On the 21st June 2014, a Shintō shrine was inaugurated in the independent Republic of San Marino, as the second shrine outside the soil of Japan. The San Marino Jinja サンマリノ 神社 has been officially supported and recognised by Jinja Honchō 神社本庁, the administrative organisation that oversees about 80,000 Shintō shrines in Japan. However, what is mainly told about Shintō, still nowadays, is that it is the most antique and purely indigenous religion of Japan, a polytheism of immanent deities, defined as kami, strongly connected with the Japanese soil and centred around the sun goddess Amaterasu Omikami, and the imperial family descending directly from her. But, if Shintō is actually such a not inclusive religion, is it possible to define this foreign shrine legitimately and consistently Shintō, on a theoretical and practical perspective? In other words, if the claims of Shintō are the ones of a Japanese religion for Japanese people only, why the San Marino Jinja has been officially inaugurated and how does a Shintō shrine operate in a different country and cultural context? Actually, as it will be possible to discover through this research, most of the pillars on which Shintō is based are not historically consistent or accurate. It will be also possible to demonstrate how historically inaccurate it is to consider Shintō an indigenous religion in the first place. Therefore to deconstruct these claims, which could obstruct a legit globalisation of it, in this research Shintō will be discussed first from a theoretical point of view. Firstly by deconstructing the general held idea of Shinto itself, following the academical debate of the last fifty years. Secondly, by presenting the new rhetoric promoted by Jinja Honcho about Shinto as the “World's new religion of ecology”, in order to increase its national and international popularity. With this theoretical background it will be then possible to analyse the phenomenon on a practical perspective. In order to do so a comparative analysis will be featured: the Ise Jingu, the oldest model reference of jinja, will be compared to the San Marino site. The result will demonstrate whether the European shrine presents the same operating patterns as the native one, and therefore whether is a legit instance of a successful Shinto globalisation. Advisors/Committee Members: Van der Veere, H (advisor).

This thesis will examine the ways in which the concept of victimhood is produced by victims’ groups connected with the Aum affair and how it was received by Japanese media in terms of a renovated mutual understanding between victims and journalists, which resulted in an improvement of the victims’ treatment on information channels. The research takes into consideration the experience of three support groups (Chikatetsu Sarin Jiken Higaisha no Kai, Kanariya no Kai and RSC) that will be used as case studies to analyze the evolution and the impact they had both on victims’ lives and information media. It aims to investigate the role of NPOs and victims’ group activities in influencing public opinion regarding victims’ redressing issues. Furthermore, it intends to explore victims’ struggle against the proliferation of New Religious Movements derived from the disbanding of Aum Shinrikyō and constituted mainly by its former members, such as Hikari no Wa 光の環 and Aleph アレフ, which are suspected of harboring the same doctrines that led Aum to be a danger for Japanese society. In doing so, victims used memory, both individual and collective, as a tool to make their case and highlight their instances even when the attention towards the Aum affair declined in Japanese media. Memorial constructions regarding the incidents, commemorative events, documentaries and victims’ groups’ activities accounts established a legacy that goes beyond the individual experience as a victim or a perpetrator, rather producing a collective instance of victimhood. Advisors/Committee Members: Van der Veere, H (advisor).