Mystery Studies and the Purification of Religion: Making Sense of Inoue Enryō’s True Mystery

While Inoue Enryō’s “Mystery Studies (妖怪学)” is best known for its careful descriptions of Japan’s various monsters (妖怪) and debunking of superstitions, this is not the full story. Indeed, Enryō himself gives this field of study a profound spiritual value, claiming that debunking these ghost stories can help lead his readers to the “True Mystery” of philosophy and religion. Yet, what this True Mystery amounts to is seemingly inconsistent in his writings. Depending on the passage, Enryō refers to this True Mystery as anything from Herbert Spencer’s Unknowable, the Buddhist notion of Suchness, or even as a manifestation of the divinity of the imperial household. Keeping this in mind, the current contribution will aim to categorize the different usages of this notion of a True Mystery before testing if these various usages can be synthesized into one clear, consistent usage of the term.