Six Aspects of Contemporary Japanese Youth Religiosity

There are three aspects of contemporary Japanese youth’s religiosity or nonreligiosity: “practicing belonging,” “vicarious spirituality,” and “gendered fetishism” (Fujiwara & Miura Reference Fujiwara and Miura2024). Additionally, the “parody of religion” has become an increasing aspect. The themes of this Element, “2.5-dimensional” and “subjective rituals or ritualization,” constitute the fifth and sixth aspects. Therefore, while this Element focuses on 2.5-dimensional and subjective rituals or ritualization, we consider that the novelty of the cases presented arises from the combination of these six aspects. In other words, the fifth and sixth aspects that we are introducing cannot be fully understood in isolation. The preceding four aspects form the social and affective conditions in which these new forms emerge. The participatory and affective bonds fostered through “practicing belonging” underpin the immersive engagements of 2.5-dimensional culture, while the supportive dynamic of “vicarious spirituality” parallels the relational orientation of subjective ritualization. “Gendered fetishism” and “the parody of religion” feed into the playful yet affectively charged boundary-crossing practices we examine in the sections that follow. Therefore, let us first briefly explain these four other aspects.

Practicing Belonging

“Practicing belonging” is a concept inspired by Grace Davie’s famous notion of “believing without belonging” used to describe nonreligiousness in Europe (Davie Reference Davie1990). Davie’s “believing without belonging” has sparked similar concepts such as “belonging without believing” to articulate nonreligiousness in Europe. However, these expressions are insufficient to describe nonreligiousness in Japan, because even fundamental vocabulary like “God,” which is the central object of belief in Western Christian contexts, often means something different in Japan.

Let us provide an example. One of the authors participated in a workshop held in Tokyo in 2019 titled “What would happen if AI became God?” The event was organized by a limited liability company that plans events. It was led by a Japanese artist in his twenties, Yū Amemiya, who calls himself an “experience writer” who writes stories of imaginary worlds and opens them up to real experiences. The participants were about fifty people, mostly men and women in their twenties and thirties. They were divided into groups of five to six and discussed the question “What would happen if AI became God?” The moderator, Amemiya, asked the participants to “first share an understanding of what ‘God’ means within your group, then discuss what would happen if that AI became such God.”

Readers of this Element are undoubtedly familiar with the “singularity discourse”Footnote ⁶ in Western societies over Artificial Intelligence: What will happen if AI’s intelligence surpasses that of human beings and becomes God-like? Will it create a utopia because AI will create the best possible world? Or will it turn into a dystopia where humans become slaves to AI? Such discussions are predicated on the notion of the existence of God as an omnipotent and omniscient being who governs the world.

The discussion in the group one of us joined did not go that way at all, however. First, everyone introduced themselves and none professed adherence to a specific religion; all declared themselves nonreligious. Next, they shared what they thought “God” was and what kind of being it might be. They variously said, “God is someone you make requests to,” “My grandma says there are seven gods in a single grain of rice,” and “When I was a child, I was told not to do bad things because God is watching.” But when it came to discussing what would happen if AI became such a God, everyone began to feel puzzled. They were unsure of the intention behind the question and what exactly was being asked.

Unable to bear the confusion in the group, I suggested, “When people say AI becomes God, doesn’t that mean it can reliably fulfill your wishes without fail? That AI understands the optimal state for each of you better than you do, and can actually realize it, right?” Their responses were, “Hmm, I think I’d prefer a God who can make some mistakes and seems more relatable than a God who can do everything,” and “A God who doesn’t necessarily fulfill our wishes but encourages us is good enough.”

Then, when I pressed, “So, what do you think the world would be like if AI became such a God?” they thought for a moment and then answered, “It wouldn’t be much different from now.” Later, when it was time for the full assembly, each group presented their discussion findings, and it turned out that all groups had similar thoughts. In response, Amemiya, the moderator, concluded the discussion by declaring, “The God of the future is a ‘sympathetic God’!”

The workshop participants were people who had previously attended events organized by Amemiya or their friends, and although the theme this time was “What if AI became God,” they were not particularly interested in religion. Therefore, it would be appropriate to say that their views fairly reflect the general perception of God among contemporary Japanese youth.

We developed the expression “practicing belonging” to describe the religiosity of Japanese youth who identify themselves as nonreligious. In this context, belonging does not refer to belonging to a church, but rather to having connections or relationships with certain groups or individuals. For today’s youth, becoming part of groups on social media or fan groups engaging in oshi-katsu serves as their place of connection to others, their place of belonging, rather than traditional groups based on geographical or familial ties. In the late twentieth century, joining new religious groups – or what Japanese scholars call new-new religious groups – was one option for young people seeking such a place. However, the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyō led to the word “religion” acquiring connotations of a dangerous cult in Japan, and those who believed in religion came to be seen as strange. Against this backdrop, more young people started seeking their place of belonging outside religious groups, and the internet facilitated the formation of such connections. The terms “connection” or “belonging” also gained market value. During the time of the Aum Shinrikyō incident, Japanese youth were oriented toward high-end brands in fashion and cars. In contrast, today’s Generation Z has a weak desire for brand consumption. The marketing industry identified the replacement as to what they consume as “connection/belonging consumption.” This term refers to consumer behavior where individuals may settle for fast (inexpensive) fashion brands of clothing, but spend money to connect with others and boost their spirits by participating in events. Amemiya’s company is an example of a young entrepreneur’s venture that caters to this connection/belonging consumption desire.

Why do young people seek connection or belonging? It is said that they seek empathy from others and affirmation of themselves from others.Footnote ⁷ When Amemiya said, “The God of the future is a ‘sympathetic’ God,” the term sympathy used here is precisely in this context. Sympathy along with terms such as recognition and desire for recognition have been frequently used since the 2000s, especially the 2010s, and have become terms that symbolize the current era. The Japan of the 1980s and 1990s, when brand consumption flourished during the bubble economy and Japan was touted as No. 1 in business and technology, was a time when Japanese youth enhanced their self-esteem. The spiritual culture in Japan during this period imported the American Human Potential Movement, focusing on boosting personal abilities and achieving self-realization. The 1995 publication New Age Workshop Catalog by a Japanese company named Fila Projects, listed about fifty workshops and seminars on spiritual self-improvement methods from the United States (Fila Projects 1995). In contrast, Japan’s self-help books in the 2020s have shifted toward not striving, not aiming higher, not seeking material things, but rather pursuing subjective happiness through self-sufficiency, a type of “subtractive self-improvement” (Manabe Reference Manabe2024: 3–5, 26–7). Yasushi Koike, a sociologist of Japanese therapy culture, called this a shift from a “strong self” to a “weak self” (Koike Reference Koike2007). Today’s young people, originally having a weaker sense of self-affirmation, do not seek to maximize their potential but rather use the acceptance of their actual selves by others and empathy for their hobbies as support for their ego. That is why they seek connections: they need others to affirm their self worth.

Practicing belonging refers to ritualistic practices that create such connections. Examples we have used previously include the Halloween parties at the Shibuya Scramble Crossing and the connection-style weddings initiated by the wedding industry in the 2010s (Fujiwara & Miura Reference Fujiwara and Miura2024). The Shibuya Halloween party, before COVID-19, had swollen to hundreds of thousands of participants and was a spontaneous festival for young people, where they enjoyed the night not only with friends but also with people they met there (see Figure 2). Connection-style weddings emerged as a novel style after the increase in Christian-style weddings in Japan since the 1980s. These weddings were marketed as an opportunity to reaffirm connections with people who have supported one’s life, such as family and friends, and to seek their recognition of the marriage through unique ceremonies. It was not merely an initiative by the wedding industry; the media also reported that contemporary weddings tended to emphasize dependence on and close relationships with parents over independence and self-reliance among young people (Asahi Shimbun, July 20, 2013).

Figure 2 Shibuya Halloween Party 2017.

Photo used by permission courtesy D. T. Johnson.

In practicing belonging within religious contexts, people seek connection with divine entities more than salvation. Since around 2014, there has been a “goshuin boom,” where people collect stamps in a dedicated notebook – called a goshuincho – from shrines and temples they visit (see Figures 3 and 4). This is akin to a religious passport program. It has spread across generations, not just among the young. Scholar of religion Norichika Horie has made an interesting observation about this.

The organizer of a “goshuin group” has said: “By looking back at the goshuin, you can face the gods again and remember the people, landscapes, and food you encountered on your journey. The goshuincho contains not just blessings but also memories.”

Though she mentions “blessings and memories,” when actually asking visitors and sellers of the goshuincho, the response is that the real blessing is not the fulfillment of specific prayers but the formation of a tie (go-en) with the gods.

(Horie Reference Horie and Horie2018: 26; see also Fujiwara Reference Fujiwara2019)

The “tie” mentioned in this quote means establishing connections. In traditional religious practices, people pray to deities for success in love or business, seeking the fulfillment of their prayers. In the current practice of collecting goshuin, value is placed on the act of connecting with the deities themselves. It functions not as a god who grants salvation but as a god who offers sympathy.

Figure 3 A goshuincho cover.

Photo used by permission courtesy of Hakaranora.

Figure 4 A goshuin page.

Photo used by permission courtesy of Carpegenk.

This trend does not appear to be limited to Japan. Abby Day has characterized the religiosity of nonreligious young people in England based on interview surveys using the term “believing in belonging.” According to Day, people who “believe in belonging … claim social and cultural identities to reinforce a belief in belonging to specific groups of people, particularly those with whom they have affective, adherent relations” (Day Reference Day2011: 194). In this example, too, unlike the traditional Christian approach of believing in an absolute God and seeking salvation, value is placed on connecting with people themselves. Day described this as social identity, but in Japan, practicing belonging is a practice by individuals with a “weak self,” making the term identity somewhat strong to describe such a mode of being.

From the Era of Fictionality to the Era of Virtuality

According to Mita and Ōsawa, the Era of Fictionality refers to the period in Japan from around 1975 to 1995. This era follows the Era of the Ideal (approximately 1946 to 1960, Japan’s pre-high economic growth period) and the Era of Dreams (approximately 1960 to 1975, Japan’s high economic growth period), and corresponds to Japan’s post-high economic growth period. The Era of Fictionality aligns with what has also been referred to as the information society, post-industrial society, or consumer society in sociological discussions.

2.5-Dimensional

A concept that symbolically represents the Era of Virtuality is 2.5-dimensional, a term that began gaining attention in the late 2010s through mass media and has since become the subject of academic research in the context of youth culture. In simple terms, a 2.5-dimensional musical is a stage performance in which actors, dressed in “cosplay”Footnote ¹⁶ as manga or anime characters, act out scenes from the original works. Described this way, it may not appear particularly novel. However, Tōko Tanaka, who studies 2.5-dimensional culture, explains it differently. She argues that cosplaying actors “actively enter into and immerse themselves in the worldview presented on [the musical] stage, enjoying the overlapping expression and boundary-crossing between the two-dimensional and three-dimensional realms.” She adds:

In other words, the 2.5-dimensional musical itself does not take place within a VR environment like the Metaverse. The use of new technology on stage is limited to features such as projection mapping, which creates background scenery. However, as Tanaka argues, the way fans engage with these musicals – particularly in terms of spatial perception and bodily involvement – closely resembles the kind of experience enabled by XR or MR technologies. To offer a simple analogy: Pokémon GO! corresponds to AR. But if the game were extended into three dimensions, allowing Pokémon monsters to appear as spatially embedded figures within real-world space, it would become MR. This becomes possible when a player wears an MR headset, which overlays virtual space onto the real physical environment. Instead of appearing on a smartphone screen, the Pokémon would appear in front of the player in 3-dimensional space, as seen through the headset. In a similar way, when an actor dressed as an anime character appears on stage in a 2.5-dimensional musical (see Figure 5), the experience for the audience closely resembles that of seeing a 3-dimensional Pokémon appear in their real surroundings. Though not technologically identical, the sensory and perceptual experience is strikingly similar. These qualities – layering fictional worlds onto physical presence, and inviting active audience co-creation – anticipate the broader discussion at the end of this section.

Figure 5 2.5-dimensional musical.

Fictional image created by Fujiwara through AI-generation.

What allows the 2.5-dimensional musical to create an experience so distinct from traditional stage adaptations of novels is that it meets several specific conditions unique to this format. First, the audience consists of fans who are already deeply familiar with the original manga or anime. These fans have a specific oshi – a character they are emotionally invested in – and before even watching the musical, they are already able to visualize each scene in three dimensions within their minds. One of the producers of a 2.5-dimensional musical explains this phenomenon as follows:

This deeply embodied, affective familiarity with the original work allows the performance to feel not merely like a representation, but like a manifestation – a crossing over from fiction into reality.

Second, the actors playing the roles are typically unknown. If a well-known actor were cast, their individual persona would overshadow the manga or anime character they are meant to portray. Instead, actors are chosen primarily for their physical likeness to the original characters. However, this does not mean the actors are unimportant to 2.5-dimensional musical fans. Once an actor is cast, fans will return to the theater again and again to watch the same performance, cheering the inexperienced actor on and hoping they grow as performers through the role. This dynamic is captured in the official website for the 2.5-dimensional musical adaptation of The Prince of Tennis, which is set in a high school tennis club:

This focus on the actor’s growth and self-realization, supported by the fans’ emotional investment, aligns with the previously discussed concept of vicarious spirituality. Fans are not simply consuming entertainment – they are supporting and witnessing the journey of becoming of some being they care about.Footnote ¹⁷

Third, watching a 2.5-dimensional musical requires participation from the audience. This participation corresponds to what communications theorist Henry Jenkins describes as “participatory culture” (Jenkins et al. Reference Jenkins, Purushotma, Weigel, Clinton and Robison2009). Possamai notes that “participatory culture encompasses hyper-real religionists” (Possamai Reference Possamai2009: 91), and the same is true for 2.5-dimensional culture. Audiences do not merely consume content passively; they actively and creatively participate in the musical experience. Because they are deeply familiar with the source material, audience members supplement the performance by mentally filling in details not explicitly shown on stage – such as scene settings or character backstories – thereby making the fictional character appear more vividly real in the body of the actor (Tsutsui Reference 63Tsutsui and Sugawa2024: 197). Furthermore, after the performance, fans contribute to the authenticity of the musical by engaging in a wide range of participatory practices: promoting the show enthusiastically on social media, purchasing and customizing merchandise, attending autograph sessions, sending fan letters and gifts, and conveying messages of support to the actors. Through these ongoing acts of devotion, they help to create the musical’s sense of “authenticity” – that is, the sense that it truly and faithfully brings the original work to life (Tanaka Reference Tanaka and Sugawa2024: 238). As a result of investing not only money but also time and emotional energy, the characters on stage appear to the audience as beings who are both human and fictional, such that the boundary between actor and character becomes indistinguishable.

The characteristic of gendered fetishism is also clearly evident in 2.5-dimensional musicals. First and foremost, this is a predominantly female-centered culture. According to Rūyma Shineha, a sociologist of science who has studied this phenomenon, fans express moe not only for the actor’s overall appearance – saying things like “he has a good face” – but also for specific parts of the actor’s body, such as “he has good knees” (Shineha Reference Shineha and Sugawa2024: 167). Moreover, when fans share such preferences in gatherings with fellow fans – stating things like “he fits my kinks perfectly” – this functions ritually, almost like a religious confession of faith, according to Shineha (176). These fans form what Shineha calls “communities of preferences,” and this community is not limited to fans alone. It also includes actors, as well as narratives, character designs, and stage productions, forming what Bruno Latour refers to as an actor-network (Latour Reference Latour2005). In this way, gendered fetishism is deeply intertwined with practicing belonging – it is not just about individualized desire, but about forging shared emotional investments and relational networks through embodied fandom.

In this manner, the participatory intensity and affective investment of 2.5-dimensional musicals directly reflect dynamics we have described under “practicing belonging,” “vicarious spirituality,” and “gendered fetishism.” Fans’ ongoing support for specific actors, their repeated attendance, and their creative supplementation of performances mirror the same relational and communal logics that animate other domains of contemporary youth religiosity.

The 2.5-Dimensional Characteristics of Tulpas

The tulpa practices found among contemporary Japanese youth are also examples of the pluralization of reality in the Era of Virtuality. These practices involve layering an imagined being onto the physical world, making them emblematic of this era. Originally a concept situated within occult culture, the tulpa has evolved by blending with youth anime and gaming culture, taking on new characteristics in the process. Tulpa practices offer a compelling case for thinking about the religiosity or nonreligiosity of youth in the Era of Virtuality, particularly in relation to MR, 2.5-dimensional characteristics, and the multiplication of identity.

A tulpa is typically described as a personified being that has no physical form – much like an imaginary friend or imaginary companion – but is nonetheless experienced as psychologically and sensorially real. In the early twenty-first century, efforts to create tulpas as companions or friends spread online, and communities of tulpamancers – those who have created tulpas – continue to interact via social media platforms.

The concept of the tulpa has its roots in Tibetan Buddhism, but was introduced to the West through Theosophy as a supernatural being created through imagination. In the early twentieth century, French explorer Alexandra David-Néel (1868–1969) described the tulpa as a visible apparitional form created by the power of imagination, consciously or unconsciously, presenting it to Western audiences as a Tibetan Buddhist concept (Laursen Reference Laursen, Natale and Pasulka2020: 163). David-Néel viewed the tulpa as a magical entity and described it as a potentially dangerous presence that could even harm the magician who created it in some cases.

In Japan, around the 1980s, within the broader current of occult culture, the creation of a tulpa as a mystical form of training for awakening was proposed. One practitioner claimed that by concentrating one’s thought, one could create a magical double formed from one’s aura. Furthermore, he asserted that by developing the ability to manipulate the aura, it was possible to heal illnesses or physical abnormalities (Takafuji Reference Takafuji1987). Another practitioner stated that creating a tulpa would lead to spiritual awakening and the ability to grasp universal truths (Saitō Reference Saitō1988).

However, by the twenty-first century, the focus had shifted toward building comfortable, companion-like relationships with tulpas as intimate beings capable of conversation and interaction. Interest in spiritual awakening or supernatural powers had faded. The following statement is from one of the online threads shared among tulpamancers, offering a contemporary explanation of what a tulpa is:

Young people do not seem to create tulpas for the purpose of spiritual awakening or the development of supernatural powers. Rather, they seek emotional connections with their tulpas – companions to help alleviate anxiety, stress, and feelings of loneliness, or friends and familial figures with which to share everyday life.

In the process of creating a tulpa, the practice vividly reflects the database consumption characteristic of the Era of Virtuality. When crafting a tulpa, practitioners choose and combine elements such as appearance, personality, and speech style from the subculture according to their personal preferences. Often, these elements are drawn from manga or anime characters, making the creation of a tulpa deeply intertwined with youth anime and gaming culture.

Moreover, the contemporary practice of tulpamancy as it has spread through the internet emphasizes its strong MR dimension – specifically, the projection of the created tulpa onto the real world. Tulpamancers use a technique called “visualization” to attempt to overlay their tulpas onto physical reality (see Figure 6). For example, when a tulpamancer perceives their tulpa in everyday life, the tulpa is often situated in a contextually appropriate position – standing on the ground, sitting in a chair, or otherwise integrated into the physical environment. To make the tulpa feel more real, tulpamancers engage in the extension of their sensory perception, including sight, hearing, and touch. Aurally, they interact with their tulpas through conversations, which may be spoken aloud or conducted internally. Tactilely, some report holding hands with their tulpa to feel physical sensation. Through these practices, they aim to endow the tulpa with a tangible sense of presence. This way of perceiving – through the expansion of reality – clearly illustrates the MR nature of tulpas. The imagined being is not simply a mental figure but is experienced as layered onto and integrated with the physical world, reflecting the complex interplay between imagination and sensory reality characteristic of the Era of Virtuality. This interlacing of imagined beings with embodied perception exemplifies the very processes that, as we will conclude, define the 2.5-dimensional space as a frontier of youth religiosity.

Figure 6 From WikiHow, “How to Make Your Own Tulpa.” This is an English-language website, but it has recently adopted a Japanese anime-style tulpa as an example. Retrieved on September 30, 2024.

www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Tulpa

An important point here is that the dimensional space in which the tulpa exists is neither the otherworldly realm nor the physical world, but rather a spatially ambiguous domain that we describe as 2.5-dimensional. A tulpa exists only in relation to its tulpamancer and differs fundamentally from spiritual beings summoned from another world through traditional spirit-mediumship practices. A tulpa is generated and sustained by the tulpamancer’s consciousness and imagination. It is neither a resident of a spiritual otherworld nor an autonomous supernatural entity. At the same time, because it lacks a physical body, it cannot be considered part of the real world, either. Instead, the tulpa appears in a 3-dimensional form within a sensorially expanded realm, situated in the in-between – an ambiguous zone that is neither fully real nor fully virtual. As a 2.5-dimensional being, the tulpa blends into the layered and pluralized realities that constitute the tulpamancer’s everyday life.

The tulpa phenomenon also illustrates the multiplicity of identity in the Era of Virtuality. In tulpa practice, multiple personalities intersect within a single mind. Just as individuals navigate multiple identities across social media platforms in cyberspace, tulpamancers experience the pluralization of selfhood through their relationship with their tulpa. This interaction becomes a lived expression of the fragmented, layered identities that define contemporary subjectivity.

“Phantom Body” in “Digital Nature”

If tulpas are specter-like beings created through the power of human imagination, there is also a Japanese scientist who claims that it is possible to generate a “phantom body” (yūtaiFootnote ¹⁹) through technology. He is Yōichi Ochiai (b. 1987), a scientist, technologist, and artist who leads a lab at a major national university and is also the CEO of a tech venture company. He is a cultural icon among younger generations, and each of his YouTube videos discussing his project “digital nature” has received over one hundred thousand views. He has received numerous international awards in VR-related fields and has been featured in more than 100 media outlets around the world – TV, newspapers, magazines, and online platforms.

His book Digital Nature (2018) bears the subtitle: “Wabi and Sabi by Pantheistic Computers that Form Ecosystems.” While singularity theory tends to imagine AI as an omnipotent, god-like being, Ochiai’s theory religiously frames the expansion of ubiquitous computing as pantheism, hence the “Pantheistic Computers” in the subtitle. Moreover, “wabi” and “sabi” are concepts known as the spiritual essence of Zen. In 2024, Ochiai went even further – he founded a physical, rather than online, “Digital Nature Shrine” and became its chief priest.

In the 1990s, the scholar of religion Susumu Shimazono coined the term “spiritual intellectuals” (reiseiteki chishikijin) (Reference Shimazono1996: 247) to describe Japanese philosophers and thinkers active then who were deeply involved in New Age culture – figures who might be seen as contemporary versions of D. T. Suzuki (1870–1966).Footnote ²⁰ With his pronounced religious sensibility, Yōichi Ochiai could be considered one of the spiritual intellectuals of the 2020s. In fact, there is a growing number of Japanese researchers working with emergent technologies who are beginning to use religious imagination to envision the future of the digital world – often in dialogue with posthumanist thought.

Let us first introduce Ochiai’s theory of digital nature, and then explain what he means by the concept of the phantom body. Ochiai himself describes digital nature (originally in English) as follows:

In the “nature” that fuses with computers, humans and other living organisms are included. Humans, as well as plants and animals, are, at their core, collections of information based on DNA. By merging that data with the vast amount of information accumulated in computers, the world becomes a network where organic life and machines (artificial objects) are interconnected through a digital foundation. This is the fundamental concept behind Ochiai’s theory of digital nature – the idea of calling this emerging, interconnected world a new kind of nature. Given that personal data is already flowing into the internet in various forms, and that nonorganic objects and machines are increasingly being connected through the Internet of Things (IoT), the worldview proposed by digital nature is not particularly far-fetched. Instead, it reflects a vision of a world in which the boundaries between the organic and the artificial are becoming increasingly blurred – a vision that resonates strongly with the Era of Virtuality.

Ochiai claims that in digital nature, even life and death are transcended, because he envisions a future in which individual consciousness continues to exist as data. In this context, the term “computer” no longer refers to conventional machines, but becomes synonymous with autonomous AI. According to Ochiai, when human consciousness becomes connected with AI and spreads throughout the world, this state can be described – using terminology from Christian cultural frameworks – as pantheistic. Alternatively, using concepts from Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, it corresponds to the idea of Kegon, where the distinction between subject and object disappears, and all things interpenetrate and mutually reflect one another. In other words, Ochiai imagines a world in which boundaries dissolve between mind and machine, individual and collective, self and other – an interconnected, consciousness-infused digital ecosystem.

In the latter half of the twentieth century, postmodern thought also advocated overcoming the modern dualisms of subject/object and mind/body. However, such efforts were ultimately limited to epistemological transformations – changes in how we perceive the world. In contrast, contemporary technologists like Ochiai believe that this goal can now be realized ontologically, that is, physically, through the power of technology. In the passage where Ochiai writes that AI will become our interpreter, he does not mean this in the narrow sense of translating between human languages. Rather, he envisions a future in which the states of plants, animals, and inanimate matter are translated into data, allowing this information to be shared. This, in turn, would make it possible to achieve a sustainable material nature.

The nomads referenced in Ochiai’s quote correspond to what he elsewhere calls the phantom body. As technology continues to evolve, digital humans – humans as information – will be able to manifest anywhere in the world by traversing cyberspace, even taking on 3-dimensional form. Today, platforms like the Metaverse already allow us to transcend spatial barriers and interact with people across the globe. But Ochiai’s idea of the phantom body differs: it is not an avatar appearing within VR, but the appearance of the person themselves in physical reality. In this sense, the phantom body is more 2.5-dimensional than the Metaverse. Ochiai likens it to becoming a phantasm – able to appear here and there, free from spatial constraints, manifesting not virtually but tangibly in the real world.

For Ochiai, the concept of virtual does not carry the usual connotations of being an illusion or something temporary. Rather, it signifies substance or essence – that is, the most fundamental part of what it means to be human. In his thought, that essence is information.

Although Ochiai describes the phantom body as something ghost-like, he is not a proponent of a spiritual worldview in which spirit or anima (soul) are considered to exist as metaphysical entities. In fact, his position is quite the opposite. He proposes that human consciousness and the mind can be converted into data, and through this transformation, interpenetrate with machines (AI). In his view, information is a measurable, physical entity rather than a metaphysical soul. Earlier, we described Ochiai as a spiritual intellectual of the Era of Virtuality. This marks a key difference from the spiritual intellectuals of the Era of Fictionality. While those earlier thinkers operated within frameworks influenced by traditional religion or New Age spirituality, Ochiai presents a worldview that is neither traditionally religious nor spiritual, yet not entirely secular or reductionist in the modern scientific sense either. In short, Ochiai’s perspective represents a new mode of religious imagination – distinct from both traditional metaphysics and scientific materialism – that seeks meaning and transcendence through information, technology, and the digital reconfiguration of human existence.

The fundamental difference between Ochiai’s worldview, as well as 2.5-dimensional culture, and Possamai’s concept of hyper-real religion lies precisely in this point. Hyper-real religion theory is grounded in Baudrillard’s theory of the hyper-real, which stands in the lineage of semiotics. It is based on the idea that “we are now living in an economy of signs in which signs are exchanged against each other rather than against the real” (Possamai Reference Possamai2005: 24). In this framework, the hyper-real is defined as “a ‘non-material,’ a de-materialised, concept of reality” and emerges from the condition in which “the real and unreal have imploded, blurring the distinction between them” (24). Put simply, hyper-real religion operates within a world of signs, abstracted from the physical world – a religion of symbols untethered from materiality. By contrast, in the cases of both Ochiai’s thought and 2.5-dimensional culture, while the boundaries between real and unreal are similarly blurred, materiality is not discarded. In Ochiai’s case, technology makes the boundary between mind and matter fluid in a physical sense. In the case of 2.5-dimensional musicals, it is through theatrical embodiment – actors physically performing fictional characters – that this interpenetration between the material and the imaginary takes shape. In both cases, physicality and presence matter.

Another notable feature of Ochiai’s thought and practice is a return to Japanese cultural roots, which is not overtly nationalistic, but clearly emphasizing cultural reengagement. His Digital Nature Shrine is conceived as “a space that fuses digital technology with the syncretic traditions of Japanese Shinto and Buddhism.”Footnote ²⁴ Within this shrine, Ochiai enshrines Null no Kami (the Deity of Null), based on the concept of null from computer science, and the Object-Oriented Bodhisattva, inspired by Dainichi Nyorai (the Cosmic Buddha), who represents the overall structure of complex systems. Ochiai even conducted the shrine’s founding ceremony dressed in Shinto priest garments, performing the ritual himself. This is not only an example of the concepts of ironic immersion or playing (parody) religion, but also reflects a strong turn toward Japanese cultural identity in twenty-first-century youth culture – one that draws not on American films or pop music, but on Japanese-produced manga and anime as core symbolic resources.

In sum, this section has traced the intricate shift from hyper-real engagements to a nuanced, 2.5-dimensional interplay where the virtual and the material converge, reshaping the cultural and religious landscapes of contemporary Japanese youth. We have described this shift as a transition from the Era of Fictionality to the Era of Virtuality, reflecting the digitization of culture (moving from narrative consumption to database consumption) and the technologization of society (where technology actualizes postmodern imaginations that transcend the distinctions between subject and object, and reality and the virtual). Young people’s exploration of the 2.5-dimensional space, far from being mere sites of escape, represents a new frontier where the boundaries of reality are continuously negotiated and redefined, and one’s self is multiplied. As we move into the next section, we will delve deeper into the nuances of how these emergent forms of engagement are not merely passive consumption but active, ritualistic practices.

Rituals that Make the Oshi Real in Oshi-Katsu

The various activities in oshi-katsu that are described using religious terminology are all part of the practice of supporting one’s idol. Fans who engage in oshi-katsu are not merely passive consumers of their favorite idol’s songs or appearances; rather, they actively perform intentional actions to support and sustain the oshi. These actions follow shared patterns across fans, forming a recognizable structure within oshi-katsu culture.

For example, at oshi’s concerts or stage performances, supporters gather with colorful penlights, thumbnail images, and cheering fans (uchiwa), which they wave in coordinated rhythms to cheer on their idol. When the oshi is a member of a group, each color is associated with a particular member of the group. There are commonly understood rules – created and shared among fans – about how to wave penlights and what chants to call. Following these rules makes the oshi appear even more captivating to the fan. This is an example of what cognitive scientists refer to as embodied cognition: the idea that one’s physical actions deeply influence one’s mental state. The ritualized movements and synchronized cheering are not merely expressions of fandom – they are techniques for making the presence of the oshi more real.

Japanese cognitive scientists Shinji Miura and Nobuyuki Kawai (Reference 61Miura and Kawai2025) conducted an experiment on cheering behavior from the perspective of embodied cognition. In the study, university students were asked to wave penlights toward characters in a boxing match scene from an anime they had never seen before. They were then asked to evaluate the attractiveness of the characters. The characters were categorized into two types: those who were active (aggressively attacking in the match) and those who were inactive (primarily on the defensive). The participants were instructed to wave the penlights in one of two ways: either forward, like striking a drum – a common motion in oshi-katsu concerts – or backward, as if tapping their own shoulder. They were unaware of the experiment’s purpose and did not know they were “cheering” for the characters – they simply waved the penlights toward the screen.

The results were striking. Only the characters who were active in the match and toward whom the participants waved the penlight forward were rated significantly higher in attractiveness after the experiment. Characters who were inactive, or who received backward penlight motions, showed no change in attractiveness ratings. In short, even without consciously intending to support a character, the act of waving a penlight forward toward an active character made that character appear more attractive (Miura & Kawai Reference 61Miura and Kawai2025). Needless to say, when the target is one’s oshi, the conscious, deliberate act of waving a penlight or fan (uchiwa) becomes a ritual that enhances both the appeal and the perceived reality of that oshi (Kubo Reference Kubo2022: 21–3).

Fans often build an altar at home for their oshi. This is not simply a place to display merchandise – it is a ritualized act of expressing affection toward the oshi, as well as a space for imaginary communication, where fans talk to their oshi and imagine being spoken to in return. Below is a guide to building an altar, found on a website that sells oshi-katsu goods and accessories:

• STEP 1: Secure a space in your home for the altar

• Decide on an area where the altar will be set up.

• STEP 2: Organize your oshi merchandise

• By laying out all your collected goods, it becomes easier to envision what kind of altar you want to create. Sorting items by type – such as favorite photos, pin badges, and acrylic standsFootnote ²⁶ – makes the process smoother and helps later with arranging the layout.

• STEP 3: Prepare stands or display platforms

• To make your favorite goods look even more appealing, selecting the right display stands or platforms is key. For smaller items like acrylic stands or pin badges, having dedicated holders is especially useful. Mix and match different display tools depending on the size and amount of merchandise to craft your own original altar.

• STEP 4: Arrange the merchandise

• Place your most important oshi item at the center, then surround it with the rest to create a balanced and visually appealing layout. It’s also recommended to decorate the altar in line with your oshi’s theme or image color.

• STEP 5: Add decorations around the altar

• Once you’ve arranged your goods, decorate the surrounding area to create an even more captivating space. You might include magazines or concert pamphlets featuring your oshi from past events to complete the setting.Footnote ²⁷

The website describes the process of building an altar as “creating your own sacred space at home.” The altar is not only a visual focal point but also a personalized sacred space, where affection, admiration, and imaginative engagement come together in a deeply meaningful ritual practice. While the steps outlined earlier for setting up an altar are not particularly complicated – and fans could likely create one without such a guide – turning the process into a method adds a sense of authenticity or “realness.”Footnote ²⁸ Moreover, fans often take photos of their altars and share them on social media to display and compare with other fans. In doing so, they need this kind of information to balance adherence to shared conventions with personal expression – following the guidelines while showcasing their individuality.

Luhrmann describes religion as a form of “serious play” or “serious play pretend.” She argues that the best comparison for having religious faith, or thinking with a faith frame is “play: an as-if frame in which someone acts according to the expectations of the play frame, while still remaining aware of the realities of the everyday world” (Luhrmann Reference Luhrmann2022: 22). And further:

Based on this analysis, we can say that fans who liken their actions in oshi-katsu to religious practices are immersed in a layered form of “play pretend.” They not only act as if their oshi visits the altar they have built and watches over them but also act as if what they are doing is akin to what people call religion. In other words, they participate in a double or even triple “as-if” frame, fully immersed in the serious play of both imagined presence and cultural performance.

Possamai characterizes subjective myths in terms of narcissism, referencing French philosopher Gilles Lipovetsky’s theory of postmodernity. He argues that Lipovetsky (b. 1944) understood consumption in advanced modern society as being fundamentally “about the construction of individual identity.” Moreover, in the era of postmodern individualism that emerged after the 1960s, “the knowledge of oneself is central,” and traditional “macro identities” such as class, gender, ethnicity, and religion are no longer as significant as they once were (Possamai Reference Possamai2005: 65). Building on this, Possamai argues that religion in contemporary society is not just subject to individualization, but also becomes a form of narcissistic individualism. However, this narcissism does not entail self-reflection in the classical sense. Rather, Narcissus “stops looking at himself, and instead looks at an image of himself as portrayed and tamed in the media and popular culture: that is, a hyper-real image of himself – a hyper-real subjective myth” (81).

What distinguishes the subjective rituals of oshi-katsu from hyper-real subjective myths is that, although fantasy is layered onto the real world, these rituals are not narcissistic. For fans, the world does not revolve around the self – it revolves around the oshi. Rather than seeking self-improvement or personal fulfillment, fans find joy in supporting the growth of their oshi, in “raising” and nurturing them. Possamai suggested that hyper-real subjective myths provide consumers with ontological security in a post–9/11 risk society (Possamai Reference Possamai2005: 82). These myths, he argues, are not mere forms of escapism from an anxiety-filled reality, but rather acts of life-affirmation, that is, “an affirmation of a desire to live and experience life in a socio-economic and political context that puts people at risk” (82). By comparison, oshi-katsu is also often described by fans as their reason for living, and in that sense, it similarly functions as life affirmation. However, as discussed earlier in this Element (p. 8) in reference to Koike and Manabe, contemporary Japanese youth culture is marked by a generally low baseline of self-esteem.Footnote ²⁹ Rather than striving for self-enhancement, many young people rely on their oshi as a form of emotional support – something that helps them lift their mood each day and continue living, however tenuously.

The protagonist of Rin Usami’s novel pushes back against the adults who insist that she should have an actual romantic relationship with an ordinary man rather than being imaginatively involved with an idol. She responds as follows:

It may come as a surprise, but the protagonist does not wish to have a romantic relationship with her oshi – even if that were a real possibility. A normal boyfriend, even one as beloved as her oshi, would inevitably involve the risk of hurting or being hurt. For many young people of her generation in Japan, that kind of emotional vulnerability is a possibility they cannot overlook. As the protagonist puts it:

In his essay What Does “Oshi” Mean to Humanity?, which reflects on his own experiences with oshi-katsu, Yoshiaki Yokogawa describes his oshi as a kind of omamori, or protective charm. This metaphor is endorsed by cognitive scientist Namiko Kubo, author of The Science of “Oshi” (Kubo Reference Kubo2022: 218–19). An omamori is not like a crystal meant to enhance one’s power – it is something calm and modest, something that simply offers support. Yokogawa closes his book with the following words:

The mentality reflected here is significantly different from that of the consumers of Western subjective myths that Possamai discusses – such as the young practitioners of Jediism who seek to identify with Jedi Knights and “develop their self and tap into latent forms of powers from within the self” (Possamai Reference Possamai2005: 79; see also Bainbridge Reference Bainbridge2024). In contrast, Japanese oshi culture is not about constructing a self-identity by building self-esteem. There is no “power” presumed to be within the self. When fans buy large amounts of oshi-related merchandise or build elaborate altars, these acts are not understood as ways to fulfill personal desires. Rather, they are expressions of devotion for the oshi. It is precisely in order to integrate this devotion into their daily lives as routines that subjective ritualization emerges. In our previous work (Fujiwara & Miura Reference Fujiwara and Miura2024), we referred to this aspect as vicarious spirituality, using tulpa practices as an example.

Tulpa Practice as a Ritual of Real-Making

Just as fans engaged in oshi-katsu use ritualization to make their oshi feel real, tulpamancers also create rituals to experience their tulpa as real beings. In Section 2, we discussed how tulpa-related practices exhibit characteristics of MR. In this subsection, we focus on the ritualistic aspects constructed by tulpamancers – rituals that form the core of how they perceive an extended version of reality.

In order to create a tulpa as a vivid, lifelike presence, tulpamancers engage in various rituals, often referred to as training. A representative example is the ritual practice of conversation with the tulpa. This is a daily ritual for many tulpamancers. In most cases, the conversation is not spoken aloud but conducted internally through imagination. The following is an example of a commonly shared training method for conversing with a tulpa:

At first, it is merely a self-directed internal dialogue, playing both roles in one’s mind. But by repeating this while consciously attributing the words to the tulpa, the practitioner attempts to give the tulpa a tangible sense of presence. This ritual, aimed at achieving autonomous conversation with the tulpa, is referred to within Japanese communities as kaiwa ōtoka (conversation automation), and it represents one of the major goals many tulpamancers pursue in the process of creating a tulpa.

Next, let us turn to a distinctive ritual practice related to tulpas known as possession. This practice, newly devised in the 2000s, is closely tied to the characteristics of the internet, the primary space in which tulpa culture has spread. One tulpa guidebook offers the following explanation for tulpa possession:

In typical spiritual cultural contexts, possession is considered an extraordinary act involving communication with spirits from other worlds or extraterrestrial beings. In contrast, within tulpa practice, possession serves as a means of integrating the tulpa into everyday life. A tulpa can engage in ordinary activities such as eating or reading. What is especially distinctive, however, is that through possession, the tulpa can post to online forums or social media in place of the tulpamancer. In some cases, the tulpa may even have its own social media account, use it to post, and interact with other tulpas or tulpamancers. Through this ritual of possession, tulpamancers strengthen their relationship with the tulpa, treat it as a social being, and thus help it grow and evolve.

Luhrmann focuses on how believers cultivate intimate internal relationships with God or spirits, using the term paracosm to describe an imagined world in which invisible others respond. Through ritual practices, believers construct and share a paracosm as “a private-but-shared imagined world” (Luhrmann Reference Luhrmann2022: 25), within which unseen beings come to be experienced as real. According to Luhrmann, for a “faith frame” to function as a paracosm, it is essential not only that the invisible other is described, but also that it responds – that it is experienced as interactive. “They know that they are not just pretending when the main character of the story begins to talk back in some way” (48).

In tulpa practice, this very responsiveness and interaction are considered central, and a range of ritual techniques are used to support such experiences. Talking with a tulpa and receiving responses, holding hands with the tulpa, exchanging smiles – these gestures of mutual engagement lie at the core of the tulpamancer–tulpa relationship. Within the tulpa community, practitioners actively exchange methods for making the tulpa feel more real. Beyond the training techniques mentioned earlier, other rituals have been proposed – such as writing down dialogue logs in documents or blogs, or creating a yorishiro (an object inhabited by a god/spirit, in this case, the tulpa). Through these practices, the tulpa is transformed from a mere product of imagination into a vivid, lifelike presence.

Rituals in Gaming Culture

Subjective ritualization in youth culture is also frequently observed in the realm of gaming. Gaming culture occupies a central place in the everyday lives of Japanese youth, encompassing console and mobile games, as well as multiplayer platforms. It is not only a matter of entertainment but also a social practice, with players forming communities around shared genres, characters, or play styles. From casual smartphone apps to large-scale online role-playing games, gaming has become a space where young people cultivate affective ties and participate in ritual-like behaviors that extend beyond the screen. Within this broad landscape, particular genres and mechanics foster especially vivid forms of subjective ritualization.

Gacha games – a genre of social network games – are particularly popular among Japanese youth. The word gacha originally refers to “a kind of vending machine-dispensed capsule toy,” akin to a gumball machine but with toys instead of candy. In gaming, the term is used metaphorically to describe a video game that implements the gacha machine-style mechanics. Gacha games entice players to spend in-game currency to receive a random item or character, essentially functioning as a form of lottery with a high degree of chance and gambling-like appeal. This game mechanism has become increasingly common not only in Japanese games, but also in those produced in China, Korea, and even Europe and the United States.

Among gacha game players, some engage in various rituals – maginai in Japanese, including spells and magic – in the hope of obtaining their desired item or character. Numerous websites now introduce different kinds of these magical practices. One such example includes the following steps:

1. 1. Wash your hands.

2. 2. On Twitter, tweet your favorite character’s name using the full 140-character limit. (It’s okay if the tweet gets cut off mid-sentence; either a nickname or the full name is acceptable.)

3. 3. Bow in a “dogeza” position (prostration) and pray toward your smartphone or tablet.

4. 4. Pull the gacha.Footnote ³¹

Even more intriguing are cases in which players create rituals inspired by the narrative settings of fantasy-style games. A prominent example is the role-playing game Fate/Grand Order. In this game, the player takes on the role of a Master, a magician who summons Servants and uses their powers to save the world from destruction. The summoning of these Servants functions as the game’s gacha mechanic. To call forth a desired character, players often perform personalized rituals or charms.

There are two primary types of these rituals. The first involves preparing an object related to the hero upon whom the desired character is based before initiating the summoning. For instance, to summon the character Gawain, players may place books about the Arthurian Legends (since Gawain is one of the Knights of the Round Table) in front of them before pulling the gacha. Similarly, to summon the character Ozymandias, players might display a photograph of a statue of Ramses II, on whom the character is based.

A variation of this ritual type includes making a pilgrimage to a location associated with the historical figure the character is based on – considering it a kind of sacred site – and pulling the gacha there. Another variation involves preparing images or merchandise of another character with close ties to the desired one in the original lore, then performing the summoning. These rituals bring elements from within the fictional setting into the real world, blending imagination and reality in an embodied, performative way.

Second, there is a pattern of pulling the gacha at the right moment when luck is favorable. One example of this is a practice that players refer to as the Fire-Worship Cult (haikakyō). This refers to the act of initiating a summons at the moment when the highest-grade character enhancement item – shaped like a flame – is drawn from a separate, free gacha system within the game. The name comes from the flame-like appearance of the item, which is interpreted as an omen of good fortune. Another example is known as the 2 A.M. Cult (gozen niji-kyō), based on a line spoken by a character from another title in the Fate series, who claimed that 2 a.m. is the optimal time for summoning a desired Servant. Yet another is the rather infamous Left Nipple Cult (hidari-chikubi-kyō), which reportedly began when a player – on a whim – tapped the gacha button with their left nipple and received a favorable result. After gacha players repeated the act with continued success, the practice spread via the internet as a sort of lucky ritual.

In this way, many of these ritualistic actions stem from the original story setting, and in that sense, they can be seen as instances where fiction is overlaid onto reality and treated as if it holds actual power. This overlapping of fiction onto the real world is what makes it 2.5-dimensional. The spread and sharing of such unique practices among players is also influenced by the phenomenon of going viral (“buzzing”) on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Practices that spread quickly are not necessarily the most credible, but rather those that are slightly bizarre, entertaining, or attention-grabbing. These acts are often likened to religions by players themselves, as in the case of the Fire Worship Cult, the 2 A.M. Cult, or the Left Nipple Cult. While there is an element of parody religion to these, it is also true that players genuinely wish to summon their desired characters.

In addition to these wish-making rituals, there are also instances where formal ceremonial rituals are created. The Pokémon Trading Card Game is one such example. Although it is a competitive game, certain actions during a match have become ritualized. Before starting, players are expected to greet each other with a polite Yoroshiku onegaishimasu (“Let’s have a good match”) and shake hands. After the match, they say Arigatou gozaimashita (“Thank you very much”) and shake hands again. Many rules are designed to prevent cheating, but there are also specific manners, such as clearly announcing moves and effects during gameplay, and refraining from shouting or insulting the opponent. Through these shared rituals, players help form a sense of community among themselves.

A similar shift from narratives to practices can also be observed in the genre of horror. A video game titled The Exit 8, released by a Japanese company in 2023, exemplifies this trend. Set in what resembles an underground subway passage, the game has the player wander through an endlessly repeating corridor, searching for anomalies in order to escape. The Exit 8 gained immense popularity and inspired a wave of similar games.

These anomalies are phenomena designed to provoke a sense of fear in the player. For example, handprints or footprints might appear on the corridor walls, or the eyes of a person in a poster might move. Some anomalies borrow imagery from famous horror films – for instance, the sudden appearance of twin men or a hallway flooding with red liquid evokes The Shining. However, what is particularly notable about The Exit 8 and its imitators is that they lack any explicit narrative. The player is trapped in a subway-like corridor and must identify the anomalies to escape, but there is no story explaining why the anomalies are occurring or why the player is there in the first place. Rather than being scared by a narrative, the player is reacting, intermittently, to elements of fear that are already shared or socially encoded. Earlier, we discussed the concept of database consumption as a key characteristic of youth culture, referring specifically to the vast collection of moe elements. In the case of these horror games, it is a database of fear elements that is being consumed.

The presence of an anomaly is not narrated in voiceover; rather, the game is designed so that players must discover it for themselves by paying close attention. In other words, the fear evoked by this horror game does not arise from passively receiving a narrative, but through the player’s active engagement in identifying elements of fear. While this may not rise to the level of a ritual, it does align with our broader argument that the shift from narrative consumption to database consumption corresponds a transition from subjective myths to subjective rituals.

According to folklorist Ryūhei Hirota, horror without narrative is a phenomenon increasingly seen in online horror works worldwide in the 2020s. A pioneering example is the viral 2022 YouTube video titled “The Backrooms (Found Footage).” The Backrooms are a fictional space typically depicted as an eerily vast extradimensional maze of empty, monotonous rooms that one can enter by somehow slipping out of reality. The Backrooms originated in the 2010s as part of the spread of eerie images online, collectively referred to as creepypasta. Ordinary users hoping to create horror content began gathering similar images, which came to be known as liminal spaces. The Backrooms video, created by then-16-year-old American Kane Parsons, is framed as a VHS recording made by a filmmaker who accidentally enters the Backrooms in the 1990s and finds himself pursued by a monster. Hirota notes that the video captures several key features that define internet-based horror of the 2020s. Chief among them is the near-total lack of narrative progression – the entire video maintains an eerie, indescribable atmosphere from beginning to end (Hirota Reference Hirota2024: 223).

Anime Pilgrimage

Another well-known example of youth culture as comprised of subjective rituals and ritualization is anime pilgrimage (seichi junrei). Anime pilgrimage refers to a form of pop culture tourism in which fans of anime and related subcultures visit real-world locations that appear as settings, backgrounds, or sources of inspiration in their favorite series. Because such behavior resembles traditional religious pilgrimages, young people began calling this practice by that name from around the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when this form of tourism started to gain popularity. Anime pilgrimage has since become the subject of academic research by scholars of religion and tourism studies both in Japan and abroad (Andrews Reference Andrews2014; T. Okamoto Reference Okamoto2015; Seaton et al. Reference Seaton, Yamamura, Sugawa-Shimada and Jang2017; Imai Reference 60Imai2018; R. Okamoto Reference Okamoto2019; Nuradi Reference Nuradi2024). As in the cases examined earlier, these practices illustrate how database-style consumption fosters personalized yet socially shared rituals, allowing fictional worlds to be overlaid onto everyday life.

The boom was sparked by the 2007 broadcast of the anime Lucky Star. In the anime, one of the characters is depicted as a shrine maiden at Takanomiya Shrine, which was modeled after the real-life Saginomiya Shrine located in the suburbs of Tokyo. Fans who noticed the resemblance began visiting the shrine in cosplay, and as the anime’s popularity grew, the number of visitors increased. Online, fans actively exchanged information about anime pilgrimage, which in turn inspired similar pilgrimages to locations featured in other anime series. In these cases, the “sacred sites” were not necessarily religious institutions like shrines but included a variety of real-world locations such as train stations, townscapes, specific shops, coastlines, and mountains. Local governments welcomed the influx of young fans and tourists as an opportunity for regional revitalization, often organizing anime-themed events. By the 2010s, mass media began covering the phenomenon, and a March 2012 NHK report estimated the number of anime pilgrims at around one million.

Scholars of religion have analyzed this phenomenon from various perspectives – examining how fans and local residents form a temporary community and hold festivals together through a Durkheimian lens (R. Okamoto Reference Okamoto2019: 146–64), or analyzing the ema (votive plaques) left by fans at shrines as material culture (Nuradi Reference Nuradi2024). However, the primary reason fans undertake anime pilgrimages is not to participate in festivals with local residents or to leave ema. Many pilgrimage sites are not religious locations at all. Fans visit these places to experience the augmented or mixed reality aspects of the pilgrimage, that is, 2.5-dimensionality (see Figure 7). Of course, actors dressed as anime characters do not actually appear at these sites. Rather, it is through the fans’ imagination that the fictional world is overlaid onto the real world. (In more recent pilgrimages, fans often bring acrylic stands of their favorite characters and place them at specific spots in the real-world location to take photos, thereby recreating scenes from the anime in a 2.5-dimensional fashion.) The excitement comes from discovering the real-world spot from a scene in the anime. The act of layering fictional meaning onto physical reality gives depth and richness to each individual’s experience of the world. Additionally, there is a gamified aspect to the pilgrimage, akin to orienteering,Footnote ³² in which fans enjoy the challenge of identifying obscure locations that others might overlook.

Figure 7 Anime pilgrimage. A fan is looking at an image of a scene from an anime overlaid onto the actual landscape.

Fictional image created by Fujiwara through AI-generation.

To elaborate further on the aspect of gameplay, Masayoshi Sakai, a scholar of pop culture industries, points out that while anime pilgrimage fans clearly understand that anime is fictional, they enjoy exploring just how meticulously that fiction has been constructed. Of course, film enthusiasts have long visited filming locations since the twentieth century, but in the case of anime, the real-world locations that inspired scenes are not explicitly mentioned in the works themselves. Instead, fans must deduce and discover them on their own. Sharing such findings and personal deductions with others online is also a key part of the experience – something unique to the digital era. It is this sense of investigative play that Sakai highlights as a novel feature of anime pilgrimage. Another important point he raises is that the locations featured in these works are often just ordinary towns in Japan, and the characters themselves are usually everyday people, like high school students. This relatability makes it easier for Japanese youth to empathize with the characters and immerse themselves in the fictional world layered onto the real one – something that strongly resonates with the preferences of today’s young generation.Footnote ³³

However, when local governments over-commercialize anime pilgrimage sites in pursuit of economic benefits, some young people begin to feel a sense of discomfort and distance themselves from the phenomenon.Footnote ³⁴ This is because rituals must be subjective rituals – practices created by the individuals themselves. Here, let us clarify a bit more what we mean by subjective.

As a point of comparison, we refer to the typology proposed by Ryōsuke Okamoto, a sociologist of religion specializing in the study of sacred sites. Based on the theory of sociologist Danièle Hervieu-Léger (Reference Hervieu-Léger1999), Okamoto classifies sacred sites into four types, according to how the sacredness of the site is legitimized:

1. (a) Institutional sacred sites, which are designated by historically dominant religions, such as state religions;

2. (b) Communal sacred sites, supported by smaller social or religious communities;

3. (c) Event-based sacred sites, which are temporarily created and sustained by people who share a space for a particular event – examples include anime sacred sites and the Burning Man festival in Nevada, United States;

4. (d) Private sacred sites, which are recognized as sacred by individuals – for instance, a family grave. (R. Okamoto Reference Okamoto2019: 157–8)

Indeed, the sacredness of anime pilgrimage sites is not legitimized solely by individuals, but through a kind of mutual validation among many young fans. However, it is significantly different from large-scale, countercultural events like Burning Man. In anime pilgrimage, it is typical for fans to visit sacred sites alone or in small groups of two or three friends, and it does not usually involve moments of collective effervescence. More recently, a popular trend has emerged in which people visit “sacred” spots associated with their oshi (idol), often carrying a plushie or acrylic stand of their oshi to photograph on-site. This type of pilgrimage is much closer in form to anime pilgrimage. While sacred site maps are collaboratively created by online fan communities, the actual pilgrimage is carried out as a deeply personal act. It is for this reason that we categorize anime pilgrimage under subjective rituals. This, in turn, leads us to a broader insight into the nature of religiosity among contemporary Japanese youth – a point we will elaborate further in the concluding section.

This section has demonstrated that the terms subjective rituals or ritualization aptly describe the religiosity of contemporary Japanese youth. It reflects a shift in identity construction. Today’s youth do not build their identities simply as a means to boost self-esteem; rather, possessing a form of weak self, they find their purpose in life in supporting oshis, whether they are human idols or spiritual tulpas. Simultaneously, the nature of popular culture consumption has transitioned from narrative-driven to database-driven. This consumption is not passive; young people actively create rituals that blur the lines between religious and secular. These rituals bring idols, anime characters, and tulpas into the physical space, making them virtually real entities with whom they interact. This shift from narrative to database consumption is also evident in online gaming and netlore. These insights allow for an analysis where anime pilgrimage is enjoyed as an overlaying of the anime world onto the real world, adding a layer of meaning to the physical realms they visit.