Article Title：'The blessing of living in a country where there are Senryu!' -: Humor in the response to Aum-Shinrikyo
Abstract：
Following the sarin gas attack on Tokyo's subways in March of 1995, considerable effort has been devoted to explaining the rise of Aum Shinrikyo and its turn to violence. This paper aims to provide a contribution to efforts to understand how Aum has been perceived and interpreted in Japan by focusing on one aspect of the reaction to Aum that has received almost no attention either within or without Japan: the humor, joking, parody, and satire that formed a major part of efforts to understand and come to terms with Aum. It is argued that the reaction to Aum in Japan cannot be understood without taking into account the range of humor, parody, and satire relating to Aum that appeared throughout Japanese mass media. As a means of introducing this aspect of the reaction to Aum, senryu (comic or satiric verse) related to Aum and contributed by readers of two major Japanese daily newspapers are translated and analyzed.
Keywords: Aum Shinrikyo; comic verse; humor; mass media; religion; senryu
DOI: 10.2307/1178677
Source：ASIAN FOLKLORE STUDIES
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