In the last decades, supirichuariti, the katakana word that refers to the concept
of “spirituality,” which is generally understood as a post-1970s phenomenon in
Japan, has been used to argue for the return of religiosity in domains outside
“traditional religions.” The first decade of the twenty-first century even saw
what was termed a “spiritual boom” which was mostly fuelled by an increased
visibility on television and popular magazines of alternative therapies and self-development theories, resembling the spiritual-but-not-religious (SBNR)
interests in other parts of the world, but basing themselves on an explicit
boundary work with established religious practice. The spiritual, however, has,
like the so-called “cults” since the Aum affair, been the target of attacks by
media and scholarly discourse for its allegedly “dangerous” religiosity and
fraudulent money transactions. The religion vs spirituality debate seems
therefore to hide another debate, good spirituality vs bad spirituality, where
taboo-discourse in relation to religion thrives. This paper introduces a recent
phenomenon that adds yet another layer of attacks on spirituality in Japan. In the
last 5 years, criticism against supirichuariti (sometimes termed datsu-supi,
“ditching spirituality”) seems to have risen from among the ranks of the
spiritual’s most fervent followers, to attack an ideology that has become “too
self-centred” as its critics argue. This type of rhetoric seems, at first glance, to
reiterate the anti-cult, pseudo-nostalgic narrative that considers money
transactions to be “taboo” in the case of “proper religion.” Yet, I argue, that the
taboo-ization of spirituality as object of business transactions by those whom I
call “spiritual apostates”, reveals a more subtle critique, which is centred on
capitalism rather than on religion. Spiritual apostasy, contrary to the anti-cult
rhetoric, is, first and foremost, about what “good” capitalism is; not what
“good” spirituality is.