JJRS > Volume 22 Issue 3-4 Self-Development Seminars in Japan

Haga Manabu

Download PDF

Since the mid-1980s self-development seminars have been attracting increasing attention in Japan. These seminars, many operated by service-industry corporations, promise dramatic achievements in self-realization to anyone who participates in a three- to four-day course. The initial seminar is followed by other courses that form a program requiring six months to a year to complete. Altogether several hundred thousand trainees—primarily young people—have participated in the training, the purpose of which is to help the trainees leave behind negative patterns of thought and experience the birth of a positive “new self.” Accompanying the development of this new outlook on life is the formation of a strong interpersonal network among the trainees, based on shared effort and shared emotion. The emotional relationship that develops among the trainees resembles in some ways the gemeinschaft relationship seen in communities of relatives and friends, but differs in that a fundamental anonymity is retained. Because of this anonymity the seminar creates an environment in which intimacy and personal freedom can coexist.