The Function of the Religious Kō 講 as a Basis for Church Organizations

At the beginning of the Meiji period the Tenri Sect, the Maruyama Sect, and other new religious organizations grew from local organizations known as ko, which were found in all Japanese farming communities at the time, into large religious denominations.Among them, the Tenri Sect became especially large.The author believes that this was because of features of the Tenri kō that were not shared by kō of other sects.For this reason, he considers it necessary to reexamine the religious kō from a new angle.Most of the research on kō so far has been carried on by students of folklore or sociologists rather than students of religion.The students of folklore have been interested in religious customs, and the sociologists in the nature of the organization of the kō and the mode in which they were formed.In particular, sociologists have considered the religious kō in discussions revolving around the division of society in farming communities into organizations based on the clan structure and those which do not involve blood relationships.They have not dealt in detail with the religious purposes of the ko, but really in actual society, many kō are almost completely divorced from religious purposes.In the religious ko, the members have equal rights and duties.Some kō are made up of heads of houses, while the composition of others is based on the status of their members in the family group.Japanese agricultural society is formed of kumi (associations), buraku (communities), unions of small buraku (similar to the villages of the Tokugawa period), and villages.kō exist at all levels, and the members belong to kō at all levels.The kumi and buraku ko, which are the most important, are formed by the heads of houses.Kō are concerned with both mutual aid and mutual regulations, with both recreation and duty.They try to insure the equality of members, but also represent class control.They function not only as selfgoverning bodies but as ramifications of the system maintained by the controlling class.The Tenri Sect made its ideology the central feature of its kō and at the same time developed the “parent-child principle,” i. e. the link between parent and child, which transcends territorial limitations