Happy Science
is a new religious movement in Japan. Ryuho Okawa started the religion on October 6th, 1986. On February 2nd, 2008, the group changed its official English name. It had been called Kofuku-no-Kagaku, which is a version of the Japanese name in Latin alphabet. The group now calls itself "Happy Science" in English.
Related pages
The Happiness Realization Party is the religion's political party. Although it fields many candidates in almost every Japanese nationwide election, as of 2018 it has no seats in the Japanese Diet.
Further reading
Clarke, Peter B. (ed.) (1999), 'Kofuku-no-Kagaku: The Institute for Research in Human Happiness' in A Bibliography of Japanese New Religious Movements: With Annotations, Surrey, UK, Japan Library (Curzon), , pp. 149-67
Yamashita, Akiko (1998), 'The "Eschatology" of Japanese new and new new religions: from Tenrikyo to Kofuku-no-Kagaku' in Japanese Religions, Vol. 23, January 1998, NCC, Kyoto, Japan, pp. 125-42
The Transformation of a Recent Japanese New Religion: Okawa Ryuho and Kofuku no kagaku, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22 p 343-380
Other websites
Official website
HS North America
New religious movements
1986 establishments in Japan
Religious organizations based in Japan