Hello everyone!
I’m kind of looking for advice and wanting to know if that happened to others.
So I went out in a date today and at first I was super surprised when the guy showed up with his work colleague. We were making small talk and I thought “hey, I’m not really feeling it” then the conversation shifted to religion.
They took out that pamphlet that had Mount Fuji on it. And I always forget which Buddhist branch it’s from but I’ve seen it before from people who came to my door.
Either way, I didn’t quite get everything they were saying except that they were insisting that it’s not a cult and people got healed. I clearly wasn’t interested but they weren’t letting up so I messaged my friend who luckily directly called me and then I dipped saying she had a problem.
On the way to meet her I was pretty paranoid to be honest. I met the guy via tinder and reported him for showing up with someone and for the religious stuff.
Does that happen often? I was just a bit overwhelmed that it happened and want to know if I got the one bad apple or if it happens regularly.
by Accomplished-Bug23
31 comments
Out of curiosity, was it an offshoot of Nichiren?
I’m not particularly knowledgable about it myself I’m afraid, but this isn’t the first anecdote I’ve heard about cultists with Mt Fuji leaflets trying to recruit people.
this is a typical ” run barry run” situation.
honestly these Mt Fuji people are spreading like Cancer.
It must be Soka Gakkai, it’s not that uncommon. They’re pretty aggressive in recruiting people.
something similar happened to me years ago, just that it was 3 college-aged girls talking to me and a friend at a store in Ikebukuro and saying they’d love to talk more and if we wanted to go to “somewhere else” to talk. I honestly just thought they wanted to make friends, no weird vibes at first. but that changed quickly when they started to talk about their religion.
glad you got out safely and quickly!
I had the LINE contact of one of the girls but they never contacted me or my friend again afterwards.
[removed]
Well done on your first invite to a religion or cult. Everyone gets their story about this if they spend long enough here.
This is not Sōka Gakkai but rather another branch, Souhonzan Ooishidera 総本山大石寺if I remember well
Mf cultists have rizz 😭
Almost certainly it is Kenshokai. They are super persistent. You should run away as soon as you aee Mt.Fuji pamphlet. Any sane religion would never actively try to recruit or convert.
Any time someone tries to tell you about something religious but feels compelled to assure you it’s not a cult, it probably is. They know people accuse them of it so they try to be proactive.
I’m a Buddhist and you can check out r/Buddhism, it’s rare to try to encourage others openly in public to “sign up”, like Mormons, cults, Johos, Scientologists, etc all do.
It’s called Fuji Taiseki-ji Kenshōkai (冨士 大石寺 顕正会). Damn, they branched off to Tinder now. Wild.🤣
I am sure they’re the same people who harassed me when I visited Japan in February, they kept going on about praying to make the world better and to stop the global destruction through war that will happen and how Taiwan will be next after ukraine. I ended up going to the police as I felt unsafe. 😔
I’ve had this happen. Met a dude in a card game shop- thought I made a nice friend to play Magic with. Then at dinner he shows up with his friend ready to put the existential squeeze on my soul. Block him! It’s hella a cult :-).
It’s a cult. I’ve noticed an influx of cultists and mlm men on dating apps using them to recruit basically. Beware of these people and leave as soon as this stuff comes up. Also don’t talk to strangers if alone in major tourist areas in Korea. It’s rampant with cults who act like they’re “a free cultural experience” that results in them asking you for money. Got sucked into that for 4 hours once. Sometimes they can be very aggressive to try to make you join their events.
Red Flags:
1. Convert oriented, not role model oriented
2. Salary contribution
3. Denies opinions too often, not Buddhist-poi
4. Brings you to see Buddha statue instead of his/her parents
You don’t do sects on the first date?
Seeing that each person commenting is writing about a different sect I’m kinda surprised how many there are
As others have said, this is definitely Kenshōkai/顕正会. I had the exact same experience years ago with a girl I met on Bumble. She showed up with someone else (unannounced) to our third date, and the conversation eventually shifted to how saying the Lotus Sutra every day would improve your life, how the bodies of people who chanted this never rotted, how all of Japan needed to convert to Buddhism to stave off an imminent cataclysm predicted by the great sage Nichiren hundreds of years ago… Got the Fuji pamphlet too. They both tried to convince me to join them at a ‘nearby’ prayer facility, but I just stonewalled them the whole time and left.
So it happens and it absolutely feels gross being taken advantage of like this.
Buddhism isn’t a proselytizing religion. The problem is that there are a variety of cults in Japan that are based on Buddhism but aren’t true to Buddhist teachings.
I’m not sure if it was the same person, but I had [a very similar experience](https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/16ms9ty/my_strange_and_unexpected_encounter_with_kenshōkai/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
“its not a cult”
it definitely fucking is lmao.
Went on a Tindr date in Tokyo and a quarter of the way through our dinner, he starts getting jealous that i’m from America because “America has a strong military and Japan doesn’t.” He then gets upset saying that China is going to invade Japan at any moment and I need to pray to Buddha. We finish dinner and the whole time i’m just trying to keep my cool because this guy is obviously crazy.
I go to the bathroom and he follows me in there so I start panicking and called my best friend. He bangs on the stall door demanding I tell him who i’m on the phone with. I run out of the restaurant all the way to the station and he chased me down the whole way to the station begging me not to leave. Luckily he didn’t follow after I tapped in. Hands down the scariest thing i’ve experienced in Japan.
I was taken in and shown the exact same stuff lol back in my visit in January
It’s not common…but it happens, and it’s not exclusive to Japan or Buddhism. Just like Christian cults that make a big deal about evangelization, some Buddist sects have adopted some of the same extreme strategy of outreach and converting more tithing members to support its founders who have hi-jacked religion for their own personal greed. It’s no different than the Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on your door offering you a copy of the Watchtower or the Mormon missionaries biking around Tokyo…but as with much of modern Japanese socieity, they’ve adapted Western social theory and made it better.
If a new date or new friend ever show up with another person, especially if a “work colleague“ or “business associate” bail immediately.
It’s either a cult or an mlm.
My wife and I often see them at family restaurants. 3 people at a table, 1 looking kinda disinterested who is usually penned into corner and the other two just talking at them the whole time, usually with some booklet or binder.
The colleague is usually well dressed and the one doing most of the talking while the date/friend is nodding along and occasionally asks things like “don’t you agree?” Or “isn’t that great?”
Why does Japan have so many weird cults
These kinds of things might be founded on such ideas as the religion (or well, philosophical way of thought if you will) but in practice there are many such groups either of this kind or others which are at least functionally cult-like or at least cult-adjacent if not actually a cult and, in most cases, its probably some sort of scam designed to extract money from followers (MLM/Ponzi/etc.). Whether such scams actually offer any real value other than connections to other people I cannot say but its enough of a historically recognized phenomenon to be popular both in Japanese media and overseas.
Cultural fun fact though: Some such cults have been known to have anime created based on their religious ideologies or imagined histories. Some of these have been translated into English.
Anecdotally, when I was in Japan, I never had this happen to me. I had been around Tokyo, Yamanashi, and rural areas between the two and various areas of Tokyo. I took classes at Sophia University (上智大学) in Yotsuya.
Are you in the Kanto region OP? I’ve been through this exact scenario.
I had to call a friend to get me out of it.
Edit: not via Tinder, the person approached me in person.
If I had a coin for every japanese cult obsessed with Mt. Fuji, I’d have around three coins. Which is not a lot, but it’s weird it happened thrice
Just a heads up, it seems to be getting pretty common to use dating sites for scams and cult recruitment. Be cautious and don’t let them pressure you into uncomfortable situations. If something seems weird or off about the date, bail and block them.