implicated social actors.

The center's head couple lived in a completely private residence which in my observations was at no time open to the greater TEC community. This was somewhat in contrast to the other buildings on TEC grounds which housed the long-term young adult TEC residents that on occasion also welcomed short-term guests coming to the center. This included the private rooms of the Miyamoto sisters when the number of people staying at the center for a particular event exceeded the guest space available in the rooms generally used for this purpose. Another notable difference between the TEC head couple and the young adult residential missionaries that is likely to have been influential in the types of housing these two categories of residents lived in was that the head couple usually resided at TEC for longer than a decade whereas the young adult
missionaries usually only lived there for several years. As a result, TEC served as more of a
“home” for the head couple whereas for the young adult missionaries, their living situation was
more suited for a “dormitory” type of housing.

Both the physical positions of the housing of these young adult residents and the partially public
nature in which they were not accorded the same level of spatial autonomy as the generally
middle-aged head couple (and any children living with them at home) was illustrative of the
hierarchical difference between the two categorical types of TEC residents. While the age<fnref n="203" /> and
expected duration of stay of these young adults was a factor in their residentially manifested
hierarchical status, it was also connected to their social positions within the group. The head
couple occupied a higher-ranking role which carried with it higher expectations and demands
than those of these younger visiting missionaries, and correspondingly, the head couple was
accorded a more autonomous and private space than that of the younger and shorter-term
missionaries who were housed communally.

Such a housing differentiation based on hierarchical position was not unique to TEC or to similar
non-lineage-based mission centers throughout the world. Rather, it was also a commonly present
factor at many lineage-based Tenrikyo sites of worship, including numerous Tenrikyo churches in
Japan that I visited or was told about. Often in these sites, there was a more autonomous place of
residence for the site's head and his<fnref n="204" /> family positioned adjacent to its sanctuary and a more
modest and communal residence for the support staff who also lived on its grounds.

To offer a concrete example of this structural tendency, I will use the lineage-based church in
Japan that was positioned as the “parent church” of the mission station headed by Mr. Sugimoto.
This branch church, where I spent a week of the total month and a half of my fieldwork in Japan,
which I further discuss in chapter nine, clearly illustrated the hierarchical model commonly
present in Tenrikyo that was materially manifested through the housing arrangement of those
living on site. Mr. Sugimoto’s family and another family have both lived on the grounds of this

<footnote n="203">²⁰³ In Japanese culture, one's age is directly associated with one's hierarchical position in which older people are awarded more status and respect than younger people.</footnote>

<footnote n="204">²⁰⁴ The heads of Tenrikyo sites are most commonly male, though less commonly, women sometimes also serve in this position.</footnote>
church for several generations, since an ancestor of each of these families was “saved” through
physical healing via the Sazuke for a grave ailment, as has historically been the most common
way people came to become followers of the path. Out of gratitude, they thereafter chose to
reside at the church to provide assistance to the church, its lineage, and the path of Tenrikyo, as
did their patrilineal descendants<fnref n="206" />.

It should be noted that, as indicated previously, most Tenrikyo followers are members of the religion through similar means to Mr. Sugimoto's family in which an ancestor became a follower through healing (most often physical and via the Sazuke) in combination with belief in the faith due to the manifested “truth” and benefits they understood to have received through it. Subsequent generations base their own “belief” in (or adherence to) the path on their ancestor's result-based belief as being a legitimate source of authority, thereby, at least ideally, negating the need for first-hand evidence of the faith's legitimacy and truthfulness. As noted by Sperber (1996), in a number of contexts, people often believe in the efficacy of a certain practice because throughout multiple generations the social members of a group have been born into a world in which the practice is believed to be effective: such beliefs largely rest on confidence in the elders purporting the beliefs.

This is commonly the case in multi-generational Tenrikyo families. The benefits of the path are
not only attributed to one's personal experience, but also to the confidence and importance
accorded to the faith by one's elders. As a result of having confidence in their ancestors as a
legitimate source of information, they also have confidence in what their ancestors believed to
have been evidenced through their personal experiences. In this, those who have been connected
to this “truth,” either through themselves or via their ancestors, for longer periods of time, thereby
deepening their understanding of this “truth,” are accorded an increase in seniority and thus in
hierarchical position. This factor was not something that I heard commonly discussed in a direct

<footnote n="205">²⁰⁵ In Japanese Tenrikyo discourse, the term that most commonly translated in English to "save" is "tasuke." This Japanese word can also be translated to "help" and can convey multiple types of assistance, from casual help to profoundly rescue. (In Tenrikyo text, this Japanese word is most commonly written as "たすけ," using these syllabic hiragana characters per the original writings of the foundress rather than in the kanji characters used most commonly in Japanese to write this word.)</footnote>

<footnote n="206">²⁰⁶ This is in accordance with Japanese culture in which, generally, women become part of their husband's household and lineage upon marriage.</footnote>
manner but was demonstrated when the manifested hierarchical model that was often present throughout the religion was thought about from a particular analytical perspective.

For people who newly embraced the faith, a common motivating factor to do so remained the benefits that the path provided (or was understood to provide) for the alleviation of a problem. In the modern European context in which my research was primarily based, it was most often in response to a psychological rather than physical problem. This tendency was something I noted in my own observations, heard from numerous Japanese and non-Japanese followers living in Europe who I met through TEC, and received agreement on from other followers to whom I mentioned this working hypothesis.

Coming back to the multi-familial grounds of the branch church at which Mr. Sugimoto was raised, while the two families who provided assistance to this branch church and its extended lineage shared in much of the church's communal residential life with the head minister's family, there was a marked and notable hierarchical difference between these families. One of these differences was that the head minister's family lived in a more lavish building located directly next to the main church building in which the sanctuary was located, while the other two families lived in a more modest, though still comfortable, building slightly farther away from the main building. It was common for such a model to be present at other churches and grand churches in Japan.

As many of the young adult missionaries and others I include in the “core TEC community” were born into, raised at, and/or lived at a Tenrikyo church in Japan prior to their coming to TEC, such a residential structure reflective of the group’s built-in hierarchy was often a previous part of their social habitus that was then continued at TEC. Also transported from the greater Tenrikyo social structure, and connectedly to a lesser degree Japanese social structure, to TEC via its residents and most of its “core members” was how gender and positional roles were enacted and embodied in this European context. The head of TEC and his wife were exemplary models of this relational role-based model through their joint collaboration in performing complementary roles, which the next subsection is dedicated to discussing.
*The head couple of TEC: an example of husband and wife working together through a “two-in-one” relationship*

Since its inception, in accordance with the most commonly followed model of leadership at Tenrikyo sites of worship, TEC has been directed by a series of male heads and their wives<sup>207</sup>. All of whom have been from Japan and thus brought with them their Japanese habitus, including their conceptions and enactment of social relations. The tendency of Tenrikyo sites to be operated by a married couple in which the husband serves as the official head and his wife occupies the role of foundational support is reflective of the important Tenrikyo teaching of “two-in-one” (*futatsu-hitotsu*) relationships manifested most frequently, though not exclusively, through husbands and wives performing complementary roles together toward a common goal. It is also reflective of traditional Japanese gender roles which feature a similar collaborative model. While not mandatory in the religion, as taught by the foundress and as was the general societal opinion during the time she lived, the social unit of husband and wife (*fūfu*) is positioned as the ideal model of adult existence<sup>208</sup>.

At TEC, the male head of the center officiated religious ceremonies and served as the center’s leader and public representative<sup>209</sup>. This was in accordance with males being associated with the element of sky, which is positioned above, and thus viewed to indicate an adeptness at overseeing things. His wife also occupied a crucial role at the center, though a less visible one, in congruence with women being associated with the element of earth, and thus adept at serving in a “foundational” role comprised principally of attending to a variety of important, largely behind the scene, tasks. While the role of TEC head wife may appear less significant than that of her husband’s role due to his being publicly positioned at the forefront of the center, from an internal perspective, the role of husband and wife are equal, though different, parts of a greater whole<sup>210</sup>

<footnote n="207"><sup>207</sup> Because this wording is a little unclear, I would like to clearly specify that this refers to one male head and his one wife.</footnote>

<footnote n="208"><sup>208</sup> With this said, it is important to note that a variety of life paths are permitted in the faith and are generally viewed as being correlated with the character and associated “destiny” (*innen*) of the individual, though a variety of both stricter and more liberal perspectives of this matter exist.</footnote>

<footnote n="209"><sup>209</sup> During my fieldwork, when the male head was away from TEC, which was most often to him attending to duties elsewhere associated with his leadership role, his wife usually served in his place as the officiate of rituals.</footnote>

<footnote n="210"><sup>210</sup> These gender-based roles are the most commonly followed ones, but a variety of other models also exist.</footnote>
which collaboratively contributed to the site's functioning and advancement of the religion. I heard from numerous followers that an explanation of the naturalness of these gender roles can be found in the Tenrikyo creation story in which one of the five female divine providences, depicted through animal symbology, is that of a nine-headed serpent, thereby showing the adeptness of women to attend to many tasks at once. In comparison, its male counterpart, represented by a single-headed dragon, was cited as evidence that men are more suited to focusing their minds and efforts in a singular direction.

A succinct description of the concept of complementary “two-in-one” relationships is contained in the following excerpt from an official Tenrikyo website operated by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters:

> The foundation of human existence is seen as coming from the providence of "oneness in two," referring to pairs of opposite characteristics and functions--symbolized by such things as earth and heaven, fire and water, and warmth and moisture--coming together as one. (Fukaya *b*, date unknown.)

During their time at TEC, these couples remained closely connected to Tenri City both in a spiritual sense, as all Tenrikyo followers ideally do, and also in an administrative sense because TEC is directly linked to Tenrikyo Church Headquarters. This direct connection to the faith's administrative and spiritual center was notably different than the lineage-based sites of worship in Europe and elsewhere, excluding grand churches, which were directly connected to Tenrikyo Church Headquarters.

Along with all TEC heads and their wives having been raised in Tenrikyo church or grand church families, they were all religiously shaped during their formative years by having spent a significant amount of time in Tenri City through which they brought an experientially-derived imbuedment of the religion from this pilgrimage town to TEC. Similar to many other core members of the TEC community, formative experiences such as having attended one of the two Tenrikyo boarding high schools, Tenri University, and/or various religious trainings held there, as

<footnote>Women sometimes serve in the leadership role of a Tenrikyo site of worship. Similarly, outside of the question of who holds these religious leadership positions, how the roles of husband and wife are more broadly understood and enacted differed and was reflective of numerous factors beyond this religiously-based perspective, such as their individual personalities, family and cultural backgrounds, and their present social milieu.</footnote>
well as countless pilgrimages throughout their lives were also included in their broader life experiences.

Although all men who had served as TEC heads were raised in Tenrikyo sites of worship and had spent significant portions of time in Tenri City, the precise hierarchical position within the greater religious organization that these four men were born into varied significantly. For example, the head of TEC during my fieldwork was the younger son of a small Tenrikyo branch church whose birth position would not usually have accorded him a hierarchically important position within the Tenrikyo structure. Contrastingly, one of the previous heads of TEC, Mr. Miyamoto, was from a family that served as the leadership of a grand church in Japan. (After occupying the role of TEC head, Mr. Miyamoto went on to occupy several other important nominated roles, including that of the head of the Tenrikyo newspaper published in Tenri City, the president of Tenri University, a Besseki lecturer<sup>211</sup>, and most importantly within the Tenrikyo faith, a Service performer who dances in the Daily and Monthly Services held in the Main Sanctuary<sup>212</sup> of Tenrikyo in front of the kanrodai<sup>213</sup>: a role filled only by individuals in the inner-circle of Church Headquarters' leadership.) Regardless of their inherited role in the greater Tenrikyo organization, while at TEC, the person serving in this nominated role assumed this leadership position in a manner that was largely reflective of the broader Tenrikyo structure and culture from which they came and continued to be heavily based in. As indicated above, a dominant feature of how the head of TEC and his wife occupied their leadership roles at this center was based on the gendered, family model of Tenrikyo, and more specifically, on the pair-based model of husband and wife.

*The head couple of TEC as “TEC parents”: the parent-child relational model’s centrality to the spiritual, organizational, and social sides of the religion*

Even more prominent in Tenrikyo than the relational model of husband and wife was that of parent and child. In accordance with the religious conceptualization of God the Parent and the foundress as loving parents who care for and guide humans as their children, this parent-child

<footnote n="211"><sup>211</sup> This is an highly esteemed, nominated position.</footnote>

<footnote n="212"><sup>212</sup> 神殿 Shinden</footnote>

<footnote n="213"><sup>213</sup> As a reminder, the kanrodai is a hexagonal marker located on the sacred point of the Jiba, where God the Parent dwells.</footnote>
relationship was extended beyond that of being between humans and these two parental religious' figures to also exist as an omnipresent relational form in the faith in two other major ways. Firstly, though not directly applicable to TEC, the organizational structure of the religion mirrors this parent-child relationship in that followers are rooted to a particular site of worship (the head of which is referred to as their “spiritual parent,”) that is in turn generally overseen by a “parent church,” which is overseen by its parent church if there are more links in its church lineage, before arriving at Tenrikyo Church Headquarters (and the sacred point of the Jiba). As I further discuss in chapter six, this lineage-based organizational structure exists similarly within the wider sphere of Japanese society but did not include TEC because it was not a lineage-based site. Secondly, in Tenrikyo, a significant amount of emphasis is placed on the relationship between parents and children and, as in many other religious traditions, on the benefits of marrying and having children, though generally neither were framed as imperative, and a variety of life situations existed and were most often accepted in the faith<fnref n="214" />.

In Tenrikyo discourse, occupying the role of “parent” was regarded as a primary way through which one may increase one’s “spiritual maturity.” Parenthood was commonly positioned as an exemplary way through which one could come to better understand how God the Parent feels toward humans as its children and thus, this role was encouraged as an important life experience. Key to an understanding of the parent’s role in this parent-child relationship is the concept of “parental love,” which is a highly prominent part of the religion that was included in much of its written and spoken discourse. The short text included hereafter is exemplary of Tenrikyo discourse in which the benevolent parental guidance of God the Parent and the foundress as we progress spiritually was emphasized. It is an excerpt from “The Doctrine of Tenrikyo”<fnref n="215" /> (1993: 24), which is a key text in the religion<fnref n="216" />, including as a standard instructional material in

<footnote n="214">214 The level of freedom one has in not adhering to the model of marrying and, if possible, having children is partially dependent on one's family and the particular milieu in which one is situated.</footnote>

<footnote n="215">215 The current Doctrine of Tenrikyo (Tenrikyo kyōten) was compiled by Tenrikyo Church Headquarters based on Tenrikyo's three main scriptures written by the foundress, the Ofudesaki, Mikagura-uta, and the Osashizu, and was authorized by the second Shinbashira (spiritual and administrative leader of the faith), Shozen Nakayama, on October 26 1949. (The Doctrine of Tenrikyo: 1). The phrase “parental love” is used fourteen times in this 15,193 word book and similarly “parental heart” is used three times.</footnote>

<footnote n="216">216 I never heard this analogy used directly in reference to them.</footnote>
Tenrikyo trainings, that many followers at TEC, and extendedly elsewhere, were familiar.

God the Parent not only created human beings and the world but has watched over our
growth with unending parental love, providing us with training in the seasonable times
appropriate to our growth. The development of humankind and our cultures is entirely
due to the gracious providence of God the Parent.

In one's enactment of the role of parent, one ideally would be seeking to model one's assumption
of this role after the parental models of God the Parent and Oyasama, though it was understood
that as humans, it would not be the same as what was put forth by these divine figures. This
parent-child relational model and its corresponding roles were extended beyond the lineage-based
organizational structure of the religion and the personal sphere of the family to also exist in other
contexts. At TEC, it was the head and his wife who functioned largely as the "parents" of the site,
thereby taking on this parental role, but in a slightly different way. For example, it was Mr. and
Mrs. Kawakubo, most commonly Mr. Kawakubo, who extended invitations to people at TEC,
including myself, to spend time at the center outside of standard event times, such as occasional
invitations to stay for dinner, etc. In this, they functioned as hosts of the center similar to as
though it was their private home. This head couple made a point to greet anyone who came to the
center for the first time or was otherwise not yet a fixed presence there, such as when people
came to Monthly Services or TEC events who were not commonly present in these settings. At
such times, Mr. Kawakubo was most often more in the forefront operating as the representative
host of the center than his wife, who was often busy elsewhere taking care of other tasks
important to the event's overall functioning, often remaining in the background while providing
essential support to the overall scene, as is typical of the female role in Tenrikyo through their
"foundational" position.

Additionally, demonstrative of this couple functioning as the “parents” of this center was that
they were responsible for looking after and overseeing the young adult missionaries who came
from Japan and lived at TEC. This responsibility was expressed, for example, during my second
year of participation in the seminar at which time Mr. Kawakubo served as one of the French
cohort instructors while his wife worked one floor below in the kitchen. During the particular
week that this account took place, he was teaching the theoretical class on the Mikagura-uta
songs for the Service ritual and their accompanying sacred dances for which we sat in the
classroom and studied the dances through an “academic” model. This was largely via a manual of the dances which included step-by-step illustrations of the dance moves with their accompanying Japanese lyrics and their word-by-word French translations written below each gesture.

In accordance with Mr. Kawakubo’s personality and holistic approach to exploring the religion, our conversations during his seminar classes often spanned beyond the precise topic of the session. While Mr. Kawakubo was talking about the importance of the Service, he told us that the one thing that he was very strict about with the young adults staying at the center he was charged with supervising was: they *must* perform the Service every morning and evening without fail. He expanded on this point by saying that he can be flexible about a lot of other things, but if they were not performing the Service, then there was basically no point of them being there; there are lots of ways a person can be in France and teach Japanese but this was not the principal reason the young adults staying at TEC were there. Rather, their main reason for being in France and living at the center was to serve as Tenrikyo missionaries and an essential element of this was to keep the faith central in their lives. Mr. Kawakubo explained to us that the regular performance of the Service was an important component to maintaining the faith in themselves and connectedly, transmitting it to others. This being the actual goal of the Tenrikyo program that sent them to France.

The fatherly role Mr. Kawakubo took on toward the young adult missionaries under his care was clearly visible through his choosing which issues to be strict about with versus which issues to be more lenient on, just as parents often do for children under their care. To a large extent, the guidance and regulations put forth by those who serve in the role of heading Tenrikyo sites was largely reflective of their particular background, personality, and perspectives in combination with widely shared understandings of the broader group, similar to how the role of parent is assumed in kinship-based families.

Similarly, the role of head wife assumed by Eriko Kawakubo and the previous women who served in this position was for each woman a combination of commonly shared and individual components. Largely, the role of “head wife” was reflective not only of norms followed in a variety of Tenrikyo contexts but also that of the “traditional” female role of wife and mother in Japanese culture. In accordance with this Japanese female role, similar to how it was assumed in
Japanese Tenrikyo contexts, it was generally women who were responsible for meal preparations and a variety of other behind the scenes tasks. Eriko's conformity to this role was manifested in a variety of ways, including sartorially through the Japanese-style apron that she often wore at the center, not only when in the kitchen preparing food but also more generally, just as Japanese wives/mothers often don this attire that functionally serves as the uniform of their role. That both the male head and his wife were in conformity with these traditional, gender-based parental roles was largely naturalized by both the head couple themselves and also the majority of people with whom they regularly interacted (i.e. Japanese Tenrikyo followers). Through their performance of these parental roles, a traditional Japanese family structure was partially created in the residential sphere of life at the center, thereby encouraging a social cohesion between those involved which extended beyond these residents to the broader social world of the center.

*The ever-changing composition of the “residential TEC family,” the changing orchestration of center life*

Important to the construction of this familial feel was the inclusion of the center’s young adult residents who together with this head couple constituted the residential core of the broader group. These young adults were an ever-present component of the continually changing, residential “family” who lived together and shared their lives during their time of living at TEC. Though their length of stay at TEC was more temporary than that of the center’s head and his family, they, too, were an important component of its social world. Their perpetual presence was an important contributor to the existence of the “TEC community” that was centered upon this site as it was largely from these residential young adults that the center’s behind the scenes, day-to-day life existed and was communicated to others. It was also largely through them that the social “fragrance” of the center was communicated and expanded to its broader social sphere. Although these young adult missionaries were not the sole contributors to the construction of a community feel at TEC, they were key contributors to it.

The individual young adult residents themselves were in a constant state of arriving, staying for a while, and leaving TEC. This was a prominent feature of the site's residential world and thus, of
the feeling of TEC's somewhat fluid yet "close-knit"^217^ community. It was not the individual residents as much as their generalized presence which provided the continuation of a Japanese Tenrikyo mode of sociality at this center located halfway across the world from its place of origin. Despite their general presence being the most prominent contributing component, the precise composition of residents was also influential to life at the center. A simple example of the changing composition of residents that was accompanied with a change in how the center internally functioned was told to me by one of the Miyamoto sisters in a casual chat that took place between us while sitting in the library\ lounge area of TEC where people spent amical, often casual, moments together. This particular account took place on a late summer Sunday afternoon, after most people who had been there earlier in the day for a large multi-day event had gone home. While sitting together on couches in the far end of the room, sharing a moment of relaxation after the highly energized event had dissipated, this long-time resident of the center reflected on its current residential composition in comparison to previous times.

Currently, there were more women than men staying at the center: a change from how it had been when she was growing up there during which time its residents were mostly male. This difference was largely due to the fact that the young adult missionaries sent from Japan to work as Japanese language teachers at ACFJT were all male until 2013, when the first young woman was sent to TEC in this capacity^218^. In talking about this change, she mentioned how much work it had often been for her mother when she was the head wife of TEC because there had not been many female staff to help her with the female tasks she was charged with at the center, such as preparing meals^219^. When I was conducting fieldwork at the center there were more women than men, thereby rendering meal preparations and other "female" tasks less labor-intensive for those involved as the work was divided between more people.

<footnote>^217^ This is the term a follower knowledgeable of this community used to describe it when I asked if there is anything I should be aware of if I conduct my thesis research on this group when I was considering the possibility.</footnote>

<footnote>^218^ This person was Kanae, my language-exchange partner.</footnote>

<footnote>^219^ When her mother served in the position of head wife was before Kanae came to TEC as the first female sent from Japan to work at ACFJT; at the time Mrs. Miyamoto held the position of head wife, exclusively young men-often sent by the Tenri Young Men's Association, came to TEC for this purpose.</footnote>
This is just one of the many examples I heard from people who have been closely connected to TEC over long durations of time regarding how the center has changed. For those who are at TEC for only a short period, it is easy to think that the center's mode of operation and social composition have remained generally fixed over time, just as I mistakenly did when I was initially becoming acquainted with the center. In fact, the longer one is involved in this community and spends time at this center, the more one can see that it has been a site of evolution, change, and social fluidity which nevertheless has maintained continuity and stability despite these changes. This was largely brought about through the continuation of a Tenrikyo model of daily life as it existed in Japan, which the next segment of this chapter discusses.

### c. The maintenance of a Tenrikyo structure of daily life

#### *Bridging residential life at TEC and other Tenrikyo sites*

The continuity of the social ambiance of the residential side of TEC was largely sustained through the structure of life at the center. Connectedly, the broader TEC community, which was highly influential to, and in turn was influenced by, this group also maintained a continuity that was evidenced through numerous comments made by long-term members. This continuity in both the sphere of residential life and also the broader “TEC community” was due to numerous contributing factors. One of which being the structural factors that influenced the social interactions and experiences that occurred in these micro and macro social contexts.

While some aspects of day-to-day life at TEC were somewhat unique to this Parisian center, other aspects were similarly present in many other Tenrikyo contexts. Such inter-site similarities facilitated newly arriving members of this residential community to become part of its sociality with relative ease, while its unique aspects encouraged their time at TEC to contribute to their membership in the “club” of people who have lived there. The cultivation of this relationship to the center was most grounded in individuals who spent significant amounts of time there. To a lesser extent, shorter periods of time of staying at the center, such as during the three-week Europe Tenrikyo Seminar throughout which participants stayed onsite, also increased familiarity to the center, thereby also fostering in these participants an increased level of connectedness to and belonging in the general “TEC community.” Thus, the structure and mode of sociality that
took place in the day-to-day residential side of life at TEC was an important component of the broader “TEC community.”

During my fieldwork, I occasionally heard TEC (and other Tenrikyo sites) referred to as “places of training” to become educated in and practice this particular mode of life and sociality that are ideally carried on afterwards by the individuals who spend time there. The mode of life at TEC was not one that was haphazardly organized and orchestrated, whether as it existed during events and trainings that drew people to stay there for shorter periods of time or during the day-to-day center life that longer term residents took part in. Rather, the structure of daily life that one took part in while staying there was a social construction that functioned as a unifier which linked people to both the specific site of TEC and to the wider realm of Tenrikyo due to its many similarities with other residential Tenrikyo contexts, thereby promoting a dual-level sense of belonging.

*Beginning the day in unison through morning hinokishin and the Morning Service: communal engagements based in the body and linked to the spirit*

Mornings at TEC began with a communal engagement of center chores and ritual tasks that were emically framed as “hinokishin.” Literally, as explained previously, the Tenrikyo-specific Japanese term of hinokishin means “daily contribution” and refers to acts of service performed on a daily basis for the benefit of others out of gratitude to God the Parent for lending humans a physical body to use. In theory, as followers told me from time to time, hinokishin is not so much defined through the precise action one does but by the sentiment with which one does the action.

In practice, this religiously motivated act of service under which these early morning efforts were nominally designated took the form of chores that were basically obligatory for those staying at TEC. Early in the morning, the head of TEC, his wife, the young adult missionaries, and generally anyone else staying onsite (though with exceptions) would together take part in various aspects of center upkeep, such as cleaning numerous parts of the center, including the three altars at the front of the sanctuary and their surrounding area used for the important ritual of the Service through scripted ceremonious protocol that I describe in chapter seven. These tasks were
performed in rotation by TEC staff; orchestration of a particular task<sup>220</sup> did not imply a particular role at the center but participatory inclusion of the group efforts being made, and thus, at that moment, the group.

After this communal engagement in hinokishin tasks, at the set time of 7:30 am, the Morning Service was then performed by, generally, everyone staying at the center. This collective ritual performance functioned to both further solidify the communal ambiance between those staying at TEC and to regularly direct their focus toward the faith as from a social and cosmological perspective, this ritual is central to it. The identical Morning and Evening Services were prescribed in the faith to be performed every morning and evening to sweep away “dusts<sup>221</sup>” from one’s heart and to give thanks to God the Parent, amongst other reasons which vary according to the individual. Its chief component, the “Seated Service,” was also the first portion of the Monthly Service, discussed in chapter five. It entails three songs with accompanying hand gestures which for its twice daily performance everyone present takes part in through active performance. The first of the three songs is performed twenty-one times, the second song once, and the third in three rounds of three. The reason for the specified number of repetitions of each of these three songs was not known to have been given by the foundress, but similar to other aspects of Tenrikyo, occasionally inspired discussion regarding possible interpretations of why it was taught in this way.

In this ritual, five ritual actors were positioned on the elevated stage at the front of the sanctuary used for this purpose in front of the altars dedicated to the ancestors, God the Parent, and the foundress. Four ritual actors played the musical instruments used for the Seated Service<sup>222</sup>, while the fifth used a traditional Japanese counting instrument composed of red cords to keep track of how many refrains of each of the three songs had been performed. Those not seated in the

<footnote n="220"><sup>220</sup> While this was generally the case, it was not a set rule. Breakfast, for example, was usually attended to by head's wife, thereby diminishing the likelihood that she would be participating in other tasks at this time.</footnote>

<footnote n="221"><sup>221</sup> Miserliness (*oshii*), covetousness (*hoshii*), hatred (*nikui*), self-love (*kawai*), grudge-bearing (*urami*), anger (*haradachi*), greed (*yoku*), arrogance (*koman*). Though not specifically “dusts,” falsehood (*uso*) and flattery (*tsuisho*) are usually also included in this list as things Oyasama cautioned to avoid.</footnote>

<footnote n="222"><sup>222</sup> The *hyoshigi* (wooden clappers), *chanpon* (symbols), *surigane* (small gong), *taiko* (drum) are the four instruments played in the Morning and Evening Services.</footnote>
audience section would sing and perform the hand dances in unison, either on the chairs or if preferred, kneeling on the floor near the back of the room in accordance with how their bodies would be positioned if they were at a Tenrikyo site in Japan<fnref n="223" />. Then, everyone sitting in the audience section would stand and position themselves in the more open spaces of the room on the sides and in the back to perform one of the rotating thirteen Mikagura-uta dances executed in standing position, after which a segment of a Tenrikyo text would be read aloud. Each morning, in addition to directing the hearts/minds and bodies of those who took part in it toward the faith and its teachings, by singing, dancing, and enacting the overall ritual in unison with one another and being actively exposed to its teachings, it also functioned as a uniting force between those present which helped to create and strengthen their collective relationship to each other, to the faith, and to its connected social world.

Through this, as propounded by Bénéï (2008: 75-76) in her discussion of the role of morning calisthenic exercises that elementary school students in western India took part in at the start of their school day in shaping their individual and collective selves well beyond the specified moments of these exercises, an “emotional, embodied discourse” was produced through their engagement in this morning ritual. In the case of these TEC residents, their production of “imaginings and senses of belonging” were produced through their singing these centrally important Tenrikyo ritual songs and performing their accompanying hand dances, and for the other thirteen Mikagura-uta portion, dances that involved their entire bodies. Their engagement in the combination of sound and gestural production was “…concrete, physical, embodied. For this reason, it is as much a collective discourse as an individual one (or whatever finer continuum of experientiality between the two arbitrary extremes is available as a cultural resource), without any necessary implication of primacy or authenticity of one over the other.” (Bénéï 2008: 76). Thus, through their daily engagement in this sensorially infused ritual, they were both re-affirming their individual identities as Tenrikyo individuals and also re-creating their collective identity as a Tenrikyo group, and extendedly, revisiting their belonging in the wider Tenrikyo sphere of followers worldwide.

<footnote n="223">²²³ The presence of chairs in the sanctuary of TEC was a place-based adaptation to the European context in which the center was located.</footnote>
*Productive days that start at TEC: the proactive continuation of the arduous work ethic of Japanese and Tenrikyo cultures through its structured daily embodiment*

After the Morning Service was completed by those staying at the center, everyone would then descend one level to the small ground-level kitchen<sup>224</sup> to have a breakfast that often consisted of toast made from sliced white bread purchased at a local supermarket with coffee or tea and juice which residents ate together<sup>225</sup>. After breakfast, the young adults working at ACFJT would then leave TEC together to take the train into Paris to start their workday at the laque cultural center and those staying at TEC would begin their workday there. Regardless of where they spent their day and what precise occupational role they held, their days were most often spent industriously working in accordance with the expected and established assiduous work ethic of TEC. Whether TEC staff worked outside of this religious center or inside it, a strong work ethic of diligence and long hours was demonstrated. This industriousness was also a prominent feature of the wider Tenrikyo sphere and connectedly, Japanese culture.

This assiduousness is also contained in numerous aspects of the faith's teachings. One example can be found in a gesture of one of the Mikagura-uta songs, which followers ideally perform and/or witness regularly, in which the word “hinokishin” is paired with the dance gesture of rhythmically walking in a small circle while pumping one's arms in a highly exaggerated manner back and forth which suggests a hardy engagement in physical labor. By regularly enacting this ritual gesture, the values and behaviors purported therein were encouraged. This is just one of the many Tenrikyo values present in and kinesthetically enacted through the ritual dances that served as a regularly embodied text of the faith which then became part of its practitioners to varying levels and in varying ways through repeated gestural performance.

<footnote n="224">224 This is a smaller space than the basement-level multi-purpose room we had meals in during the seminar.</footnote>

<footnote n="225">225 The everyday breakfast of residential life at TEC was different than the center's morning meal when the center hosted overnight events for which non-residents stayed at the center. At such times when there were "guests," fresh baguettes purchased from local bakeries were served with an assortment of jams, honey, butter, etc. Regarding this, numerous long-time TEC residents told me that they particularly liked when the center hosted people for overnight events because they get to have what they regarded as a special treat for breakfast.</footnote>
That Tenrikyo is largely an embodied faith rather than exclusively or primarily an intellectually based one was evidenced through the fact that these sacred dances, along with their accompanying songs, are considered one of the religion's "three scriptures," along with the Ofudesaki<fnref n="226" /> and Osashizu<fnref n="227" />. Through their orchestration, the faith was conveyed through sensorial and embodied means. In this, an insight is provided into a comment on the religion that I heard from time to time throughout my research<fnref n="228" />, that Tenrikyo is not something one can understand simply through thought, but rather that it is something one comes to understand little bit by little bit through experience. Through regular sensorial exposure, and connectedly embodiment, of these sacred songs and dances, it is arguable that an absorption of the faith took place into a space of the self that exists largely in the subtle, and at times unsubtle, experientially based realm of knowing and understanding.

In this, the connection between the performance of this ritual Service and the maintenance of its teachings in the self is evidenced, thereby supporting Mr. Kawakubo's insistence that the residential missionaries perform it twice daily, as prescribed in the religion, to maintain the faith's centrality in themselves and in their focus. Through the regular enactment of this ritual, along with practice of a Tenrikyo mode of sociality through lived behaviors and interactions, the expansive whole of the religion was encouraged in a manner based not only in the realm of the intellect but also in their embodied and non-enunciated selves. This subtler side of what it is to experience and “be” Tenrikyo and how it was transmitted to or shared with others is a centrally important component of my thesis as it was, connectedly, a key component of my lived experience “in the field.”

*Pragmatic flexibility and consistent dedication to the Morning and Evening Service*

In my observations, there was sometimes a contrast at TEC between the appearance of a more orthodox approach to the religion displayed during the European Seminar and other official

<footnote n="226">²²⁶ Ofudesaki: literally “tip of the writing brush,” refers to A 17-part collection of 1,711 waka poems, written by the foundress from 1869 to 1882 through divine inspiration from God the Parent.</footnote>

<footnote n="227">²²⁷ Osashizu ("Divine Directions") is a written record of oral revelations given by Izo Iburi, the foundress' main disciple who after the foundress' physical passing in 1887, received the "grant of speech" from the foundress and dictated instructions through divine inspiration.</footnote>

<footnote n="228">²²⁸ Most commonly but not exclusively from women.</footnote>
contexts and what existed in day-to-day life amongst its residents. During organized gatherings for which followers came to TEC and stayed in its guest housing, the Morning and Evening Service was performed “religiously” as a group at their scheduled times. When only longer-term residents were at the center, more flexibility was accorded. Whereas mornings at the center were highly communal and involved everyone who was staying at the center, the residential members of TEC were much more dispersed in the evenings. Although the latter part of the day was also communal, evenings during the week were significantly less so than the mornings. This was mainly due to the late work schedule of some ACFJT teachers who usually got back to TEC after the scheduled Evening Service time of 6 pm and the group dinner that followed shortly thereafter that was usually prepared by the head wife and any female staff<fnref n="229" /> present during its preparation, which, like many other tasks performed at TEC, was a communally shared moment for those involved. For ACFJT staff who had not returned to the center by dinner time, a portion of the meal was set aside for when they came home, usually after finishing work at the cultural center’s closing time of 8 pm and the approximately thirty-minute commute home thereafter.

The general lack of TEC residents present for the center’s official Evening Service, even amongst residents not working late at ACFJT, resulted because they were often occupied by a variety of other things and thus did not engage in this evening ritual at its officially scheduled time of 6 pm. They instead often performed it on their own at some point of the evening that corresponded well with their individual schedules. While it was important that the residential members of TEC performed this centrally important ritual twice daily, there was flexibility regarding precisely when and with whom it was enacted. That it did not have to be, and often was not, performed with others in a group setting or at its officially scheduled time was initially surprising to me because this somewhat laidback approach was quite different than what I observed during the three-week annual Europe Tenrikyo Seminar that was my in-depth introduction to the faith.

In this structured training program, participation in the highly communal Morning and Evening Services at their scheduled times by everyone present was positioned as highly important. Thus, I had assumed that this was always the case at this religious center. Instead, the precise time at which it was performed when primarily only residential “insiders” were there was approached

<footnote n="229">²²⁹ This gendered allocation of labor was not absolute and occasionally male staff also engaged in meal preparation.</footnote>
less strictly than it was in the more public context of the seminar. One key reason I attribute to this discrepancy is that during the seminar, TEC staff were serving as an exemplary model of religious practice whereas when in private, they were functioning as more autonomous religious actors already highly familiar with and inculcated in the faith, including its ritual engagement, thereby allowing more room for situationally dependent adaptations and a less collectively orthodox practice.

Some evenings at TEC outside of times when the center welcomed many non-residents, the Service was performed communally by a small group of people at the center. Often though, when I stayed until the Evening Service time when already at TEC for another purpose, such as looking at Tenrikyo books in their library after an activity was held there earlier in the day, I found myself in the sanctuary with only a single staff member there for the ritual at its officially scheduled time. In such cases, the staff member present was quite possibly only there due to my having indicated a desire to participate in the ritual when asked fifteen or thirty minutes before the scheduled time if I wanted to do so.

The first few times I encountered this dramatic shift from the Service performed together by a much larger group which included all five musical instruments and numerous others in attendance that I had come to know through my three weeks of participation in the European Seminar, I was quite surprised by the difference. Overtime, I learned that everyone residing at TEC performed the Evening Service each day, but because of busy schedules and practicalities, they often went up to the sanctuary on their own to quickly perform it at a time of their convenience at some point in the evening. Without fail, though, they performed the Evening Service. This difference in how it was performed in more official contexts versus in the everyday world of TEC was demonstrative of a somewhat frequent discord between the idealized way the religion was engaged in more public settings versus the more laidback or less fervent approach that I observed in more private settings.

Regardless of this lack of absolute fixedness regarding the precise time at which this evening ritual was executed, it was consistently performed, thereby encouraging the maintenance of the focus of these residents on their religion, and connectedly, why they were in France. In discussing with me the absolute regularity with which this ritual practice was maintained by the residential
missionaries, one young woman resident light-heartedly told me that no matter what, even when they have come back from an evening of drinking, they are sure to perform the Evening Service. She expanded on this by telling me partially with words, partially through acting it out, that sometimes on such occasions they may almost drift off to sleep during part of it or are a little wobbly in facing the altars, but none the less, they are sure to perform the Service. Her somewhat comical account of their dedication to the execution of the Service twice daily was one of many examples that I observed throughout my research of a non-rigid adaptiveness to maintaining religious practice and one's connection to the faith in concert with other aspects of one's life.

*Remaining partially in Japan while abroad through language*

As can be expected in a context in which everyone spoke Japanese as their native language, the main language of communication amongst TEC residents was Japanese. Thus, amongst other residents, the two previously mentioned young women sent by their church in Japan to learn French spoke in Japanese with their compatriots in their daily life at TEC. Furthermore, they did not spend much time away from the center except when at their language school with a mix of students of different nationalities similarly at the beginning stages of learning French who were not a source of fluent language immersion. As a result, although staying in the communal housing of TEC was both economical and kept them highly connected to the faith and involved in the lifestyle of living at a Tenrikyo site, their advancement toward their declared reason for being in the country was hindered due to a lack of natural immersion in the language.

This impediment to learning the French language was not unique to these two young women but extended to the other residential staff members as well, who also spoke mainly in Japanese throughout the day. The continuation of the language of the country from which they came in a country with a different national language calls into question the level to which these residents were really in a foreign context during their time abroad and to what level they remained largely in Japan, though at a distance, during their time of living at TEC. In the case of the ACFJT Japanese language teachers, though they were in interaction with French people during their workday in the classes they taught, because the school's pedagogical approach was that of
language immersion<sup>230</sup>, there were limited opportunities in their daily life to gain exposure to and practice the French language.

I also sometimes heard from such individuals, more often female than male, that although they would sometimes like to speak in French more in various contexts outside the classroom, because the French people with whom they interacted often spoke some Japanese<sup>231</sup> and there was a perceived (and real) desire on the part of such French people to practice this language, these residents often spoke in their native language with them “to make them happy.” In this, we can see a displayed prioritization of the key Tenrikyo teaching of making efforts to facilitate the happiness of others that functioned as a barrier to their linguistic integration into the country in which they were living. The continuation of Japanese as the main language of usage amongst TEC residents was an important component, though not the only one, of this language serving as the main language of its “core community” that encouraged the presence of a two-tiered community of people connected to TEC that was largely, though not entirely, divided between Japanese and non-Japanese people.

*The displayed social world of residential TEC life: the culturally prescribed separation between what is shown and not shown*

Regarding the description of the residential sphere of TEC offered in this chapter, it is important to bear in mind that the mode of sociality I most often saw practiced by TEC residents was a partial representation of the entirety of living at this center. To varying degrees, certain ways of being positioned as being in accordance with the Tenrikyo values they were charged with conveying to the local European population, of which I was included, were purposefully put forth in “public settings<sup>232</sup>.” At the same time, there were subtle indications that the individual and interpersonal situations of these residents were, in fact, more complex. This dichotomy that was often present and presumed to exist as a social fact in Japanese culture by many Japanese people and in academic literature is commonly referred to with the words *honne* (本音: "true sound")

<footnote n="230"><sup>230</sup> Even in beginner-level classes at ACFJT, the model of immersion-based classes was followed.</footnote>

<footnote n="231"><sup>231</sup> This was mainly due to the social contacts of these residents being largely through ACFJT and TEC.</footnote>

<footnote n="232"><sup>232</sup> Because I was not a TEC resident nor a core member of the TEC community, the scenes I was exposed to were de facto “public” scenes.</footnote>
and *tatemae* (建前: "built in front," "facade"). *Honne* refers to a person's true feelings and desires that may be kept hidden, apart from with those one is closest. *Tatemae* refers to the behavior and opinions one displays in public based on what is expected and required according to one's position and circumstances.

These words and the connected social model became a commonly used dyadic concept during Japan's post-war era, though its referenced distinction between these prescribed inner and outer spheres was not something new to this period (Doi 1986:35). Now, this linguistically expressed duality is a highly familiar concept in the Japanese repertoire. This was demonstrated in my own experience by the familiarity with them and the underlying dichotomous concept they represent expressed by the numerous Japanese people to whom I broached these terms<fnref n="233" />. Most often, the Japanese people to whom I mentioned these terms indicated a view that this opposition is an important component of Japanese sociality and furthermore, one that differentiates it from Western modes of sociality.

Kondo's (1987: 245-246) discussion of *tatemae* and *honne*, largely in relation to the Japanese language in which different forms of speech imply various layers of politeness, formality, and informality, illuminates the underlying social and psychological structure they represent. She explains that boundaries between the self and other are non-fixed and constantly changing in accordance with the surrounding context and through the roles a person occupies in a particular situation. She asserts this to imply that *tatemae* and *honne* are both equally important aspects of human life that ideally exist in dialectical interplay and a relationship of complementarity in which either extreme is unacceptable. People should not be unfeeling robots, nor should they openly express everything they think and feel.

Furthermore, as Hadley (1989) indicates in her discussion of *tatemae* and *honne*, the distinction is much more multifarious than a clear dichotomy between the inner and outer self. There are different faces for different occasions and furthermore, she asserts, there may be different layers of *tatemae*, "...the number of layers being in itself significant, and there are also different ways in which one can peel off and penetrate the layers of *tatemae* in any particular context," (p. 626). In

<footnote n="233">²³³ The majority of the Japanese people I discussed *tatemae* and *honne* with were not people I knew through Tenrikyo contexts.</footnote>
her exploration of these inner and outer sides of the self, she includes reference to the prominent Japanese psychiatrist, Takeo Doi (1986), who authored an in-depth examination of these inner and outer spheres in his book aptly titled in Japanese “*Omote to ura*”<fnref n="234" />, cited previously. (The pair of Japanese words “*omote*” and “*ura*,” which translate approximately to “front/surface” and “rear,” are closely related to and often used synonymously with *tatemae* and *honne*). In this work, Doi asserts that the *omote* both reveals and conceals the *ura*; the outer realm expresses the inner realm that it also conceals so that when people look at *omote*, they are also seeing *ura* through *omote*. In this discussion, Doi posits *tatemae* to be the product of socialization and *honne* to be the expression of self-consciousness.

> It is a distinction not infrequently discussed by Japanese, who describe as *tatemae* language or behaviour which is deemed appropriate for a particular social situation when the expression of one's personal feelings would be out of place. Doi points out that *tatemae* always implies the existence of a group of people who assent to it, but who nevertheless hold their own personal *honne* views in the background. (Hendry 1989: 624).

Shih’s (2010) discussion of Oriental modernity through a specifically Chinese and Japanese vantage point is interesting in this regard. He asserted that Oriental modernity is concerned principally with self-image rather than self-identity. Central to understanding this differentiation is the distinction between identity and image. Identity is concerned with a boundary between the internal and the external. If there is not an established difference between what is internal and what is external, identity cannot be established. In defining what one is, one is also defining what one is not. Image is about how one is evaluated by others. People perform according to roles agreed upon by themselves and others. Because each situation involves a different relationship, one is required to perform differently in different situations to receive a positive evaluation. Principally needing an identity is different than principally needing an image. Although those who are identity-focused may feel that those who are image-focused have no soul, being focused on an image is actually linked to the importance of social relationships in order to understand how to behave meaningfully. Central to one’s ability to adapt to situations and relationships is the effective management of one’s image. From this perspective, it is logical that group oriented

<footnote n="234">²³⁴ The title of this book in its cited English translation is “The anatomy of self: the individual versus society” (1986).</footnote>
cultures would be more image-focused and individualistically oriented cultures would be more identity-focused.

Shih employs an epistemological explanation of this difference. While Christianity<sup>235</sup> produces the need for an identity because it is with this identity that one will face the Lord, Confucianism produces the need for an image because in order to complete the circle of life, one must eventually reproduce a collective relationship that renders the meaning of life to newcomers. In this model, people learn to self-sacrifice in order to reproduce the greater self, defined through the collective relationship. Although having multiple identities can be psychologically troublesome for an individual, utilizing different images of the self in different situations can be socially beneficial. In Tenrikyo, social relationships are positioned as one of the main reasons for human existence and one of the most important components of human life. The broader human experience is relegated to occurring physically on earth, through multiple lives, rather than on a belief in an afterlife that occurs in a different realm. Thus, Shih's discussion of the largely Western value of "self-identity" versus the "Oriental" emphasis on "self-image" is highly pertinent to this religion and furthermore, to the construction of a community at and via TEC.

Throughout my research, I was most often exposed to the purposefully put forth *tatemae* side of individual and social realities with glimpses into the more profound *honne* sides of individual and social complexities through small indicators, such as facial expressions and small but noteworthy comments. This discord was a socially prescribed modality reflective largely of the normalized way of being in Japanese culture, and also in the Tenrikyo faith, that is conveyed in this linguistically defined duality. In this, the benevolently cheerful and optimistic ways of being often presented in "public" settings<sup>236</sup> that were in accordance with prescribed behaviors and dispositional models of what they "should" be like were often not completely expressive of the more complex realities at work.

<footnote n="235"><sup>235</sup> The model of Christianity Shih discusses is particularly reflective of a Protestant framework: the predominant Christian denomination of both his home country of Taiwan and also the United States where he had spent a significant amount of time for graduate studies and thereafter as a visiting scholar at numerous American academic institutions.</footnote>

<footnote n="236"><sup>236</sup> In saying "publicly performed," I am referring to both moments in highly public spaces and also between limited numbers of people in less visible spaces between people who still maintain a certain level of polite distance.</footnote>
Commonly included in my observations were seemingly paradoxical juxtapositions between what was presented on the surface and the more global reality at play. The multiple layers of what was occurring, which commonly included both purposefully displayed and concealed components, was not reflective of one layer being more “real” than the other, but rather of the complexity involved in its entirety. Often in my research context, through prioritizing certain self-representational and behavioral modalities that did not overtly display the entirety of what was occurring, social harmony and ease were accorded a higher value than frankness or full disclosure of what one thinks and feels. This modality was illuminative of the importance placed on social harmony and that of “the group,” thereby encouraging its existence.

This harmoniously collective social model was at the core of the Tenrikyo faith through both oratory and textual teachings. It was present also prominently by means of its chiefly important ritual of the Monthly Service, which was a manifestation and sensorially rich and embodied conveyer of these teachings that was symbolically, and in practice, the coming together of multiple roles. In the pointed context of this ritual, this was symbolically manifested by numerous instrumental and dance performers collaboratively forming a greater whole. Similar to that of the center’s residential world and a variety of other social contexts that I observed over the span of my fieldwork, the people filling these ritual roles were largely interchangeable but the structure they followed was fixed. The next chapter is dedicated to a discussion of this important monthly ritual, as it existed at TEC.
# Chapter five: Monthly Services at TEC: uniting with the faith and a local segment of the “TEC community” through a regularly occurring enactment of the sacred

## a. Returning to a familiar socio-religious context through ritual gatherings

### Repeatedly coming together for the Monthly Service

At the center of every Tenrikyo site of worship is its enactment of the Monthly Service. For these monthly ritual gatherings at TEC, there were usually approximately thirty to forty people in attendance. About two-thirds were female. Sixty to sixty five percent were Japanese (or in the case of several young adults, the children of Japanese missionary parents born in Europe). About ten percent were French, with the remaining twenty-five to thirty percent composed of numerous other nationalities. The most represented of these other nationalities was the Republic of the Congo due to religion's presence in this country since 1966<sup>237</sup> in combination with the significant presence of Congolese people living in the Paris area. There were also several people from Latin American countries who regularly came to TEC Monthly Services, two from the UK, and a Korean woman who I discuss in more detail later. Given this multicultural social composition, although I am neither Japanese nor French, my American nationality did not render me out of place.

At TEC, this chiefly important ritual was held on the second Sunday of every month in its sanctuary, starting at 10:30 am. Similar to most lineage-based Tenrikyo sites of worship in France, which the next chapter discusses, this ritual was held on a Sunday as an adaptation to the French societal landscape in which it was located because in this country, people generally did not work on Sundays and the day was framed as one for other activities, such as attendance of a religious service. Alternatively, in Japan, Tenrikyo Monthly Services were usually held on a particular date every month instead of on a particular day of the week. This was reflective of the fact that traditionally in Japan, no day of the week was regarded as any more special than any other day; it was rather particular times in the lunar cycle that were accorded significance. In Tenrikyo, excluding the main Monthly Service held in Tenri City around the sacred point of the

<footnote n="237">237 During the span of my fieldwork, the 50th anniversary of the Congo Brazzaville Church (the main Tenrikyo site in the country) was celebrated.</footnote>
Jiba on the 26th of every month, discussed in chapter nine, it did not theologically matter on what particular day of every month that this ritual was performed, but rather that it be performed with monthly regularity, with each site having a specific designated day on which to do so.

This ritual was an important means through which a bridge between TEC and other Tenrikyo sites was brought about. Although TEC was located in a Parisian suburb, the Monthly Service belonged to a non-place specific Tenrikyo world that was regularly enacted at disparate Tenrikyo sites. At any given TEC Monthly Service, if one were to look at the scene taking place inside the center's distinctly "Japanese" sanctuary, one would see mainly Japanese people in attendance, but also an eclectic mix of people from various other countries, and the geographic location would be difficult to guess. In a broad sense, the scene that unfolded every month at TEC during these rituals did not belong distinctly to the Parisian suburb where it took place, but instead to the broader Tenrikyo realm in which the same ritual components were enacted at every Tenrikyo site of worship.

In addition to the ritual itself, this sameness was also manifested through multiple other factors including the site, the accompanying mode of sociality, and the ritual being followed by a communal meal. It was also encouraged through the significant presence of Japanese people, many but not all of whom were born and raised as Tenrikyo followers, and largely though not entirely in congruent manner, many were also positioned as core members of the "TEC community," with their presence significantly influencing the social world that came about during these ritual gatherings. The prominent influence of this ritual was also demonstrated through the symbolism contained in it that was manifestly present in the discourse and actions of the group, which I discuss in various parts of this thesis.

To begin this chapter, I include hereafter an explanation of “The Service” from the official website of TEC<fnref n="238" />. The Service it describes is the “real” Monthly Service enacted around the sacred point of the Jiba in the Main Sanctuary of Tenrikyo in the pilgrimage town of Tenri City. All other Monthly Services performed elsewhere are considered “practice renditions” of this “real” Monthly Service, with several scripted differences which demarcate their separation. The

<footnote n="238">²³⁸ The website of TEC existed in Japanese, French, English, and Spanish.</footnote>
image that follows this text is of a TEC Monthly Service included on the same page of this website.

## The Service

The Service is Tenrikyo's most important rite as it is the fundamental means for the path of single-hearted salvation. In its primary sense, it refers to the Kagura Service conducted in the Inner Sanctuary of Church Headquarters, but it also includes the Dance with Hand Movements, which is known in Japanese as the "Teodori."

The Kagura Service is a reenactment in principle of God the Parent's providence at the time of creation. Ten Service performers encircle the Jiba-Kanrodai and symbolize by hand-gestures the principles of God the Parent's workings, by which humankind and the world were created. The Kagura Service is the means by which we call forth God the Parent's blessings of universal salvation, whereby the world will be reconstructed as the world of the Joyous Life.

Following the Kagura Service, the Dance with Hand Movements is performed by three men and three women on the dais in the Main Sanctuary. Both the Kagura Service and the Dance with Hand Movements are joyously performed by the dancers moving in unison to the Mikagura-uta and in harmony with the music of the nine instruments.

The Kagura Service is also called the "Joyous Service," the "Salvation Service," and the "Service of the Kanrodai," denoting its different aspects.

from Yoboku's Guide to Tenrikyo, translated by Tenrikyo Overseas Department
<figure><img src="image_17.png" /><figcaption>Image 4: Performance of the Monthly Service at TEC. (Photo from website: Tenrikyo Europe Centre 2016) Not seen in this photo are the three stringed “women’s instruments” located on the right side of the stage.</figcaption></figure>

In discussing the fundamentally important ritual of the Monthly Service that is at the center of the Tenrikyo faith, it is pertinent to highlight that this ritual’s celebratory nature is manifestly present in a Japanese word commonly used for this monthly ritual: “tsukinamisai,” which denotes a monthly celebration, generally of a ritual nature. Coming together to join in celebration was not only a component of what was included in religious life through this monthly ritual; it was its main component from which secondary parts of religious life and community developed. As noted by Morishita (2001:3), the original linguistic sense of the “Monthly Service,” as it is referred to in English<fnref n="239" />, loses some of its original import in translation. He postulated that the word “service” perhaps originated from the religious services held by Christian denominations in the West. Worthy of note to Morishita is that the explicit meaning of festivity contained in the word tsukinamisai is not conveyed in its translation. Ideally, this “Monthly Service” is a joyous event in which people come together and embrace the teachings conveyed benevolently by the religion’s foundress, largely through the music and dance which comprise the central component of this ritual.

<footnote n="239">²³⁹ In French, it is similarly called the “Service Mensuel.”</footnote>
It should be noted that this monthly ritual's celebratory nature is in accordance with the broader Japanese cultural environment in which special occasions and special dates are often ceremonialized. This trait was also present in Tenrikyo beyond these Monthly Services through numerous other occasions that were ritually commemorated at TEC and in many other Tenrikyo contexts. During the span of my research, in diverse Tenrikyo contexts including, but not limited to those at TEC and in Tenri City, I saw a repeated rhythm of preparing for special events, orchestrating them, and then again beginning preparations for another upcoming special event. The Monthly Service itself is an example of the central place that special events hold in Tenrikyo.

The Service songs, and their accompanying dances, are the vital part of this ritual that are positioned at the geographic and spiritual center of the faith. This dual centrality, which is pivotal to understanding the position of the Service ritual within Tenrikyo, is grounded in the fact that the principal Service ritual is performed around the faith's physical and spiritual center of the Jiba in Tenri City. During the performance of the Service elsewhere, whether it be a daily Morning or Evening Service, an *Onegai*<fnref n="240" /> (“petition”) Service, or a Monthly Service, ideally, followers spiritually unite themselves with the main Tenrikyo Service performed on the 26th of each month around the Jiba by key religious actors, including the Shinbashira<fnref n="241" /> and his wife. In doing so, they are not only connecting themselves with this specific point of sacrality and its associated spiritual significance but also with the broader transnational social world of Tenrikyo through the construction of this conceptual connection which functions as an important contributing component to the modes of sociality which exist at, and are shared between, dispersed Tenrikyo sites.

*Entering a cognitive realm linked with the Service through sensorial cues*

Each month, the Monthly Service at TEC began with the soul-provoking sounds of Japanese *gagaku*<fnref n="242" /> music, thereby serving as an auditory opener to the experience of the Monthly Service.

<footnote n="240">²⁴⁰ “Onegai” is a Japanese word used to express a request and is commonly used in a manner similar to the English word: “please.”</footnote>

<footnote n="241">²⁴¹ The Shinbashira is the acting leader of the Tenrikyo religion.</footnote>

<footnote n="242">²⁴² *Gagaku* music refers to ancient court music of Japan imported from China and Korea as early as the 6th century which was thereafter established as a Japanese court tradition by the 8th century. Gagaku music is not performed at the principal Monthly Service performed around the Kanrodai at the Jiba in Tenri City but is sometimes included</footnote>
throughout the duration of the Service. Overtime, the slightly different experiential state that I encountered during this ritual encouraged a partially conditioned response in me that provoked such a state to come about when again exposed to the multi-sensorial stimuli of the Service. The cognitively evocative sounds that promoted this state included not only the introductory gagaku music but also, and perhaps moreover, the music of the Monthly Service itself, which was a hypnotic blend of repetitive percussion and harmonious stringed instruments that sensorially encouraged the inhabitance of an alternative state.

In observing others in attendance, a slightly different state from that with which they arrived was somewhat commonly evidenced. At any given time after the first few minutes of the Service, while most in attendance remained in a visually "normal" state, some closed their eyes and appeared to partially drift off, subtly rocking back and forth in rhythm with the percussion instruments emitting their repetitive cadence of the Service songs: visual cues which suggested a slightly altered state into which some people drifted in and out. The ritual of the Monthly Service was divided into three sections, each of which provided ample time for this state to come about. The first portion of the Service (the "Seated Service") lasted approximately 10-15 minutes and each half of the thirteen standing "Mikagura-uta" songs lasted approximately 30 minutes. (I discuss these three sections of the Service later in this chapter.) Each of the three sections played in separate continuity were long enough to encourage those in attendance to cognitively and emotionally move through various experiential states with the sounds and vibrations of the music and the sights of the dancers and also the broader setting of the sanctuary in which this ritual occurred.

This constructed inner state influenced not only the individualized religious experiences of the religious actors present but also the social interactions that occurred between them afterwards, specifically during the after-Service meal held two floors below that generally lasted several hours and constituted a key component in the creation, development, and reinforcement of the individual social bonds and feeling of belonging in this group. That the unifying feature of the Service ritual was viewed to be extended into the post-Service meal, which I discuss later in this chapter, was, albeit often indirectly, evidenced through the common mention of the positively unifying feature of the Service ritual in concert with a main aim of gatherings, including that of the Monthly Service, being for people to come together with others, creating or deepening
positive relationships with them. Although the role of the inner state of attendees cultivated through the Service was not often directly mentioned in reference to interactions that occurred during these post-Service meals and other contexts outside of the ritual itself, this connection was commonly demonstrated to exist through the mention of both of these features of the overall Monthly Service gatherings independently, but by the same people.

This initial switching of psychological states from that of the everyday to that associated with the sacrality of the Service, which then encouraged such interactions outside of this ritual to maintain this state, occurred not only through the sounds and vibrations of the music, but also via a variety of other stimulatory means that were encountered at the beginning of this ritual, several of which I describe in more detail shortly. Through these experiential transformers, the way in which this ritual event was encountered and embodied previously and the associations with it that were created over time promoted a re-encountering of such a state as a developed response to its recurrently present multisensory stimuli. Both the more private sphere of their individual experience (which for many was not understood as a solitary one because it included an encounter or communion with God the Parent and/or the foundress) and the collective social experience of being with others was shaped through the sensorially rich process of going through this opening segment of the ritual. This was an important component of the lived experience of attending Monthly Services, whether as a ritual performer or in the more passive role of sitting in the audience section throughout the entirety of the ritual.

In Japan, the progressive process of entering into a cognitive state associated with sacrality is not unique to Tenrikyo but rather is in accordance with the purification process Japanese people commonly go through when entering a site of worship, such as a Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine. This important transformative process was specifically brought to my attention through a casual exchange with a young adult missionary teacher living at TEC in reference to her enjoyment and the special feeling that she derived from visiting churches in France, which she explained to be because they are “God’s places” (kamisama no tokoro). This exchange occurred after we had already gotten to know each other over the span of nearly a year and a half and included an honest exploration of both her and my perspectives. I posed the question of what she meant by their being “God’s places.” My question was prompted by the fact that in Tenrikyo, it is taught that the entire universe is the body of God, and thus, in my interpretation of this teaching,
it would mean that every location in the universe is a place of God, thereby negating only certain
“religious” sites of having exclusive claim to this divine quality. She paused briefly and then
replied that she supposed her particular feelings associated with being in a religious site are due
to that in Japan, when entering a religious site such as a Shinto shrine, one increasingly purifies
oneself through simple rituals paired with the purification of one’s inner being. Thus, it is not
exclusively the sacred site itself but the broader experience she associated with it that she found
appealing.

In the context of my research, the psychological and behavioral modes that people entered and reentered when taking part in Tenrikyo rituals held at TEC, or other Tenrikyo sites, was something that came about through multiple means and thus, as discussed by the young adult missionary in regard to the overall experience of entering into a site of worship, was a multi-step process of readying oneself to inhabit a sacred space. For people performing in the Service as ritual dancers and/or instrumental players, this conditioned state of engagement with the faith was additionally entered into prior to the ritual itself through their physically entering into the ceremonial robes<sup>243</sup> in the men's and women's changing rooms<sup>244</sup>. The ritual performers in these changing rooms were typically core members of the local TEC community, such as TEC residents and local mission station heads (or their wives), along with the occasional presence of followers coming from elsewhere, most often other locations in Europe and to a lesser degree Japan when they were at the center or in the Paris area for another reason.

Though brief, the time they spent changing into and out of their ceremonial wear in these
gendered spaces of transition was an intimate moment with others<fnref n="245" /> included in the inner social
sphere of TEC Monthly Services. Moreover, through both the physical sensation of donning these
ceremonial robes and seeing oneself in the mirror in them and knowing that others will see them
in this way, their inhabitation of this sacred context was invoked through their robed bodies. In
partially like manner, for those not dressed as ritual performers, it was common when attending

<footnote n="243">243 At most Tenrikyo Monthly Services, these ceremonial robes are kimono for women and hakama pant suits for men.</footnote>

<footnote n="244">²⁴⁴ General-use rooms at TEC used for this purpose before and after Monthly Services.</footnote>

<footnote n="245">²⁴⁵ This statement is directed more at the social dynamics of the female changing room because I have little knowledge about the social dynamics of the male changing rooms.</footnote>
the Service to wear a happi coat, as it also was when engaging in a variety of Tenrikyo activities and events that did not call for the formal ritual wear. I further discuss these coats in a later subsection of this chapter, but at this point, it should suffice to explain that a main purpose of such Tenrikyo clothing was to situate the wearer in a pointedly Tenrikyo framework.

Another important point of entry into the sphere of sacrality associated with the sanctuary of TEC, and other such Tenrikyo sanctuaries, was the aesthetic component of these prayer spaces that was largely similar throughout the world, regardless of geographic location<fnref n="246" />. This visual component was conducive to creating an embodied and psychological state of concomitance that spanned beyond specific sites to include a more global, largely non-place-based association with the religion for those who had spent time in Tenrikyo contexts, to a great extent, regardless of specific location. Chiefly important to this trans-spatial similitude were the three alters at the front of this room dedicated to the ancestors, God the Parent, and the foundress toward which everyone faced and directed their ritualized actions associated with prayer.

Along with the previously discussed components that encouraged those present to enter into a particular embodied and psychological state associated with this ritual, another important facilitator of this was the ritualized addressal at the start of the Service to the three spiritual entities represented by the altars via the kinesthetic and sonorally-based<fnref n="247" /> act of clapping four times and bowing slightly to each of them that was repeated at each transitional point of the Service. It was to these altars that the Service performers faced in their execution of the sacred dances and correspondingly, to these altars (or more specifically, the entities they represent) that much of the focus of those in attendance should be directed. These three altars are aesthetically uniform between Tenrikyo sites of worship throughout the world. Thus, whether one is attending a Monthly Service at TEC, a Paris-area mission station, a Tenrikyo church in Sao Paulo, or a

<footnote n="246">²⁴⁶ This is true in all instances of Tenrikyo sites of worship that I have seen in person or in photographs. It is possible, though, that there exists a Tenrikyo site I have not encountered that differs aesthetically from the norm because this component of the religion is a traditionally followed component of the religion, but not a mandated one.</footnote>

<footnote n="247">²⁴⁷ I use the word “sonoral” rather than “auditory” because I wish to convey reference not only to the reception of the produced sounds in the ear but also reception of the vibrations produced through these sounds in the entire body, as was included in my own engagement with this ritual.</footnote>
grand church in Japan, one is facing the aesthetically same material objects toward which
followers (ideally) direct their devotion, reverence, and prayers.

The next step of the transition into the sacrality associated with the Monthly Service was the opening of the doors of the altar to God the Parent to reveal the portal to the “sacred object<fnref n="248" />” contained therein<fnref n="249" />. This “sacred object,” which all Tenrikyo altars dedicated to God the Parent have inside, is from the Jiba, where God the Parent is understood to have enacted the conception of the first humans and continues to reside currently. They are regarded as highly important by Tenrikyo followers. This was evidenced, for example, when I heard multiple followers at TEC talk about that when they moved from one location to another, they put the altar dedicated to God the Parent with their checked bags, but carried the sacred object normally contained within it on their person as it is the sacred object that is principally important rather than the altar in which it is housed, which though rather costly, is much more easily replaceable<fnref n="250" />. Similar to other components of the Monthly Service, the opening of the portals to the sacred object associated with God the Parent was orchestrated through specific ritualized actions that were repeated every month, thereby rendering them a familiar component of the Monthly Service to people already familiar with the ritual<fnref n="251" />.

To begin this part of the Monthly Service, everyone in attendance clapped four times in unison
and bowed slightly, as is the prescribed ritual marker of Tenrikyo to begin and end marked
segments of sacrality, including that of prayer. Three males, generally but not always the center's
head and two long-time senior males who held hierarchically important duties associated with

<footnote n="248">²⁴⁸ In English, the term “sacred object” was invariably used to refer to them, and in French, they were referred to as “objet sacré.”</footnote>

<footnote n="249">249 The sacred object remains hidden by small red curtains placed behind its small wooden doors.</footnote>

<footnote n="250">²⁵⁰ I cannot say with certainty if the God the Parent is represented “through” the altar dedicated to it, or God the Parent is understood to actually dwell in the altar due to the sacred object which contains its essence. Based on my observations, this is a highly complex theological question for which there is not a conclusive and unified answer.</footnote>

<footnote n="251">²⁵¹ At TEC Monthly Services, it was common for several people present to be attending a Tenrikyo Monthly Service for the first time, largely due to the fact that Tenrikyo followers are often encouraged to invite non-followers to a Service. The majority present, though, were people who had developed a high level of familiarity with this ritual over time.</footnote>
TEC<fnref n="252" />, would then ceremoniously approach the altar to God the Parent. When in front of the altar, they would reverentially make a low-pitched intonation of a long “Oh” sound, while the man in the middle of the three (generally the head of TEC, who was organizationally positioned as the hierarchically top ranking person of the center) opened the altar’s creaky portal doors, thereby enhancing the sensorially-linked sentimental effect of what they were doing through these sounds<fnref n="253" />. After the doors of the altar had been opened, thereby creating an entry to the sacred object contained within, the three men then descended from the altar, and everyone in attendance again would clap four times and bow slightly, thereby marking the end of this portion of the Monthly Service.

*Thinking of Tenrikyo in relation to Shinto and the anthropological category of animism*

The practice of placing “sacred objects” inside shrines and altars, and how they were conceptualized in Tenrikyo, is highly similar to this religious feature as it exists in Shinto, thereby rendering this point of my thesis an appropriate place to include a short discussion of the multifarious category of Shinto, which contains within it multiple subcategories, in relation to Tenrikyo. “Shinto” is a term commonly used to connotate “Japanese traditional religion” which is, in fact, a collection of native beliefs and mythologies that can, and has, taken multiple forms. “Shrine Shinto” (Jinja-Shintō 神社神道) is a broad category regarded as the main tradition of Shinto which has been present in Japan for over a millennium<fnref n="254" /> and consists of participating in worship practices and events at local shrines.

<footnote n="252">252 These “hierarchically important duties” include, for example, serving as the head of a lineage-based site of worship in Europe, serving as an instructor charged with teaching components of the European seminar (thereby acting as a voice of authority on the religion,) and occupying important positions at ACFJT, such as long-time permanent Japanese teachers of the center (some of whom also occupy ACFJT administrative positions ). Numerous such referenced individuals occupied all three of these categories simultaneously.</footnote>

<footnote n="253">²⁵³ When I attended Monthly Services at the Sugimotos' mission station, at which I was often the only person in attendance outside their immediate family who lived at their house, its head, Mr. Sugimoto, in like manner made this low-pitched “oh” sound while opening the doors of the altar to God the Parent which housed similar sacred object while preparing for the Monthly Service, which he did alone while I was usually seated on a couch facing the other direction and his wife and children were busy elsewhere. This suggests that this method of opening the altar doors with this accompanying reverential sound was not done for the sake of an audience, since in this case, there basically was none.</footnote>

<footnote n="254">²⁵⁴ The precise amount of time that “Shinto” has existed in Japan is an unclear and complex matter that is beyond the scope of my thesis.</footnote>
Before the Meiji Restoration (1868), Shinto shrines were most often attached to Buddhist temples. After the Meiji Restoration, Shinto was transformed into a system of independent systematized institutions commonly known as “Sect Shinto” (Kyōha-Shintō 教派神道). This was a legal category created to separate government-owned shrines from local religious communities and practices<fnref n="255" />. Conversely, “Folk Shinto” (Minzoku-Shintō 民俗神道) is a category that can be broadly described as folk beliefs in deities and spirits and often includes divination, spirit possession, and shamanic healing<fnref n="256" />. During the structured modernization efforts of the Japanese government that brought about Sect Shinto, it was what is now placed in the category of “Folk Shinto” that the government attempted to eradicate through mandating that all Shinto groups be associated with one of the thirteen officially registered Shinto sects.

The term “Shinto” itself translates approximately into English as “the way of the gods” and is written with two kanji characters: 神道. The first of these two kanji (神: shin) is the symbol which denotes the concept of kami, which as discussed in the introduction is most commonly translated into English as “god” or “spirit,” although neither word adequately conveys the entire concept conveyed in this word. The second kanji (道: tō) lends itself much better to a direct translation into English and means “path” or “street,” or sometimes when used in a more symbolic sense, “the way of ____.” It is used in the names of numerous self-development practices, such as judō (literally: “the way of softness/flexibility,”) sadō (literally: “the way of tea,” i.e. the codified art of tea ceremony,) and shodō (literally “the way of writing,” i.e. the traditional art of calligraphy). At the heart of these practices is not the tangible results they may produce but the process through which they are practiced that encourages the cultivation of the practitioner. In Tenrikyo, it is the same term, though with its stand-alone pronunciation of “michi” rather than its composite pronunciation “tō/dō” that is commonly used in the religion to refer to its practice and teachings, thus my use of the word “path” intermittently throughout this text to speak of it.

<footnote n="255">²⁵⁵ As noted in the beginning portion of my thesis, important to the contextualization of these changes is that this time coincided with what is regarded as the beginning of Japanese modernity and also the time Tenrikyo was in its infancy.</footnote>

<footnote n="256">²⁵⁶ I acknowledge that the precise meaning of this term is often vague and contentious.</footnote>
Similar to Tenrikyo, as evoked previously, purity is a central concept in Shinto, as is the “sincerity” (*makoto*) with which religious acts should be performed in order to render them effective, which in Tenrikyo is notably that of the Service, hinokishin, and the Sazuke healing ritual. In both Tenrikyo and Shinto, certain deeds are thought to create a kind of impurity that should be cleansed away because they can impede the well-being and good fortune of the person who engaged in them. Thus, purification rituals are performed on a daily, weekly, seasonally, lunar, or annual basis and are a primary practice of their respective religious traditions. The purifying ritual of the Tenrikyo Seated Service and the purifying rituals of Shinto are discussed through the same verb; for both, practitioners “sweep away” impurities<sup>257</sup>. In Shinto, purification rites are referred to as “harae” or “harai,” which translates into English as “sweep.” This verb is likewise used in the first and third refrains of the Seated Service, albeit conjugated in a slightly different manner in the third<sup>258</sup>, and is performed principally as a purification ritual of the self and of the world.

Despite the decline of religiosity in Japanese modernity that contributes to the difficulty of further expanding the religion of Tenrikyo in Japan or in maintaining its current numbers there, the majority of Japanese people continue to engage in Shinto practices and rituals. Most, though, do not identify as “Shinto” in surveys. An explanation of this can be found in the multiple existing categories of Shinto which exist. Often, only practitioners of Sect Shinto declare Shinto as their religion. Contrastingly, there are no formal rites one must first go through to practice “Folk Shinto” and most Japanese people occasionally visit Shinto shrines and beseech *kami* without being a member of an institutional Shinto sect and also often without a declared belief in the existence of a god or gods. In this, the ongoing presence of Japanese animistic<sup>259</sup> practices and traditions associated with the broad category of “Shinto” is continued as an integrated part of Japanese modernity.

<footnote n="257"><sup>257</sup> In Tenrikyo, spiritual impurities are generally framed as “dusts” (*hokori*). One of the main reasons the Seated Service is performed is to “sweep” them away from one’s heart.</footnote>

<footnote n="258"><sup>258</sup> The third refrain of the Seated Service uses the active form of the verb (*harote*). I sometimes heard it explained that this form of conjugation was to emphasize the purification process as an ongoing endeavor.</footnote>

<footnote n="259"><sup>259</sup> Shinto is commonly characterized as “animistic” by outside researchers. In the Japanese language, there is not a commonly used word that corresponds to the notion conveyed through the term “animist.”</footnote>
Tenrikyo does not contemporarily position itself as “animistic,” a category predominantly used in anthropological discourse rather than by “animists” themselves, but rather as a monotheistic universal religion that is striving to hold a solid position in the category of “world religions.” Nonetheless, there are similarities between Tenrikyo and the very broad category of “animism” which render a contextualization of some aspects of Tenrikyo through this lens outside a specifically Japanese context appropriate. VanPool and Newsome’s (2012) discussion of the “life essence” that they purport to exist in Pueblo pottery, thereby making this pottery active agents, offers another perspective with which to think about the Tenrikyo altars, and connectedly, the sacred point of the Jiba to which followers throughout the world direct their prayers. In their discussion, they state that the fundamental approach they utilize is that of “new animism,” which they explain to have as its fundamental approach that “the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship to others.” (VanPool and Newsome 2012: 244, Harvey 2006: xi [cited in VanPool and Newsome 2012]). VanPool and Newsome later expand on this with the following:

> Our heuristic goal in differentiating between the Cartesian principle... and New Animism... is to highlight that the study of animism is not typical of, or even central to, most theoretical frameworks as currently applied. We believe that this is a mistake when studying religion, cosmology, and symbolisms of cultures based on fundamentally different ontological structures. Any perspective that (actively or passively) denies an object's spiritual character will in application impede a complete understanding of the epistemology based on animism. (VanPool and Newsome 2012: 259)

In comparing these two fundamentally different ways of understanding the world, the authors explain that although from a Cartesian perspective, a *kachina* mask is a passive tool that people use to impersonate a *kachina*, from a Puebloan perspective, the *kachina* mask is a living being that is cared for and fed (VanPool and Newsome 2012: 243-244, Ladd 2000 [cited in VanPool and Newsome 2012]). Similarly, in Shinto, the shrine is positioned as a building in which the *kami* is enshrined in a literal, rather than figurative, sense and is considered a sacred space separate from the rest of the world. Household shrines<sup>260</sup> can be used on a daily basis as a substitute for large shrines and, similar to large shrines, are regarded as sacred spaces inside which the *kami* literally dwells which should accordingly be treated with the utmost respect.

<footnote n="260">260 Kamidana: 神棚, written with the kanji of *kami* and shelf.</footnote>
This comparative switching of perspectives from a Cartesian model to an animistic one, or the inclusion of both, is highly valuable to formulating an adequate understanding of Tenrikyo altars, particularly the altars dedicated to God the Parent inside which “sacred objects” were housed in both larger Tenrikyo sites such as TEC and also smaller sites, such as the home-based mission stations scattered throughout multiple European countries which I discuss in the next chapter. This switching of perspectives is equally, if not more, pertinent to fostering an adequate conceptualization of the Jiba. More than the sacred objects and the Jiba being understood as representative of something, they were regarded in my observations as sacred in and of themselves as the Jiba was positioned as the point at which God the Parent dwells, the point from which humans originated, and the point at which our salvific destiny will be realized, with the sacred objects being an extension of sorts of this sacred point.

*Enacting unity through sound and bodily movement*

Throughout the Service, we would repeatedly clap four times and bow slightly to mark different parts of this monthly ritual, thereby enacting unison via bodily movement and sound through this simple embodied manner of expressing reverence. The ritual act of clapping four times was prescribed by the foundress to her followers to be their way of doing *sanpai* (paying respects/ offering prayers). This method was somewhat different than the established Shinto manner of doing *sanpai*, for which one claps twice, and is an idiosyncrasy of the Tenrikyo religion in relation to the broader Japanese “religious” context in which it came about.

The actual reason Oyasama taught her followers to do this is officially unknown, but the subject was something I heard discussed at TEC during various reflective moments on the faith, such as Tenrikyo trainings<fnref n="261" /> at which numerous aspects of the faith were postulated about and discussed. In such conversations, often led by someone serving in the role of instructor for that moment, the particularity of the foundress teaching her followers this marker of sacrality was commonly discussed as having been somewhat peculiar in Japan at that time due to how the number four was culturally framed. In such exchanges, the broader cultural context of Japan at the time the foundress conveyed her teachings was often described as having been highly superstitious. Amongst numerous other “superstitious” beliefs mentioned was that the number four was

<footnote n="261">²⁶¹ Including, for example, during the European Seminar and the three-day youth retreat of Palette.</footnote>
regarded as particularly unlucky<sup>262</sup>, which it is still is today though generally to a lesser degree, thereby rendering the foundress teaching her followers to clap four times as their ritual marker somewhat curious.

The possible reasons I heard for why the foundress taught her followers this ritual marker were numerous and were generally reflective of the religion's teachings on the purpose and ideal state of human existence. One hypothesis I heard was because the number four corresponded with the number of syllables contained in a Japanese word for "happiness" (*shi-a-wa-se*): the emotional state framed as the central focus of Tenrikyo and the ultimate reason for human existence and the goal of the path. Another possible reason I heard hypothesized about in such discussions was that followers were instructed to clap four times so as to achieve unison through clapping together at precisely the same time, which was usually achieved by the fourth clap. This hypothesis was linked to unity being a central Tenrikyo tenet that followers were encouraged to work toward in numerous contexts and through numerous means, the Service being the exemplary model. Though the latter is only one theory amongst others that I heard, it is highly pertinent to the construction of a sense of social cohesion that encouraged a feeling of community amongst the participants. When it was mentioned, I often heard it accompanied by a somewhat comical but accurate description of what happened when this ritual marker was enacted in a group context in which the first few claps of the group were often slightly offbeat from one another, but by the fourth clap, everyone finally came into sync to clap at exactly the same time. Such postulations focused on the achievement of acting together in unison were often accompanied by a comment about how nice it sounded or how good it felt to come into precise concert with everyone else present.

As previously explained, according to the cosmological perspective of Tenrikyo, God the Parent created humans to live “the Joyous Life,” which will be achieved largely through humans acting harmoniously together in unity and helping one another. The concept of operating in unity with others is expressly conveyed through a Tenrikyo term that I learned during the first part of my participation in the Tenrikyo European Seminar. This term is “iteihitotsu,” which was explained

<footnote n="262"><sup>262</sup> Traditionally, the number four in Japanese was considered unlucky because it is sometimes pronounced shi, which is the phonetic pronunciation of the word for death, though written with a different kanji character. This number is still sometimes avoided, such as buildings not having a "fourth" floor, etc.</footnote>
to translate into English as “unity of mind” and refers to working together toward a common goal.
On Tenrikyo’s official website<sup>263</sup>, the following excerpt is put forth to explain its meaning:

> This term refers to the way Tenrikyo followers unite in working together toward a common goal, with their minds in genuine unison, rather than acting separately with different objectives. To allow for such unity, it is fundamental for those involved to bring their minds into accord with the truth of the path as well as to respect and help one another.” (TENRIKYO 2005).

The Service, as I sometimes heard it discussed at TEC and in other Tenrikyo contexts, is not a performance focused on the musical or dance skills of the performers but an exercise in and a display of people occupying different roles which come together to create a greater whole. In such discourse, I sometimes heard the collective unity enacted through instrumental and dance ritual actors likened to both different people of a group and also the “Ten Providences of God the Parent” coming together in unison to create a greater collective ensemble, as the latter did at the beginning of human creation and continues to do currently, thereby facilitating the functioning of the natural world and our physical bodies. By taking part in the Service ritual, participants were engaging in a ritual through which people united (both in action and, from a Tenrikyo perspective, also spiritually) to form a greater whole by sacred means taught to humans through the benevolent and divine parental guidance of God the Parent, and extendedly, the foundress, which followers were encouraged to do in other contexts, outside of this exemplary ritual demonstration, as well through practicing this means of collaboration via the Service ritual.

In the performance of the Service ritual in the Main Sanctuary of the religion in Tenri City, constructed around the sacred point of the Jiba, those in attendance would clap together in unison from the north, south, east, and west wings of the sanctuary by which they were simultaneously facing the central sacred point of the Jiba toward which the faith is focused and also others in attendance. Through this, unity was encouraged with both the spiritual and physical center of the faith and with the other attendees co-creating the production of these unifying reverberations. As noted, this unity was encouraged through the unifier of the Service performance itself, which I discuss in further detail in relation to how it was enacted at TEC Monthly Services later in this chapter and as it existed in the Main Sanctuary surrounding the Jiba in chapter nine. Further

<footnote n="263"><sup>263</sup> https://www.tenrikyo.or.jp</footnote>
supporting the idea of the ritual side of Tenrikyo encouraging a sense of agreeable unity is that I sometimes heard both people who regarded themselves as Tenrikyo followers and people who did not classify themselves as such but had spent time in Tenri City and attended Services in the religion's Main Sanctuary there describe the awe-inspiring feeling of unity that was achieved through everyone present clapping in unison.

For example, this sentiment was directly explained to me in a semi-structured interview with a Dutch man in his mid-sixties, Anthony, who made sure to specify to me in the interview, as he did sometimes when he was at TEC, that he was not a “member,” or as he sometimes said, with a pause beforehand and a slight change in tone for an added touch of tongue-in-cheek drama, “not a believer.” He was married to a Japanese Tenrikyo woman in her mid-thirties named Haruka who had been raised in the faith. Tenrikyo played a significant role in Haruka’s upbringing and in her current life, as she explained to me that it similarly did for other members of her natal family as well. She came to TEC, on average, several times a year for various events and I position her as a “core” member of the TEC community despite her not being based in France. Her husband often came with her to TEC but would choose to do other things, such as help with the upkeep of the center’s grounds (which from a Tenrikyo perspective is positioned as “hinokishin,” though it is not a term that he employed himself) when others there engaged in the Service ritual, thereby maintaining his position as a “non-member,” according to his own perspective.

This was Anthony's second marriage. His first marriage, which had lasted for several decades, had been to another Japanese Tenrikyo woman who had passed away. Despite not performing the Service at TEC, he told me in our semi-structured interview that except when his adult children were visiting, he performed the Morning and Evening Service at home with his current wife "because it makes her happy." In our interview, I explained that I had encountered a variety of perspectives regarding who is and is not a follower and asked why he told me that he is not a follower despite his engagement with the faith. He explained to me that he is non-religious himself and did not believe in Tenrikyo. He did not want to present himself as a Tenrikyo follower "because it would feel dishonest." He explained to me that his present wife had tried for a while to get him to "become Tenrikyo" but that finally, she had accepted his position.
Included in her efforts were having him listen to the Besseki lectures in Tenri City. In contrast to my own experience of listening to them, which I discuss further in chapter ten, when Mr. Sugimoto arranged for me to attend the Besseki lectures delivered live in English<sup>264</sup>, he listened to a pre-recorded version of it in English several times<sup>265</sup> with headphones that lasted about an hour and a half while in a room reserved for the attendance of these lectures with others simultaneously listening to its live delivery in Japanese. He told me he listened to them because his (present) wife and others had really wanted him to, but did not do so nine times, which is the requirement for authorization to undergo the sacred rite through which one becomes a "Yoboku." He explained to me that this was because he found listening to the lectures tedious and repetitive<sup>266</sup> and thus did not want to undergo the experience of listening to them nine times.

In our conversation, despite or perhaps because of his maintaining that he was not a Tenrikyo follower himself, he noted numerous things about the religion that he viewed positively. One was the experience of being in the Main Sanctuary of the religion in Tenri City with many others and clapping four times in unison for the Morning and Evening Services. Anthony also spoke about the experience of performing the Seated Service in unison with others present, facing one another and the Jiba from these four wings as a particular experience that one would have to personally experience to understand. (This interview was several months before my own trip to Tenri City, which, when he learned about, he expressed to regard positively because he viewed the pilgrimage town as a place one needs to visit personally to understand, and relatedly, to understand the religion.) His focus was firstly directed toward the brief act of reverently clapping four times with many others in this religious context that he described to be a profound and awe-inspiring experience of unity that reverberates through the sanctuary, thereby creating an extraordinary feeling, even if one is not a "believer," and said that he can understand why this is an important and highly influential experience for followers. In his description, it was the unity exacted through the many bodies present and the sound that they collectively produced through

<footnote n="264">264 This may have been facilitated by my being there during the summer months when it is more common for people from overseas locations to be there.</footnote>

<footnote n="265">265 Anthony had native or near-native competency in English.</footnote>

<footnote n="266">266 The Besseki lectures are supposed to be verbatim the same every time, regardless of who delivers them, so they are, by default, repetitive.</footnote>
these four claps that he focused on as the most notable and emotionally evocative component,
based on his own experience.

While I do not know if one of the possible reasons mentioned in this subsection for clapping
specifically four times was the actual reason the foundress taught her followers to do so, the latter
reason focused on its facilitation of unity via sound and bodily movement is interesting in relation
to my thesis because this commonly enacted ritual component of the Service performed in
numerous Tenrikyo contexts, including TEC, did serve as a regularly enacted unifier between
those present. At TEC, as at other Tenrikyo sites, this embodied act of expressing sacred
reverence in unison with others present encouraged a collective feeling amongst the group and
was one factor, amongst others, that bolstered a sense of community. It also fostered a connection
to the wider sphere of Tenrikyo and to the central point of the Jiba toward which, ideally,
Tenrikyo followers direct their prayers. Thus, though simple, this ritual marker of clapping four
times was an important contributor to the social and spiritual experience of the religion practiced
regularly at TEC, and at other Tenrikyo sites throughout the world.

b. The social world of TEC and the social model of Tenrikyo as manifested through
the TEC Monthly Service

*Sartorial clues of one's relationship to the religion and one's social position at TEC*

To continue this focus on the physical bodies of Service attendees, I would like to now discuss
the various types of clothing present. Although the Monthly Service functioned as a unifier
between those present, it also displayed the two-tiered nature of the TEC community in which
some present were positioned more closely to the group's core and to the Tenrikyo religion, while
others present were positioned at more of its periphery. One of the markers of this dual-layered
quality was the various types of garb worn by those in attendance. On any given occasion of this
monthly ritual, some people would be wearing the ceremonial Tenrikyo kimono or hakama suit,
which in almost all Tenrikyo sites throughout the world is the ritual attire worn by Service
performers<sup>267</sup>. Others in attendance would be wearing the short black Japanese happi coat, while still others would be wearing their everyday (non-Tenrikyo) clothing<sup>268</sup>.

Thus, the ritual performers were immediately visually evident through both their attire and, most commonly, through their physical position in the sanctuary being seated on the chairs at the front of the seating area on the side of the room that corresponded, according to their gender, to the side of the stage on which they would perform, with men on the left and women on the right. Often, a small segment of these women would also be dispersed elsewhere throughout the sanctuary: a subtle spatial display of women often having more flexibility regarding what position they occupy in the religion than men. Though in each segment of the Service, more males than females took part in the ritual performance, as its scripted execution called for three female instrumental roles and six male instrumental roles, overall on any given month, there were more female than male performers robed in this ceremonial attire who performed in the ritual. This was possible because the three segments of the Monthly Service were performed by a different composition of performers, with it being possible to be perform in one or more of the three segments.

These ceremonially robed individuals usually comprised between a half and a third of the people in attendance. Each month, different ritual actors were designated by the head of TEC to perform as dancers and/or instrumental performers in each of the three segments of this ritual. In the head of TEC's monthly allocation of who would perform which ritual roles of the Monthly Service, a certain level of variation regarding who would serve as a Service performer and which role(s) they would fill was common. For example, one month an individual may be assigned to play a certain musical instrument for one segment and to serve as a dancer for another segment. For the next month, the same individual may be solely assigned to play a different musical instrument for

<footnote n="267">267 There is some variation regarding the donning of these ceremonial Tenrikyo robes for Monthly Services in the global scene of Tenrikyo, mainly due to place-based specificities which sometimes encourage special provisions to be made, such as in Korea, one of the main countries outside of Japan to have a Tenrikyo presence. There, due to the historical relationship between Japan and Korea, the "daily robes" (*kyofuku*) ceremonial wear composed of an easy to wear slip-on black robe and black used in daily Morning and Evening Services, which are much less distinctly Japanese in style than the Japanese men's hakama pant suit or women's kimono usually worn for Monthly Services to avoid blatant displays of displays of "Japaneseness".</footnote>

<footnote n="268">268 Most people who did not wear Tenrikyo-specific attire appeared to wear what they would otherwise in their everyday lives rather than something nicer or more formal for the occasion.</footnote>
a single segment and to otherwise not be included in the ritual as a performer. In practice, though, despite this monthly reassignment of performative roles which could allow for a variety of people to actively take part in this ritual, it was predominantly the same religious actors who performed each month, the majority of whom were Japanese followers closely connected to TEC and the Tenrikyo religion.

This distinct lack of diversity in national backgrounds amongst the performers was not due to a preference for Japanese ritual actors, but to a lack of available people of other nationalities who were qualified<fnref n="269" /> and wanted to perform in TEC Monthly Services. In this pattern that corresponded with national origin, we see an example of the multi-layered “TEC community” in which its “core” was predominantly composed of Japanese people born in the faith with people of other nationalities positioned most commonly at more of its periphery. Relatedly, we also can see that despite efforts on the part of TEC and the collection of European-based missionaries to bring in new followers from the local European context to the faith, the Tenrikyo scene in Europe remained chiefly, though not entirely, a Japanese one.

The non-Japanese religious actors most frequently included amongst the TEC Monthly Service performers did not come to know the faith through the efforts of local Tenrikyo missionaries and furthermore, their home sites of worship were located outside of Europe. Amongst the male performers, the most regularly present non-Japanese individual was a French man in his late thirties, Mathieu, who came to know Tenrikyo through his Japanese wife who he met in France. He was affiliated with her church in Japan as his “home site” in accordance with the general Tenrikyo practice of new followers usually becoming rooted to the “home site” and its affiliated lineage of the person who introduced them to the path.

The two non-Japanese women most regularly included amongst these ritual performers at TEC were a Congolese woman in her mid-twenties named Frédérique and the Korean woman mentioned previously: a mid-thirty-year-old named Ji-young. Both women were raised in

<footnote n="269">²⁶⁹ Although generally in Tenrikyo, one must have attained the status of Yoboku to serve as a performer at sizable Tenrikyo sites, which TEC is, during my fieldwork, I saw two examples of people permitted to perform in the TEC Monthly Service after having completed the three-week religious seminar at TEC who were not Yoboku per the head of TEC’s authorization. Regardless of this flexibility, though, one must obviously be able to perform the instrumental music or dances of a segment of the service to perform.</footnote>
Tenrikyo sites of worship at which Frédérique's father and Ji-young's mother served as the sites' head ministers. Like many Japanese Tenrikyo followers at TEC born into this religion, Frédérique and Ji-young came to France as adults without their immediate families. For these two Tenrikyo followers, similar to many others, not only did Tenrikyo serve as a source of religious identity and faith that they continued to practice with others through coming to TEC, but their connection to their religion via TEC also served as a connection to their familial roots, the traditions in which they were raised, and the greater Tenrikyo world to which their families were also connected. Although they were not exactly included in the "core" group of followers who constructed the base of the "TEC community," their close relationship to the Tenrikyo faith supported their close link to TEC and its associated social world.

Because the ceremonial wear of the Tenrikyo kimono or hakama suit was indicative of those performing in the Service, it was a clear signifier of their “membership” in the religion, and almost always implied a close relationship to the faith. Between the other two forms of dress present in the sanctuary of the Tenrikyo happi and one’s everyday clothing, such a clear designation was largely absent. The Tenrikyo happi was, in theory, the attire worn by Tenrikyo followers for the Service and other religiously focused events which sartorially enrobed the person in the Tenrikyo faith and also the church lineage and “home site” to which they were rooted. On the back of the happi, “Tenrikyo” was written in large white kanji characters or the Roman alphabet<sup>270</sup>. On the front of the happi, on the border of one of the over-lapping sides of the coat’s folding front was the name of the church or mission station that served as the person’s “home site.” On the other side of its folding front was the name of the grand church with which the mission station or church was connected, i.e. their church lineage.

<footnote n="270"><sup>270</sup> In my observations, most often, happi coats associated with a “home site” in Japan used kanji lettering while happi coats associated with home sites of worship in Europe or other locations in which Latin letters are the primary script use Latin letter. Occasionally, the opposite was true, largely for stylistic reasons.</footnote>
<figure><img src="image_18.png" /></figure>

Image 5: Lesson on Tenrikyo ritual for core members of TEC wearing Tenrikyo happi coats in preparation of Tenrikyo European Seminar orchestration, TEC sanctuary. Photo: Info TEC 2019.

In contrast to lineage-based sites of worship at which most often everyone in attendance would be wearing happis of the same lineage, at the non-lineage based site of TEC, a variety of church lineages and home sites of worship were displayed via these happis. The presence of followers of multiple church lineages displayed through these happis was a somewhat unique feature of TEC and other non-lineage based mission centers throughout the Tenrikyo diaspora that was in like manner mirrored on a larger scale in a variety of Tenrikyo trainings and gatherings held in Tenri City that also drew together followers of multiple lineages. Generally, in the religious life of Tenrikyo followers in Japan, excluding the time they spent in Tenri City, they most often only spent time at their own church and its connected lineage-based sites, each of which with a slightly different way of doing things and interpretations of the faith. At TEC, this multi-lineage presence was one contributing factor to its diversity.

Another contributing factor to the diversity at TEC Monthly Services was the presence and lack thereof of these religious coverings. At most Tenrikyo sites of worship in Japan, followers regularly wore their happis for daily and Monthly Services, thereby rendering this clothing a normalized and important component of the overall experience of these rituals. At TEC, only a minority of those in attendance as solely spectators<fnref n="271" /> wore a happi. The general theme of

<footnote n="271">²⁷¹ “Spectator” is meant to reference people not performing in the ritual.</footnote>
distinction between those who wore one and those who did not was that Japanese followers<sup>272</sup>, most of whom grew up in the religion and furthermore whose upbringing included uniforms in other contexts such as school, wore the happi and most non-Japanese people, most but not all of whom were not raised in this religion, wore their everyday clothing.

This distinction was simply the general theme displayed. If such scenes that came about in the TEC sanctuary were looked at more closely, a variety of individual situations would be observable. Some non-Japanese followers regularly wore the happi for the Service and in other contexts for which its donning was practiced, notably other ritual occasions. Conversely, some Japanese people raised in the faith often forewent this sartorial element when at TEC. There were multiple reasons for which this religious outerwear was or was not worn at TEC. To partially show the variety of reasons at play for the donning of or abstention from wearing this religious outwear, I discuss two male followers who made the choice to abstain from wearing the happi at TEC for different, somewhat antithetical aims.

The first was Mr. Katagiri, a European-based mission station head of approximately forty years of age who was raised in Japan and came to live in France as a young adult, initially to TEC as a residential Japanese missionary teacher. During a semi-structured interview, he explained to me that when performing the Service at home, for which he sang and danced the Seated Service and all thirteen standing Mikagura-uta songs by himself daily<sup>273</sup>, he always wore the happi because it situated him in this ritual modality. Contrastingly, at TEC, he did not wear the happi, which he explained to me to be out of concern that the visual distinction between members of the faith being clothed in this religious marker and newcomers not wearing it might promote a felt division between these two categories by certain newcomers coming from this European context, thereby risking that they may not feel completely welcome and included. Thus, in order to diminish this distinction and encourage a welcoming environment to all, he did not usually wear the happi at TEC despite his personal preference to do so when in the private context of his own home. His decision for abstaining from donning the happi at TEC was to diminish the visual distinction

<footnote n="272"><sup>272</sup> “Japanese followers” in this instance is meant to include European-born (often adult) children of Japanese Tenrikyo families.</footnote>

<footnote n="273"><sup>273</sup> His wife, who was not born into the faith but participated in various Tenrikyo activities with her husband, and their adolescent daughter did not join him in this daily ritual.</footnote>
between “insiders” and “outsiders” that may discourage the addition of newcomers to this center,
and to the religion, which was the primary reason for the existence of TEC.

The second individual whose motivation for not wearing a happi I would like to include was
André, a retired French military official in his mid-sixties rooted to Bordeaux Kyokai as his
“home site” after he came to know the faith through this lineage-based site approximately ten
years prior. In the case of André, a significantly different explanation was employed for why he
chose to not wear the happi. André embraced the Tenrikyo teachings and the faith but was often
opposed to what he viewed as an inappropriate mixing of Japanese culture with the foundress’
teachings, which he was not shy to express at TEC and in other Tenrikyo contexts.

His decided abstention from wearing the happi started through his attendance at a large gathering
at TEC at which the twenty-something year old head of the worldwide Tenrikyo Young Men’s
Association and designated successor to the role of Shinbashira, along with other high ranking
Tenrikyo officials, were present. Midway through this event, André left because of the offense he
took at what he viewed as an insulting level of hierarchical differentiation in how the event was
orchestrated. Thereafter when at TEC or Bordeaux Kyokai, he abstained from wearing the happi
as a sartorial protest against the system of Japanese conformity that he was opposed to but had
previously acquiesced to, largely out of politeness, through his wearing of this religious
outerwear. (André and the event that led to his sartorial protest are both further discussed in
chapter eight.) It was only a year after this event, when he was at TEC to participate in the
European seminar that he decided to finally put on this religious attire again, which he expressed
to be his way of making peace with Tenrikyo’s general system by making an effort to get along
with it by reincorporating himself into this bodily practice.

These two instances of people who identified as Tenrikyo followers who made the purposeful
choice to not wear the happi at TEC were based in quite different reasons. In the case of Mr.
Katagiri, the removal of a potential social divider was the impetus for this abstention, whereas in
the case of André, a separation from an aspect of the religious system he viewed as being a
culturally inappropriate inclusive conformity was positioned as the reason for not wearing this
garment.
For both men, though, their decision to not wear the happi was connected to their perception of this religious outerwear being associated with the Japanese, more inner sphere of TEC and the Tenrikyo religion. Although this was not entirely true and was somewhat dependent on the particular social actor in question, this sartorial tendency was one marker, among others, that contributed to and evidenced the presence of the two-tiered nature of TEC's social world. At TEC Monthly Services, though, this differentiation via the happi was largely subdued due to majority of core members of TEC present being dressed in the ritual wear of Service performers.

*The distribution of translated hymn books: the connection between language and social position in the “TEC community”*

In practice at TEC, one's competency in the Japanese language, which in general was closely linked with being Japanese, was a significant factor in whether or not one was included in the more core portion of the “TEC community” or situated at more of its periphery. Despite Ji-young and Frédérique having been raised in the Tenrikyo faith and regularly performing in the TEC Monthly Service, both of these non-Japanese Tenrikyo women were positioned between the almost exclusively Japanese core of the “TEC community” and its predominantly non-Japanese periphery. Moreover, they both participated in a variety of activities at TEC beyond this monthly ritual but remained partially separate from the close-knit inner social world connected to this center that was evidenced through a variety of indicators, such as their absence from certain activities like the preparations for the Monthly Service held at TEC the day prior which I discuss later in this chapter. Their lack of complete integration into this inner social core was also displayed through the social interactions between these non-Japanese women and others at TEC gatherings, such as the post-Monthly Service meals that followed these monthly rituals at which they displayed amical relations with everyone present but did not evidence a particular closeness with the almost exclusively Japanese core of this social realm. An important contributing factor was that neither of them spoke Japanese<fnref n="274" /> and thus, they were excluded from conversations in the language generally spoken in informal interactions between members of the center's inner core.

<footnote n="274">²⁷⁴ Ji-young had taken introductory Japanese lessons at ACFJT, but had not studied the language enough to join in social interactions at TEC in the Japanese language</footnote>