What makes Tokyo so enviable is its abundance of housing and the ease with which new building projects can get off the ground. An astonishing number of homes are built every year in the city — 145,000 in 2018 — which is more than in the whole of California (with roughly three times the population) and, in some years, than in the whole of England (with about four times the population).

Nimby Tokyoites may object to new projects, but their protests can be swatted away by the determinedly pro-housing central government, which wields almost unlimited power. Local government rarely gets a look in. And unlike in Britain or the US, new housing tends to be squeezed efficiently into existing neighbourhoods rather than built on empty land, of which there is little. As policy expert Alan Durning writes, Japan’s process of approving housing projects is “simple, uniform, and markedly more welcoming to homes of many sizes than other nation’s policies”.

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With earthquakes an ever-looming threat, Tokyo homes are knocked down at a much faster rate than elsewhere to keep them secure (Japanese buildings have the same lifespan as an American car, about 30 years). But rather than being a nuisance, Durning points out that this creates more opportunities to replace a house with a block, which tend to be far more capacious; “pencil buildings” make efficient multi-story use of a very small footprint. Tokyo has tripled its housing stock in the past 50 years. Only Singapore and Seoul have done better.

The Japanese government’s aggressively pro-building policies stem from an attempt to boost the economy after the collapse of the real estate bubble in 1992. A steady eradication of housing regulations over the next decade culminated in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s Urban Renaissance project, which allowed fast-track approval of high-rise inner-city developments. Now, Japan’s cities seem to be in a dizzying state of flux and thrum to the sound of construction.

This is not to say that there is no opposition to the permanent vista of cranes or the occasional fightback when the government overplays its hand. There was spirited, if unsuccessful, opposition to the demolition of the much-loved Nakagin capsule tower in Tokyo last year, and music legend Ryuichi Sakamoto campaigned against the redevelopment of Meiji Jingu Park — one of Tokyo’s few central green spaces — up until his recent death.

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It should also be noted that though Japan has ample housing, much of it is uninspiring and characterless. Built to last a couple of decades at most, even the better-quality blocks lose their shine quickly. Like seedy nightclubs, they are given glamorous English names like “Suginami Deluxe Heaven” or “Ogikubo Princess Stage” in an attempt to give a veneer of sophistication to mundane steel and concrete cubes. Almost no one has a garden, a spare room, or a pleasing view.

It’s not always easy to find a home in Tokyo as a foreigner. Most long-term residents will have a tale of entering an estate agents and noticing an immediate froideur (think of the slaughtered Lamb scene in American Werewolf in London). I was denied entry to one letting agent in Urayasu, a Tokyo suburb which, rumour has it, is entirely closed to foreigners. The woman behind the counter leapt up and raced to the door as she saw me approaching, crossing her arms and shaking her head.

It has been estimated that only 10–20% of real estate companies in Tokyo will rent to foreigners, though few will openly admit this. Prejudice may be a factor, but a more likely explanation is caution: landlords don’t want to take a chance on a tenant who probably can’t read the rental agreement or understand the subtle, unwritten neighbourhood rules.

Stigma is less of a problem when it comes to social housing, which Tokyo has in varying quality. The once-cherished “Danchi” — Soviet-inspired blocks known in the Sixties as the “homes of the future” — are now dark, dingy, and depressing places that house only the desperate and the elderly. They are infamous for being the most common location of kodukushi or “lonely death”, whereby someone living alone will pass away and lie undiscovered, sometimes for years. More attractive are the Urban Renaissance homes, which are usually of decent quality, though there are only 740,000 of these nationwide and competition for one may be intense.

Could the UK profit from emulating Tokyo’s housebuilding success? To an extent. The lack of red tape for perfectly uncontroversial projects is admirable. But Japanese cities have very few historic buildings whose demolition anyone would object to, nor do they have extensive green areas to preserve. A similarly permissive regulatory regime could hardly work in Bath or Oxford or Edinburgh.

It is also uncertain that Brits would be satisfied with the often very modest, unadorned dwellings that Japanese people live in, sometimes all their lives. The Japanese invest very little of their personality in their homes, spend less time in them than other nationalities, and frequently see them as places to sleep in and little more. (Tokyo’s suburbs are often referred to as “bed towns”.) An indicator of the Japanese attitude to their homes is that even at the height of pandemic restrictions, the figure for home-working only hit 20%. In the UK it is currently 44%.

Perhaps the best lesson we can learn from the residents of Tokyo is to obsess less over property: to expect less. Thanks to the threat of earthquakes, property is not a good investment; and living anywhere too grand, or renovating or extending your home, would be considered ostentatious and threaten the precious societal harmony. City-wide safety and a clean, reliable, and inexpensive transport system means there is less of a postcode premium or stigma. People just aren’t that interested in where, or how well, you live.

With lower expectations and less emotional attachment, it’s perhaps no wonder that Tokyo has solved its housing conundrum. I once asked a student to describe her dream home and after a lengthy, bemused pause, she shrugged her shoulders and said: “I don’t know, somewhere near a Starbucks.”

The Japanese government is considering raising the age of consent from 13 to 16 as part of a package of sex crime reforms. Yes, you read that right, the age of consent in Japan is currently 13, one of the lowest in the world and the lowest in the G7. A justice ministry panel is also recommending redefining rape to make court judgements more consistent. As it stands, it must be proved that not only was sex non-consensual, but that the victim had been unable to resist due to “violence or intimidation”. The new law will allow courts to consider drugging, intoxication, “catching the victim off-guard” and psychological manipulation in their definition. Voyeurism will also be outlawed.

That Japan is only now updating its laws is troubling, as it suggests a society indifferent to the fate of vulnerable minors and sexual assault victims. Just last week, a former J-pop star Kauan Okamoto claimed to have been sexually abused by the now-deceased music producer Johnny Kitagawa when he was 15. He thinks many more boys who worked for Kitagawa were also abused, but were afraid that speaking out would ruin their fledgling pop careers. “I believe that almost all of the boys who went to stay at Johnny’s place were victims,” he told reporters . “I would say 100 to 200 boys stayed there on a rotation basis during my four years at the agency.”

All this appears to add substance to the implications of the “weird Japan” reportage that fixates on the seedy elements of Japanese culture, such as the popularity of disturbingly young girl bands who cavort scantily clad in glossy videos. (Some members of the J-pop band NMB48 are just 14.) But as ever with Japan, things are not what they seem. The salacious Orientalist myth needs to be separated from the more prosaic reality. For one thing, it’s not exactly true to say the age of consent in Japan is 13. Most prefectures (or counties) interpret laws against “lewd acts” to include sex with minors. This means the real age of consent in much of the country is 18 — though penalties for “lewd acts” are generally lighter.

Still, that hardly explains why Japan’s sex crime laws haven’t been updated since the late Meiji period. The answer may lie in Japan’s traditional “black box” attitude to sexual crime. In a culture where direct expressions of opinion or intent are considered impolite and injurious to societal harmony, and everything is caveated or left unsaid, it is often considered too difficult to determine what happens in the “black box” of an intimate encounter between two individuals. The police and judiciary would rather not be asked to get involved — and nebulous sex crime laws that deter victims from coming forward have long suited them. Of course, it also benefitted predatory men.

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Then there is the fact that the public was, until recently, largely unaware of the flaws of the outdated laws. Japan has a low official rate of sex crime at 1.02 per 100,000 citizens (the UK’s figure is 27), and horrific stories of abuse do not appear on the news. Nor does sexual abuse ever feature as a storyline in TV dramas. In the absence of compelling evidence of a problem, the dusty old ordinance remained on the statute books as there simply wasn’t any clamour for change.

That is, until recently. Japan is at its most dynamic and progressive when it feels the world’s gaze upon it, a phenomenon known as gaiatsu (“outside pressure”). Not all Western-inspired protest movements translate to Japan (BLM flopped), but MeToo took off in 2017. The behaviour of celebrities came under intense focus, with particular attention paid to how “talents” interacted with their very young fans. In 2017 the bassist of the band Tokio quit after forcing a kiss on a high-school girl, and actor Keisuke Koide had his contracts for TV dramas cancelled when it was revealed he had slept with a 17-year-old. Then, in the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics, Yoshiro Mori, a former prime minister, was forced to step down after implying that women talked too much in meetings. The director of the opening ceremony was sacked for likening the female star to a pig.

At the heart of Japan’s MeToo movement was Shiori Itō, a journalist and filmmaker whose rape allegations against a high-profile colleague saw her awarded substantial damages in 2019. Her memoir Black Box, published in 2017, became a bestseller, and she has since campaigned to change Japan’s century-old rape laws.

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Ito’s story raised many awkward questions in Japan. Those impressively low crime statistics came under scrutiny: a government survey in 2019 found that only 14% of victims of sexual assault had reported the crime. And the survey only questioned those aged 16 and above. The reasons given were a lack of faith in the police, a belief that their trauma was unimportant, and shame. In a country where stoic endurance is prized and maintaining societal harmony is considered of far greater value than personal suffering, underreporting is a serious issue.

However, there is a limit to Japan’s tolerance. In 2019, a series of technical acquittals in four sex abuse cases involving minors sparked outrage. This included a horrific case in Nagoya, where a man was acquitted despite the judge acknowledging he had repeatedly raped his teenage daughter and had threatened to beat her if she refused. The judgement hinged on whether the young woman could have resisted: the judge ruled she could have done. A higher court overruled the judgement, and the man was given a 10-year sentence, but the dangers of the ossified penal code had been exposed and calls for changes to the law intensified.

Gaiatsu may be a factor in the timing of the proposed changes. Japan will host the G7 summit in Hiroshima in May and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida — who was schooled in the US and is on a mission to harmonise Japanese society with Western norms — will not want any embarrassment spoiling his showpiece.

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Kishida has already made efforts to rid Japan, which is ranked 116 out of 146 in the gender gap index, of its chauvinist reputation. Last June’s Intensive Policy for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women required firms to disclose their gender pay gaps; last December, Japan hosted the sixth World Assembly for Women, featuring luminaries such as Malala Yousafzai and Christine Lagarde. Kishida is likely to welcome the justice ministry’s sex crime reforms and push through the necessary legislation swiftly.

This is all well and good, except that the proposals appear to be more about sanitising Japan’s international image than protecting vulnerable young people. The bar for rape conviction will remain high: Human Rights Now have said it will still fail to meet international standards. Whether the new policy will cut through on the international stage is also in doubt. Two weeks ago, thousands of tourists flocked to Kawasaki to attend its annual Penis Festival — much to the mirth of the Western press. But what foreigners often don’t realise is that the defining aspect of Japanese sex culture isn’t, as A.A. Gill claimed, its weirdness — but its secrecy.

The plan will involve not only the upgrade of Japanese weapons but the procurement of at least 400 US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles. It is a decision some have interpreted as effectively superseding the pacifist constitution and putting Japan on the road to becoming a military superpower.

The initiative shows how seriously Japan’s government takes the threat of an invasion of Taiwan. A Chinese takeover would be calamitous, as it would endanger the shipping lines that supply much of the country’s manufacturing materials and nearly all of its oil. With an American response far from guaranteed, the Japanese clearly feel they need to take their own precautions and signal their intentions unambiguously.

At present, Japan has a unified military structure, the Japan Self-Defence Force (JSDF), founded in 1954. With nearly a quarter of a million personnel, its original purpose was domestic security, logistical (non-combat) support for international peacekeeping missions under the auspices of the UN, and reassuring the population that Japan wasn’t completely defenceless.

Japan was obliged, under Article 9 of the 1947 constitution, to renounce war as a “sovereign right of the nation” — the only country ever to do so. The exact wording stated that Japan would never again maintain “land sea or air forces”, but over time the JDSF has developed from its initial Dad’s Army-style and scale into a significant military force, with license to operate overseas, albeit in limited circumstances. The rearmament plan marks a significant step towards Article 9’s further reinterpretation, this time into virtual meaninglessness.

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Japan’s defence from external threat has long been the preserve of US forces stationed in the country, sanctioned under the Security Treaty signed in 1951 and renewed periodically thereafter. A reorientation of this arrangement would liberate the US from much of its responsibility in the region and a good deal of the cost. The UK is also set to gain, as witnessed by the trinational fighter jet deal with Italy and new defence agreement signed in January.

How do ordinary Japanese people feel about it? The majority, it seems, are pleased. In an opinion poll published by public broadcaster NHK last month, 51% supported increased spending on the military, with 36% opposed. Where once any move to increase the radius of Japan’s military aegis would have seen thousands marching through the streets; now, there are only a few forlorn-looking protesters in Shinjuku station. The press is onside too, with even the Left-wing Tokyo Shimbun newspaper seemingly reconciled to the new direction.

The war in Ukraine has been a powerful catalyst in this change of mood. Nightly coverage of devastated Ukrainian cityscapes has reminded the Japanese that they have had their own quarrels with Russia in the past (over the Kuril Islands), and the threat of a nuclear option sends a chill down the spines of citizens of the only country to have suffered atomic destruction. Kishida himself is from Hiroshima and several members of his extended family were killed in the atomic bombing.

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As for energy, Japan imports 90% of its supply — with 9% coming from Russia — and so is especially vulnerable to disruptions to supply chains. Last May, Kishida announced the restart of the country’s nuclear energy programme, partly suspended as a result of the Fukushima disaster. This, too, was met with little opposition. The anti-nuclear energy movement, once formidable, has weakened considerably in recent years in parallel with the anti-Article 9 revisionists. It was reported in August that 60% of Japanese supported the restart, fuelled by concerns of a winter energy crunch if the Russians were to cut off supply.

The personality of Kishida may be a significant factor too. It is ironic that the current Prime Minister, seen as a milder, more Left-leaning figure than his predecessor Shinzo Abe, should be the one to reposition Japan as a significant military power, realising his forebear’s lifetime goal. But Abe, whose father had volunteered to be a kamikaze pilot and whose grandfather was a Class-A war criminal, was too closely associated with the war, and with the far-Right, for his arguments for reforming Article 9 to be accepted without suspicion. He was seen by many, fairly or unfairly, as an ultra-nationalist who sought to restore Japan to its pre-war glory and military dominance.

Kishida, by contrast, isn’t viewed with such animosity. The mild-mannered former banker is part of the moderate Kōchikai faction within the ruling party, which has generally supported a dovish foreign policy. He has acquired a reputation as being broadly supportive of the pacifist constitution, or at least lukewarm about revising it. For this reason, the Japanese seem more willing to believe his argument — that, in an increasingly dangerous world, the rearmament is necessary and defensive in nature, and not part of a secret plan to return to the dark imperial past.

But can he pull it off? This is the big question. Germany has made similar promises about bolstering its lacklustre armed forces in recent months and so far, they have yielded few concrete results. Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a €100 billion increase to its defence budget nearly a year ago, with promises to make a significant contribution to Ukraine. But apart from a few military vehicles, little has been forthcoming from the Federal Republic. There have even been hints that Germany may resile from its spending pledge altogether.

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The rearmament plan could unfold in a similarly nebulous fashion in Japan. Announcing a major new policy direction is one thing, turning it into a reality quite another. Kishida’s once impressive approval ratings have plunged since his controversial decision to award Shinzo Abe a state funeral. Beset by scandals that have seen four cabinet ministers resign in the last year, and with the fallout from revelations of his party’s close relationship with the cultish Unification Church ongoing, his political capital is low.

As for actual capital, it is unclear how the rearmament will be funded. Koichi Nakano, Professor of Comparative Politics at Tokyo’s Sophia University, says it is “most likely unaffordable”, without adding to Japan’s already-colossal public debt. The Japanese economy is in terrible shape; 2022 saw a disastrous current account deficit, the Yen has tumbled, and that once-peculiar foreign phenomenon inflation has begun to manifest itself. Signs have gone up in shop windows apologising, in exquisitely formal language, for even modest price increases. Tax rises are the obvious answer, but polling suggests the Japanese are resolutely against higher taxes to pay for an increased military in times like these.

This leaves Kishida in danger of overpromising. For along with the military buildup, he has committed himself to dealing with Japan’s demographic crisis by huge increases in welfare spending. The world’s oldest country is losing hundreds of thousands of citizens every year as the old die off and the young stubbornly refuse to procreate. By some estimates, on this trajectory, the Japanese will cease to exist in a couple of hundred years. The obvious quick fix is a massive increase in immigration, but that is still anathema to most Japanese who view their culture as a unique and delicate artefact that wouldn’t survive the rough touch of legions of imported citizens. Many Japanese are asking themselves: will it be babies, or bombs?

On the surface, Japan appears to have progressed a lot since then. The latest Japanese TV drama Modern Love (a sort of Japanese version of Love Actually) features a lesbian couple who are raising a child. Male homosexuality has featured on TV before and lesbianism is hinted at strongly in the ever-popular Takarazuka theatre (an all-female musical theatre troupe). But Modern Love is the first frank depiction of lesbianism on mainstream TV.

Japan is also starting to see the sort of identity-based skirmishes that are common in the West. Novelist Mieko Kawakami made headlines when she dared to interrogate prize-winning author Haruki Murakami over the depiction of female characters in his novels. During the pandemic, she also criticised the government’s Coronavirus task force for being all male.

The tide also seems to be turning in Japan’s leading universities. Once renowned for their conservatism, many seem to be adopting a Western-style “progressive” or “woke” agenda. Waseda University has introduced speech codes for staff when interacting with LGBTQI+ students, while the International Christian University spent a fortune last year building an unprecedented suite of gender-neutral toilets, and has added “other” to the list of gender options on class registers. Japan’s Women’s University is one of several all-female institutions considering the admission of transgender students.

Meanwhile, Japan’s universities are introducing more progressive content to their humanities courses. A spate of umbrella courses with blandly innocuous names, such as Sophia University’s “Sustainable Futures”, are geared to promoting the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals: modules focus on “gender”, “race”, “climate”, and “inclusivity”. As for recruitment, applicants for university positions are often informed that if a male and female candidate are regarded as being equally qualified, the female will be chosen.

But, as ever with Japan, appearances can be deceiving. Japan’s progressive wave is merely an illusion to appeal to the outside world. Despite superficial reforms, its university campuses are as placid as ever. Student activism is virtually unknown; teachers are still held in high esteem, and visiting speakers are treated well. I’ve seen a beauty contest advertised on campus, but never a demonstration. In a society where people recoil at the idea of revealing their innermost traumas in public, and where fierce employee loyalty is deeply ingrained, the MeToo movement never stood a chance. It didn’t grow much beyond the campaign of a single victim, the TV journalist Shiori Itō, and as with Black Lives Matter hardly featured on Japanese campuses at all.

A likelier explanation for these reforms is a desire to attract foreign staff and students to boost university incomes. The Japanese government has been trying to increase the numbers of overseas students in Japan since it initiated its Global University Project in 2014, which selected 37 universities to subsidise for 10 years. In 2015, the government set an ambitious target of 10 Japanese universities in the Times Education top 100 rankings, which it is yet to achieve. There is much talk of Japan needing “globalised citizens” to revitalise the economy. To achieve these goals, a more “progressive” posture had to be struck to counter perceptions of Japanese universities as staid and backward looking.

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Ultimately, the difference between wokeness in the West and in Japan is this: in the West, much of the impetus in universities seems to be coming from the students — at least a loud and determined minority; while in Japan the process is top-down and aimed at generating revenue. It’s not real: no one is cancelled and there are no “safe spaces”. Japanese students, if they even notice reforms, are often simply baffled by it all.

Similarly with TV dramas, there is little evidence of any desire on the part of the audience for more “modern” storylines. The most popular shows are still strikingly old-fashioned: presenters are rough-looking middle-aged men in shiny suits, with perky, deferential female sidekicks. They are known as se desu ne (“yes that’s right”) girls and their role is to be attractive and laugh at men’s jokes. The same goes for the music industry. The 48 female members of pop group AKB48 are selected for cuteness, sweetness, and air of innocence. Like all TV talents, they are inevitably controlled by agencies run by men.

As for Modern Love, could envy at the success of South Korea’s Squid Game and Parasite be having an influence on Japanese TV producers? Japan is an old hand at selling its culture overseas. The country is ranked fifth in the Global Soft Power Index, and its cultural influence in the UK is growing: Hideki Noda’s (‘Q’) — a drama blending kabuki with songs by Queen — played in London recently, and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s performance of Studio Ghibli’s My Neighbour Totoro has racked up nine nominations in the WhatsOnStage awards. Perhaps progressive posturing is part of an attempt to trigger a “cool Japan” wave in the West to rival the Korean wave known as hallyu?

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To paraphrase Paul Valéry, in the modern world, everything changes but the avant-garde… and Japanese society. The corporate world remains unshakeably male, and calls to recognise same-sex marriage as constitutionally valid were thwarted in the courts in Osaka and Tokyo at the end of November. Japan languishes at 116 (out of 146) in the global gender equality rankings produced by the World Economic Forum in 2022.

It’s not clear how many Japanese people care. Long-term residents will recognise that, however dominant men seem to be, women wield considerable power in the domestic realm and beyond. A good example of this can be found in the inner workings of the formidable modern Buddhist group Soka Gakkai, whose political wing Komeito remains a coalition partner in government. Soka Gakkai is controlled, it is believed, by an all-female praesidium known as the married women’s association (the “Fujimbu”) which dictates the organisation’s policy.

Yet if progressive posturing is good for the Japanese economy, then so be it. Since the Meiji era (1868-1912), the Japanese have been renowned for refashioning foreign ideas into a distinct and efficient form. Japan’s police are based on the French gendarmerie, its schools on Germany’s gymnasiums, and its broadcasting service NHK on the BBC. The same goes for the arts: bonsai originated in China, as did the tea ceremony.

The phrase “go woke, go broke” might be a valuable warning in the West, but in Japan that message has been lost in translation. A full rejection of progressive Western values would be counterproductive: far better to appear to go along with it superficially, while changing nothing of consequence. Far better, and far more Japanese.

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The apparent motivation for the crime was quickly revealed: a grievance held by the assassin against the Abe dynasty for promoting a religious group, the Unification Church — better known as the “Moonies”. He alleged the group had pressured his mother into making huge donations — around $1 million — leaving the family “devastated”. Revulsion at the murder was quickly followed by intense curiosity as a spotlight was placed on the murky relationship between Japan’s political class, especially its eternal party of government the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), and what are referred to as the new or upstart religions, or less politely, as cults.

Followers of the Unification Church would dispute the latter designation, but it is certainly a controversial organisation with a track record of illegality. The founder Sun Myung Moon, a close friend of Abe’s grandfather — the former PM Nobusuke Kishi — served time for fraud in the USA, and the group’s fundraising activities in Japan, conducted under the alleged protection of the LDP, provoked a group of 300 lawyers to set up an association to help people who claimed to have been coerced. It is alleged that agents of the Unification Church would scan the obituary columns, then target the grieving with emotionally manipulative appeals. The bereaved would be told that their recently deceased relatives needed assistance to reach heaven, which could be arranged, in return for sizeable and ongoing bequests. In 2020, a court in Tokyo ordered the church to repay $34,000 obtained through such methods.

Despite its occasional setbacks, the success of the Unification Church in Japan has been exceptional: it is believed to have raised 70% of its income in the country. But it is far from unique. Japan has proved to be fertile ground for a wide variety of pseudo (or nouveaux) religious groupings, and there are an estimated 180,000, or one for every 700 people in Japan. Many are innocuous, but the more controversial are characterised, according to a study by Inoue Nobutaka, by extreme levels of secrecy, erratic growth, and coercive proselytising.

This trend can be traced to the 1860s, a period of great social upheaval where centuries-old rules and customs were rapidly supplanted by a flood of new ideas and outside influences. The severing of the syncretic ties of Shinto and Buddhism and the lifting of the 250-year-old ban on Christianity in 1873 created space for a proliferation of new faiths. These were initially persecuted by the Right-wing militarists that ruled Japan, who subscribed to the official state religion of Shinto. But after the Second World War, which put an end to emperor worship and saw freedom of religion enshrined in the new US-imposed constitution, a spiritual vacuum emerged. As did, for the unscrupulous, a distinctly attractive tax-free business opportunity.

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Customers, or converts, were not hard to find as post-war Japan struggled to rebuild. Cities were flooded with young people from the countryside, who were poor, lonely, and often desperate. The migrants sought not just employment, but spiritual succour and a sense of belonging — the new religions offered both. In Tokyo especially, where the pace of life and the stifling rules of etiquette made making friends a great challenge, the allure of the welcoming new religions was palpable. (Even today, neighbours often don’t speak to each other, knowing one “hello” obliges them to repeat the greeting forever.)

Of those that flourished, some religions sought power and security through politics. The most famous of these is Soka Gakkai, a form of Nichiren Buddhism based on the teachings of a 13th century priest. It now claims eight million followers in Japan and twelve million worldwide. It has its own political party, Komeito, which thanks to the rigid discipline of its members — who vote as they are instructed — has become a key player in Japanese politics, often as a coalition partner for hire.

Komeito has been in alliance with the ruling LDP since 1999 and is the junior coalition partner of the present government. Michael Cucek of Temple University in Tokyo calls Komeito “the most important and least understood part of Japanese politics”. He says that the party is essentially run by women, with the most powerful part being its decision-making inner sanctum the Fujimbu, or mothers and women’s association. The political alliance is controversial within the LDP, but Cucek explains that as 25% of the party’s district votes are believed to be supplied by Komeito — in return, naturally, for favours — the awkward embrace looks likely to endure.

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It is tempting to compare the relationship between the two parties to that which the LDP’s senior politicians once maintained with the yakuza — Japan’s organised crime gangs — in the turbulent early Sixties. Kishi maintained a close relation with the mob boss Yoshio Kodama, whose assistance in supplying muscle he called on from time to time. Whether the fixers wear the sharp suits and Hawaiian shirts of the gangsters, or the flowing robes of religious leaders, makes little difference to the outcomes: they get things done.

At the other end of the spectrum are the apocalyptic cults, the most notorious of which was Aum Shinrikyo, founded by Matsumoto Chizuo, the half-blind son of a tatami mat maker. Aum promised psychic powers and salvation from a forecast Armageddon — a prospect with far more resonance in a country regularly struck by natural and man-made disasters. Aum drew on their leader’s charisma and unbounded self-belief: he persuaded followers he could fly and sold a panacea (actually orange peel in water) for $7,000 a shot to hoodwink followers into signing over their assets.

The group offered a form of spiritual cleansing for those who had become disgusted by the moral rot and emptiness that seemed to characterise Japanese society in the Seventies, when Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei (known as Japan’s version of Richard Nixon) was embroiled in a bribery scandal and tainted by association with Yoshio Kodama, and Eighties, when Japan’s bubble economy ushered in an era of decadence and greed. Acolytes tended to be professionals, who were not just cynical about the decline of Japanese ethics but had been numbed into a fatalistic credulous passivity by the banality of corporate life.

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Aum was responsible for the world’s only WMD terrorist attack by a private organisation when they released sarin gas onto the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 13 and injuring 6000. The leader was executed, but astonishingly the group survives, having changed its name to Aleph and lowered its profile. It is rumored to have 1600 members and has been in the news recently for refusing to cooperate with government surveillance orders.

The subway attack has become Japan’s signature cult-inspired atrocity, the one everyone knows about. But it is not an isolated incident: in 1986, seven women, calling themselves the “brides of God” and members of the “Friends of the Truth Society”, immolated themselves on a beach in Wakayama.

No one knows for sure how many Japanese are cult members today, but a figure of 10-20% has been estimated. The fundamental problem, one Japan expert tells me, is that “Japan has no real religion”. Traditional Buddhism is more of a philosophical and lifestyle creed and Shinto is mainly concerned with aesthetics, he explains. All of which makes the Japanese yearn for a more structured, accessible, transactional theology.

And once you recognise this yearning, you see evidence of it everywhere. It’s there in the mini-deities or spirits of the yuru-chara — mascot characters that represent everything from prefectures to companies to household goods. It’s there in the teen-pop idols, scarcely allowed to exist as real people, worshipped by devotees who will buy special tickets to shake their hands, or just sit in their presence. It’s there in the exclusive neighbourhood culture schools led by a revered “master” rewarded with discrete cash payments. And it’s there in the faux-religious rituals of tidying guru and Netflix star, Marie Kondo.

Japan is often questioned over its unsettled history, with the various legacies of the Second World War and its aftermath still a source of difficulty. But perhaps it is its unsettled spirituality, which lurks in the Japanese psyche, leading vulnerable and lonely people down dark pathways, that is the deeper, and more troubling issue.