“Psychics” and “scientists” in Taisho Japan

Today the idea of “psychical forces”（shinrei 心霊）has been completely juxtaposed to the idea of “science” and criticized on “scientific” terms, resulting in its disappearance from the realm of public opinion. This intellectual trend was already present during the Taisho Era in a journal entitled Hentai Shinri, which specialized in the subject of the psycho-logical aspects of deviant behavior. The research to date on this publication has argued that the professional psychologists whose research was published in Hentai Shinri played an important role in delineating legitimate psychological knowledge through their criticisms of “non-professional” psychical researchers and leaders of the utopian Omoto 大本 Sect of syncretic Shinto. This article is an attempt to reinterpret the “science” purported by both sides from the viewpoint of the kind of “non-professional” reader relativized by Hentai Shinri, in showing that both parties made no distinction between “psychical research” and “spiritualism”.<br> 　To begin with, while holding opposing views concerning the existence of a soul after death, both identified themselves as psychical scholars and researchers based on scientific methodology. In this sense, “psychical research” was by no means a monopoly held by scholars specializing in deviant psychology. It goes without saying that the “science” upheld by either side differed in meaning, as the proponents of the afterlife adhered to the idea of science as practiced by the British physicist Oliver Lodge in his studies on telepathy. On the other hand, the “science” followed by Shinri Hentai treated premonitions as “psychic emotions” citing the ideas of the Society for Psychical Research at Trinity College, Cambridge, while at the same time recognizing the existence of mysticism. Consequently, both sides shared a common Taisho Era attribute as groups of enthusiasts gathered together in a search to understand the mystical aspects of life.<br> 　Both sides also shared the attempt to locate themselves within the mass culture of the Taisho Era. Here we find a unique situation of “knowledge”, which up to that time was monopolized by intellectuals, being widely disseminated in periodicals such as Hentai Shinri and being consumed by the readers of daily newspapers and monthly magazines. The author concludes that the knowledge regarding psychic phenomena offered by the field of deviant psychology, in general, and Hentai Shinri, in particular, was inextricably connected to the Taisho Era’s overall “mass popularization of knowledge”.