On Kasai and Center

After 7 years teaching and studying experience as a Research Fellow at Joetsu University of Education, Niigata, Japan (a Japanese national university), Kenta Kasai accepted the job as a research fellow of Center for Information on Religion, Tokyo, Japan. Though it is financially supported by a Buddhist order, Shinnyo-en, the theme of study is open to all religions. This Center has offered a huge media covarage. The index database of newspaper articles in Japan on religions to various professionals, for example, scholars, lawsuits and journalists, with the cordial cooperation of the Religious Information Research Center, affiliated to International Institute for the Study of Religion, Tokyo, Japan. TV broadcasting religious programms are under the analysis and some of the result are published by professor Kenji Ishii, Kokugakuin University.

Kasai has studied sociological and psychological understandings of religion at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the University of Tokyo. His dissertation is a post-Freudian sociological understanding of "spirituality" and mutual support of Alcoholics Anonymous, a well-known self-help organization for the people who want to quit drinking.

Alcoholics Anonymous is NEITHOR a group of religious ascetics NOR conservatives to abolish all the liquor. They are rather just a support community for the people who are not against the very existence of liquor but who suffer from some unacceptable habit of drinking. As you know, to continue to quit drinking is hard and often discouraging challenge. Members often say, "There is no [physically complete] cure, but recovery." Though Alcoholics Anonymous does not identify itself as a religious group, it encourages members to find their own "spirituality" called "Higher Power." From a viewpoint of sociological and psychological understanding of religion, context and usage of the terms such as "recovery," "spirituality," or "Higher Power" are worth being analyzed.

In reference to some sociological understanding of religious groups, Alcoholics Anonymous has three interesting characters in comparison with other religious groups, even if it is not original to Alcoholics Anonymous. First, it develops very generous idea of spirituality in secular context influenced by both religious and modern psychological thought, such as writings of "positive thinkers" and William James'. Second, it also encourages members to offer support to other (newer) members as a crucial reciprocity to the "recovery." Third, the cohesiveness of group and that of self is often correspondent. Therefore, mutual support is crucial for both group stability and members mental stability. Endorsed by various idea of "spirituality," such correspondence is often felt as a "spiritual experience" more than just coincidence. Then he moves to the some concrete questions about these three characteristics through detailed research. What on earth is their objective of "recovery"? How they realize it? Then how the group and self transform in the process to recover? Descriptions of the cases and post-Freudian theories of self bridges the symptom and transference of alcoholics in reference to the "spirituality" they find in their way to "recovery."

Kenta Kasai is currently on leave and do his research as an individual and independent scholar, with an affiliation as Visiting Scholar of School of Religion, University of Southern California. He had been visiting sholar of Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs, Boston University and also Associate in Research of the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, Harvard University until he left Boston.