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Inside the Fringe Japanese Religion That Claims It Can Cure Covid-19
When New York went into lockdown last month, emissaries of a religious group called Happy Science showed up in a ghostly Times Square to deliver a peculiar end-of-days gospel. They wore ritual golden sashes and huddled in a semicircle.
“Doomsday may seem to be coming,” a young minister said.
“But the greatest savior,” he continued, “our master, is here on earth.”
One or two passers-by lingered, taking in the gloomy scene. Of the few people who were on the street, most rushed past.
None of this was as haphazard as it seemed.
Happy Science is an enormous and powerful enterprise claiming millions of adherents and tens of thousands of missionary outposts across the world. Secretive, hostile to the media, and structured around a tiered, pay-to-progress system of membership, they’re sometimes called Tokyo’s answer to Scientology.