Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Religion...Keywords: meditation, Shin Buddhism, psychotherapy,...

Naikan: A Meditation Method and Psychotherapy

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Summary and Keywords

“Naikan” 内観 is a self-reflective form of meditation founded by Yoshimoto Ishin 吉本伊信

(1916–1988), who developed it from a lay Shin Buddhist practice called mishirabe身調べ. After Yoshimoto used it to help prisoners in the 1950s, psychiatrists in the 1960s started to use it as a psychotherapy. Today in Japan it is the most popular psychotherapeutic method that originated in Buddhism.

Naikan involves self-reflection on three questions: What have I received from a significant other? What have I given back to that person? What troubles and difficulties did I cause that person? People doing Naikan ask themselves these questions in relation to a family member or some other person during particular times in their lives.

There are two types of the practice: intensive Naikan (shūchū naikan集中内観) and daily Naikan (nichijō naikan日常内観 or bunsan naikan分散内観). The former is done continually for a week at a Naikan training center, of which there are about twenty-five in Japan and several outside Japan in Austria, Germany, and the United States. During intensive Naikan, those doing Naikan report individually eight or so times a day their answers to the three questions to an “interviewer” (mensetsusha面接者). Daily Naikan is done as part of a person’s everyday normal routine for as short as a few minutes or as long as two hours a day. Intensive or daily Naikan is offered as a therapy at about twenty medical institutions in Japan and another fifteen in China.

Naikan: A Meditation Method and Psychotherapy Clark ChilsonSubject: Sociology, Anthropology, and Psychology of Religion, Buddhism, Practices, Applications, and Concepts, Schools, Lineages, and MovementsOnline Publication Date: Apr 2018 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.570

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Intensive Naikan is commonly done for one of four reasons. First, it is done to solve a specific problem, such as alcoholism, gambling addiction, a psychosomatic disorder, or a bad relationship with a family member. Second, it is used to train employees so they can interact better with customers and colleagues. The Toyoko Inn, for example, which has over 230 hotels throughout Japan, requires all its full-time employees to do intensive Naikan. Third, it cultivates greater self-awareness with regard to, for example, how our minds work. Finally, it is done to discover the true nature of our lives through a spiritual awakening, which commonly entails the realization of how we live due to the care of others and how we suffer because of our own self-centeredness. This final purpose is in accordance with Yoshimoto’s view of Naikan as a method for learning how to live happily regardless of one’s life circumstances. Those who do Naikan for non-psychotherapeutic purposes sometimes use the term “Naikanhō” 内観法 (Naikan method) to distinguish their aims from Naikan therapy (Naikan ryōhō) 内観療法, which is used to solve a particular problem. But regardless of whether Naikan is done for self-developmental, spiritual, or for therapeutic reasons, the Naikan method of reflecting on the three Naikan questions is the same.

Keywords: meditation, Shin Buddhism, psychotherapy, psychiatry, psychology, Japan, self-cultivation, self-reflection, introspection

The Buddhist Origins of Naikan

A literal translation of the Japanese term naikan (pronounced nye-kən), is “introspection.” In Buddhism, according to one dictionary, it means the practice of observing the self, or more specifically, introspection to observe the truth in the mind. The term naikan is found in several places in Zhiyi’s Mohe Zhiguan 摩詞止観, in which it means internal contemplation. The Zen monk Hakuin 白隠 (1686–1768) used naikan to refer to an introspective practice for health that involved visualization, moving vital energy (ki 気) through the body, and contemplating four thoughts. Some modern Shin Buddhist thinkers have used naikan to mean a method for seeking truth and interpreting Pure Land Buddhist scriptures. The Shin Buddhist philosopher Kiyozawa Manshi 清沢満之 (1863–1903) created the term naikan-shugi 内観主義 to specifically indicate how introspection can lead people to discover the truth about themselves, which can then serve to guide how they act.

The origins of Yoshimoto’s Naikan method lie in a religious experience he had when he was twenty-one years old and searching to secure his faith in Amida 阿弥陀 Buddha. He grew up in a devout and wealthy Shin Buddhist household, but was anxious about whether he had an entrusting heart (shinjin 信心). Through a family connection, he learned about a lay Shin Buddhist group in Nara and Osaka that did a meditative practice known as mishirabe (self-examination). If done successfully, mishirabe was believed to

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effect a state of mind free from self-attachment and as synonymous with obtaining complete trust in Amida (shinjin gyakutoku 信心獲得).

Those doing mishirabe, who were called the “sick” (byōnin 病人), were required to sit alone and reflect on their sins. They were not allowed to eat, drink, or sleep during

mishirabe. It would typically last several days until the byōnin either quit or experienced

shukuzen kaihotsu 宿善開発, which Yoshimoto characterized as realizing “enlightenment.”About every two hours, one of the so-called enlightened (kaigonin 開悟人) who had successfully done mishirabe, came in to listen to “the sick” report on what they had discovered through reflecting on their lives. To help “the sick” make progress, the “enlightened” prodded them along by asking questions such as, “If you were to die now, where would you go? Would you go to heaven (gokuraku 極楽) or hell (jigoku 地獄)?” The “enlightened” would then tell “the sick” to investigate themselves and the impermanence of things.

Yoshimoto failed several times at mishirabe before he had a powerful experience in November 1937. Yoshimoto says in an autobiographical account how it occurred on the fourth day of his final mishirabe. Just before his awakening, he was suffering physical pain from lack of sleep. He thought about giving up, but the memories of how he failed the year before pushed him forward. He was doing poorly when his teacher, Komatani 駒谷, entered Yoshimoto’s room to listen to his report. Yoshimoto admitted to his teacher that he was not doing well. When his teacher asked him, “Do you understand your sins?” Yoshimoto admitted that he did not feel them “deep in his heart.” Komatani replied by telling Yoshimoto that his “bad karma is too strong” and that those who lack the correct karmic condition cannot be helped. As Komatani got up to leave Yoshimoto grabbed him, but Komatani pushed him away. Yoshimoto recalled what happened right after as follows: “Shuddering with guilt and fear of death, I gasped for breath in the depths of despair . . . After that, I fell face down unconscious. I do not know how long I was like that; it might have been minutes or hours, but when I came to I was so full of joy and all I could do was cry.”

Yoshimoto was never able to explain what happened but he wanted others to feel the joy he felt. He became a proponent for self-reflection that focused on people examining the wrongs they had done. Because Yoshimoto wanted to popularize this type of self-reflection, he decided in consultation with his teacher Komatani to remove the requirement to abstain from food, drink, and sleep. By the end of 1941, he began to call this modified form of mishirabe Naikan.

Yoshimoto understood Naikan from the perspective of Shin Buddhism as a way of seeking truth and overcoming self-attachment. But he realized shortly after modifying mishirabethat a person did not need to believe in Shin Buddhist doctrine for Naikan to have a positive effect. He discovered this during the war years when he offered a week of intensive Naikan to the employees of his leathercloth company. In 1943 eighteen female factory workers between the ages of fifteen and twenty volunteered to do it. Yoshimoto was pleased by the outcomes. A mother of one of the women went to see Yoshimoto to

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happily report how after doing Naikan her daughter had become calmer and more industrious. Yoshimoto also found that among those who did Naikan, their productivity increased, they felt less frustration and more gratitude, and that they got along better with their coworkers.

Throughout his life Yoshimoto advocated for the practice of Naikan. In the 1940s and early 1950s, he framed this advocacy in religious terms, as is evident in a 1945 self-published autobiography titled Before and After Faith: A Naikan Experience (Shinzen shingo: Watashi no naikan taiken 信前信後：私の内観体験). He also set up a “Faith Consultation Office” (Shinkō sōdansho 信仰相談所), which in 1947 published a bulletin titled “A True Way to Save the World” (Kyūsei shinpō 救世真法).

He became a Shin Buddhist priest of the Kibe-ha 木辺派 and built a temple called Naikan-dera 内観寺, where he trained people in Naikan. After becoming a prison chaplain in 1954, he gradually started to reduce the religious language he used to describe Naikan and to argue that it was not religious. By doing so, he made it possible for Naikan to be taught at public institutions that were prohibited by law from endorsing any religious activities.

Secularizing Naikan in Prisons: 1954–1960The first few months that Yoshimoto served as a prison chaplain at the Nara Youth Prison (Naikan shōnen keimusho 奈良少年刑務所), he had difficulty getting anyone to do Naikan. In hopes of attracting interest, he set up a club in the prison that met for two hours on Wednesdays, during which time they did Naikan. Their Naikan focused on examining their actions and attitudes when they were different ages. Throughout the week they also wrote Naikan diaries, which Yoshimoto read. Yoshimoto suspected at first that those that came to the club’s meetings did so to avoid mandatory factory work. After a while, however, some of the youth started to open up to him about their lives and to practice Naikan seriously.

Yoshimoto also started to introduce Naikan to other juvenile detention centers and to prisons. He wrote two books about his experiences working with prisoners. Some of his writings he had translated into English and compiled as a book titled Self-Reflection Will Guide You to the Right Way. In that book he states that the purpose of Naikan is to “be spiritually awakened from suffering” and “to get rid of the selfishness in you, to reach the stage to be able to endure whatever difficulties you may have.”

To spread Naikan among correction facilities, it became necessary to present Naikan as non-religious. Because Yoshimoto could not be at more than one prison at a time and it was hard to visit correctional facilities throughout the country, Yoshimoto wanted to train correction officers so they could teach Naikan and conduct interviews. To do this and not violate the law that prohibited public funds from being used to support religious activities, corrections officers could only guide prisoners in Naikan if it were regarded as

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non-religious. So Yoshimoto started to present Naikan as a practice that was not inherently religious. In 1956, for example, he wrote that Naikan is a self-reflection method and that no law prohibits self-reflection in prisons. The following year in a booklet titled Naikanhō no tsutaekata 内観法の傳え方 (How to Convey the Naikan Method), Yoshimoto published a dialogue with a prison warden who argued that Naikan was not religious. The warden says it would be wrong to conclude that Naikan is religious just because Yoshimoto is a religious person and a prison chaplain. He referred to the Prime Minister Ishibashi 石橋, and said that even though Ishibashi was a Nichiren Buddhist and ordained as a Nichiren priest, that did not make all his political policies Nichiren Buddhist. The warden then states that there is no constitution that prohibits self-reflection and that for Naikan, no one has to worship Amida 阿弥陀 or convert to Shinshū真宗. So with the understanding that Naikan was not religious, Yoshimoto began to train correctional officers at his temple in Nara, so that they could lead others in Naikan without him. The training mostly involved having the officers do a week of intensive Naikan.

By 1962 there were twenty-nine prisons and ten reform schools offering Naikan.Surveys of those who had done Naikan while incarcerated revealed that the recidivism rate was much lower among those who had practiced Naikan in prison. The most dramatic case was shown in Miyazaki prison in which in 1960 the recidivism rate was only 14.4 percent for those who did Naikan, compared with 80.3 percent for those who did not.

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Medicalization of Naikan from the 1960s

Psychiatrists who worked in the prison system were the first to recognize Naikan as having psychotherapeutic benefits. In 1957 Tsushima Mamoru 津島衛, a psychiatrist at a correctional facility in Nara, praised Naikan. He said it should not simply be considered religious but seen as scientific and psychotherapeutic. The following year another psychiatrist, Haraguchi Naoshi 原口直, introduced Naikan to the Jōno 城野 Medical Prison in Kitakyushu 北九州. He also told other psychiatrists about successful cases of prisoners who did Naikan.

The first major publications on Naikan in relation to psychology and psychotherapy came in the 1960s. In 1962 Takeda Ryōji 武田良二, who worked in corrections, published an article on how Naikan related to psychological problems. Three year later, a psychologist and professor at Shinshū 信州 University named Takeuchi Katashi 竹内硬, who did intensive Naikan with Yoshimoto, wrote an essay praising Naikan from a psychological perspective. This essay was published as the forward to Yoshimoto’s autobiographical history of Naikan titled Naikan no yonjū nen 内観の四十年 (Forty Years of Naikan). Takeuchi also helped promote Naikan as a psychotherapeutic practice by publishing an article in 1965 in the popular Buddhist magazine Daihōrin 大法輪 on how Naikan restructures a person’s life. In that same year, Naikan as a psychotherapeutic method gained further attention among Buddhists when Satō Kōji 佐藤幸治, a psychologist and professor at Kyoto University, wrote a review of Yoshimoto’s book Forty Years of Naikan for the major Buddhist newspaper Chūgai Nippō 中外日報.

Around the time of these publications, the psychologist Murase Takao 村瀬孝雄 began to study Naikan as an indigenous psychotherapy. Murase was intrigued by how Naikan developed independent of Western psychotherapeutic ideas. In an article he published in 1970, he argued that unlike Morita therapy, which was developed by a physician trained in Western medicine, Naikan had no connection with global scholarship or to the modern world of technology. He pointed out how it was built not on the basis of psychological theories but rather on Yoshimoto’s religious experience.

Besides theoretical writings on Naikan, we find in the 1960s Naikan emerging as a treatment in medical contexts. Psychiatrists began to publish findings on the results of patients who did Naikan. For example, Ishida Rokurō 石田六郎, a psychiatrist in Fukushima with a private practice, reported on the successes he was having using Naikan with patients suffering from psychosomatic and neurotic disorders. Ishida learned how to do Naikan from printed materials and audio recordings of Naikan interviews that Yoshimoto sent him.

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On the basis of those materials, he developed a therapy called “Naikan Analysis” (Naikan bunseki内観分析), which mixed Naikan with autogenetic training, a relaxation method. His use of Naikan attracted attention when he published a report on it in 1965 in the medical journal Nihon iji shinpō 日

本医事新報.

In addition to Ishida, psychiatrists at Okayama 岡山 University Hospital came to take an interest in using Naikan with both alcoholics and patients with neurotic disorders. Suwaki Hiroshi 洲脇寛 and Yokoyama Shigeo 横山茂雄, for example, reported on their success using Naikan in 1967 to treat a seventeen-year-old male who was suffering from obsessional neurosis.The positive results they were getting with Naikan led to Yoshimoto receiving an invitation to speak in 1968 with psychiatrists at Okayama University. In that same year he was also invited to Jikei-kai 慈恵会 Medical University in Tokyo to give a talk, which consisted of a thirty-minute lecture followed by ninety minutes of questions on Naikan.It was around the time of these talks that Yoshimoto was honing the Naikan method and formulating the three core questions of Naikan: What did I receive? What did I give back? What troubles and difficulties did I cause?

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Naikan received considerable attention in major national as well as local newspapers. Journalists told stories about Naikan’s effectiveness for reforming prisoners, treating addiction, improving family relations, and helping with problems at school. Articles introducing Naikan ran headlines such as the following: “The results of Naikan Education in Hiroshima Prison – Awakening the Conscience of Inmates”; “Alcoholism Cured by Buddhist Practice”; “To Solve Family Problems, Look Objectively at Self”; “Truancy Fixed!” Japan’s national TV broadcasting company, NHK, introduced Naikan to the public. In 1965 and 1967 it broadcast two programs highlighting Naikan. Then between 1978 and 1982 it aired three other programs focusing on Yoshimoto and Naikan.

Naikan’s Development Beyond Yoshimoto: 1975

to 2017

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Figure 1. Naikan Therapy Room at Sanwa Chūō 三和中央 Hospital, Nagasaki 長崎.

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Yoshimoto was interested in promoting Naikan through publications, but he gave little effort to creating organizational structures. He did not create a strong network of Naikan practitioners that could support each other. Nor did he try to create institutions that could foster regular interaction among those who had done intensive Naikan. The creation of social organizations would be taken up by his disciples Takemoto Takahiro 竹元

隆洋, a psychiatrist; and Miki Yoshihiko 三木善彦, psychologist at a university in Osaka 大阪.

The impetus for the creation of a Naikan organization came in August 1976. Takemoto had gone to Yoshimoto’s place to do Naikan for a second time. The night he arrived, Yoshimoto became ill and had to be rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. Takemoto spent the night worrying about what was going to happen to Yoshimoto and to Naikan if Yoshimoto died. He began to think about the importance of having an organization to study Naikan and to keep it going beyond Yoshimoto. He contacted Miki, and together, in consultation with Yoshimoto, they set up the Japan Naikan Association (JNA; Nihon Naikan Gakkai 日本内観学会), which had its first meeting in 1978. The association’s first president was not Yoshimoto but the prominent psychologist Murase Takao.

Since its founding, the JNA has held an annual conference, at which research papers are presented on topics related to Naikan and its application for psychological disorders. In 1995 it started publishing an annual journal with research articles, case studies, reports, and book reviews. Most of the articles and case studies are written by mental health care professionals and directors of Naikan centers. The JNA has also produced an annual newsletter titled “Naikan News” since 1985 that reports on Naikan events such as local conferences and workshops and on national conferences of interest to Naikan practitioners, such as those on psychiatry and psychology. It also includes responses to major Naikan presentations.

In 1998, to focus more specifically on Naikan as a medical therapy, the Japanese Naikan Medical Association was founded. It also has annual meetings and publishes a journal with research findings related to the use of Naikan as a medical treatment. It works in close cooperation with the JNA.

A non-academic organization called the “Self Discovery Society” (Jiko hakken no kai 自己

発見の会) was founded in 1990 to promote Naikan. It consisted of several regional groups that offered opportunities for those who had done intensive Naikan to interact. Up until 2011 it published a quarterly magazine titled Yasuragi やすら樹 (Tranquility) that had short and easy-to-read articles on Naikan. It then became dormant for several years until it was started up again by a second generation of Naikan practitioners who did not personally know Yoshimoto but who ran Naikan training centers. It has a website and started publishing a magazine in 2017 titled Naikan Classic.

Up until the time that Yoshimoto died in 1988, he endorsed Naikan activities promoted by his disciples and others. He did not, however, try to control them nor did he promote a certification process to set standards for how Naikan should be done. This made it easier

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both during and after his life for various deviations of Naikan to develop at temples and in new religions.

Two temples that included Naikan were the Gasshoen 合掌園 and Senkōbō 専光坊, both located in Mie 三重 Prefecture. Gasshoen is a Shin Kibe-ha Buddhist temple. Although it is no longer a major center for Naikan, from 1974 to 1993, when the head priest Mizuno 水

野 died, the temple provided intensive Naikan for over 10,000 people. Some of the testimonials of those who had done Naikan appeared in a magazine published by the temple titled Naikan no tomo 内観の友 (Friends of Naikan). Twice a month the temple held meetings during which Naikan practitioners got together and shared their experiences with it. Unlike at Yoshimoto’s temple, Naikan-dera, Naikan at Gasshoen was practiced as part of the religious life of the temple. During intensive Naikan retreats, for example, those doing Naikan started each day by reciting scriptures and listening to a sermon.

Similar to Gasshoen, Senkōbō has been run by a Shin Buddhist priest who has integrated religious elements with Naikan, such as the recitation of the nenbutsu 念仏 and Buddhist sermons. But unlike Mizuno, Senkōbō’s head priest, Usami Shue 宇佐美秀慧, used Zen practices such as having the people doing Naikan come to his room in the manner of a Zen interview (dokusan 独参) and having those who want to do Naikan at the temple wait outside of it, sometimes for days, as is done when a Zen novice requests entry to train at a temple.

Two new religions that adopted Naikan are GLA and Hikari no Wa ひかりの輪. GLA’s founder, Takahashi Shinji 高橋信次 (1927–1976), thought that Naikan was powerful for changing people and leading them to gratitude. Although Naikan is no long emphasized in GLA, in the 1980s there were two GLA-run Naikan centers in Tokyo.

In contrast to the decline of Naikan in GLA, Naikan has emerged as a core practice for Hikari no Wa, which was founded in 2007. Its founder, Jōyū 上祐, was the spokesperson for Aum in 1995 after it released sarin gas on a Tokyo subway. After denouncing Aum’s leader, Asahara Shōkō 麻原彰晃, Jōyū established Hikari no Wa as a new religious organization. In 2009 it started incorporating Naikan into its religious practices. Two of its leaders did a week of intensive Naikan. For the past several years it has held one-day Naikan seminars about once every other month in different major Japanese cities during which people reflect on the three Naikan questions. After many of these seminars, Hikari no Wa puts testimonials from them on its website.

Internationalization of Naikan

Outside of Japan, Naikan has had the greatest influence in German-speaking regions of Europe, where thousands of people have done intensive Naikan trainings. Ishii Akira 石

井光, a professor fluent in German at Aoyama University, Tokyo, helped introduce the practice to Austria and Germany. In 1980 Ishii conducted the first intensive Naikan

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training ever held outside Japan at the Scheibbs Buddhist Center in Austria. The training’s sponsor, Franz Ritter, had met Ishii in Japan in 1978 when doing Zen training at Eigenji, a temple near Kyoto. After doing intensive Naikan in 1980, Ritter started to promote and teach Naikan. In 1986 he established the first Naikan training center outside of Japan. The center moved in 1990 about fifty miles south of Vienna and was named Neue Welt Institut. The Austrian Buddhist Society recognizes it as a Buddhist institution.

A second Naikan center was opened in Austria in 1990 by Roland Dick, a one-time archeologist, and a third by Josef Hartl in 1992 called Naikan Haus Wien. Josef Hartl was a one-time drug addict and prisoner who credited Naikan with turning his life around. He was a disciple of Senkōbō’s Usami. He first practiced zazen then started practicing Naikan in 1986. He also trained to become a shiatsu provider. In 1996 he founded the Naikido Center of Vienna, which offered both Naikan and shiatsu. Among Hartl’s Naikan trainees were Johanna Schuh, who opened her own training center in 2006 in Vienna called Insightvoice; and Ruedi Beiner, who offers Naikan training in Münsingen, Switzerland.

In Germany, the first Naikan training center was opened by Gerald Steinke in 1987. Steinke suffered for many years from insomnia and depression. At the recommendation of Ishii he visited Japan in 1986. After doing Naikan with Yoshimoto, Steinke’s depression and insomnia disappeared. After returning to Germany, he opened a Naikan center and started offering Naikan at a prison in Göttingen. Steinke’s work with prisoners led to a Naikan center being built in a prison in Peine, near Hanover, that allows up to six people at a time to do intensive Naikan. Outside of prisons, intensive Naikan training is offered today in Germany at three places: Naikan Zentrum Bayerischer Wald in St Oswald, Bavaria; Naikan Haus in Wartenberg, near Munich; and Naikan Stammhaus in Tarmstedt near Bremen.

There are also two alcohol and drug addiction treatment centers in Europe that provide Naikan as a relapse prevention method. They are die Fleckenbühler in Germany, and Projekt Alp in Switzerland.

In the United States, intensive Naikan trainings have been fewer and more sporadic than in Europe. The first Naikan training in the United States, in which twelve people participated, was at a Shin Buddhist temple in San Luis Obispo in 1981. It was led by David Reynolds, an anthropologist who did intensive Naikan with Yoshimoto and later combined Naikan and Morita Therapy to formulate what he called “Constructive Living.” Reynolds, who later published several popular books on Japanese psychotherapies, also helped initiated Naikan trainings in Hawaii between 2001 and 2005 that were led by the Shin Buddhist minister Sengoku Mari. The only Naikan center in North America is the ToDo Institute in Vermont run by Gregg Krech. It opened in 1992 and has offered once or so a year intensive Naikan training as well as workshops and online Naikan courses.

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In Asia, Naikan can be found in China and Korea. In China, Naikan was introduced by the psychiatrist Wang Zucheng 王祖承 of the Shanghai Mental Health Center. Wang had studied in Japan for a year in the mid-1980s and started writing articles on Naikan for psychiatric journals in 1988. In 1992 he invited from Japan the director of the Yamato 大和 Naikan Institute, Maeshiro Teruaki 真栄城輝明, to give a talk at a World Health Organization meeting held in Shanghai. Maeshiro’s talk was attended by over four hundred mental health specialists from around China. Soon after that meeting, Wang had a Naikan therapy room built at his hospital and started to offer Naikan therapy. Since then numerous studies have been conducted on Naikan in China as a psychiatric intervention for ailments ranging from Internet addiction to schizophrenia. In 2010 Naikan started to be covered by public health insurance and by 2014 there were fifteen medical institutions in China that used Naikan.

In contrast to China, where Naikan is largely promoted by mental health professionals, in Korea its strongest advocates have been Christian leaders, particularly Catholics. The Catholic priest Heo Kuen, who accredited the intensive Naikan he did in Kagoshima in 2002 with helping him overcome his alcoholism, became the director of the Pastoral Center for Alcoholics ran

by the archdiocese of Seoul. To help alcoholics, he began offering intensive Naikan two or three times a year. In 2006 the Korean Naikan Association had its first major meeting, which was held at a church in Seoul.

To foster cooperation among Naikan advocates in different regions of the world, two organizations were formed: The International Naikan Association (INA), which consists largely of German-speaking Europeans; and the International Academy of Naikan Therapy (IANT), which consists mostly of mental health professionals in East Asia. The INA had its first conference in 1991 in Tokyo, but seven of its next ten conferences were in Europe. The IANT held its first conference at Tottori University in 2003. Both organizations have held conferences every two or three years since their founding.

Naikan Methods

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Figure 2. Naikan room and screen. Photograph by author.

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Intensive Naikan involves a week of concentrated focus on Naikan’s three questions. Although a few hospitals offer it as a psychotherapeutic intervention, it is typically done at Naikan training centers. At some training centers it is done every week; other centers offer it once every other week, or less frequently if demand is low. At training centers, those coming to do Naikan arrive on a Sunday afternoon and leave the following Saturday or Sunday. As of 2017, a fee of about 70,000 yen is charged for the week, which covers all costs, including room and board. People arriving to do Naikan, referred to as naikansha 内

観者, may be asked how they found out about Naikan and what they already know about it. A brief orientation is given on the first day that provides an overview of Naikan. The

naikansha are told that they must not talk to or communicate with each other in any way during the week. Speaking is prohibited among naikansha in order to foster interiority and deeper self-reflection.

Each naikansha stays in a room with a folding screen and bedding, usually a simple futon. At some places the naikansha share a room with one or more others and at other places

naikansha have their own private rooms. When sharing a room, the naikansha may be able to hear other people’s interviews. Although this takes away from the privacy of interviews, it is also understood as helping naikansha learn how others respond to the questions and as a source of support because they are given a sense that they are not alone in the process.

Throughout the week, all naikansha awake at 5:00 or 6:00 a.m., depending on the center. For about the first thirty to forty-five minutes of the day, they will take care of personal hygiene; clean their room; and may do some other assigned cleaning task, such as vacuuming the hallway or washing the bathroom. The cleaning of what was just cleaned the day before and the looking for what needs to be cleaned can serve as a metaphor for repeatedly investigating and cleaning the mind with Naikan.

For the rest of the day, except when having to go to the toilet or when bathing, the

naikansha does Naikan siting behind a folding screen (byōbu 屏風) in a space about three feet wide and three feet long. The three questions in the interview format are often displayed inside the screen. There may also be a list of significant others to do Naikan on, such as one’s mother, father, spouse, grandmother, grandfather, uncle, boss at work, etc.

To promote the continuation of self-reflection, at some centers there are Naikan-related phrases posted in the toilet area and hallways. For example, there may be quotes by the founder Yoshimoto Ishin such as “Before a large building is built, construction of the foundation is necessary. Naikan is building a foundation for life.” Meals are brought three times a day to the screen behind which the naikansha eats. During mealtimes, recordings of Naikan interviews (mensetsu 面接) of others who have done Naikan are played for thirty to sixty minutes. These recordings allow the naikansha to hear ways of giving Naikan reports, but they are told not to imitate them.

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Intensive Naikan usually starts with doing Naikan on one’s mother during the first few years of elementary school. The naikansha reflects on what he received from his mother between the ages of six and eight, what he gave back to her at that time, and what trouble he caused her when he was between the ages of six and eight. After reflecting on these questions for ninety minutes to two hours, an “interviewer” (mensetsusha 面接者) who is a Naikan practitioner comes in to do an interview.

Naikan interviews follow a prescribed, ritualistic format. The interviewer enters the room, kneels before the screen, and bows. He then opens the screen, bows again, and says, “During this time what have you been examining yourself on?” If the naikansha is doing Naikan on his mother when he was between the ages of eight and ten years old, he replies, “During this time I have been examining myself in relation to my mother from the ages of 8 to 10. What I received from my mother was ___________. What I gave back to her was ________. I caused her trouble by _____________________.” The blanks are filled in with concrete, specific answers to the Naikan questions. For example, the naikansha could say “I received a chocolate birthday cake. And, when I was sick and had to take a bad tasting medicine, she mixed it in miso soup so it would be easier to take.” Concrete answers that can be visualized are seen as more effective for deeper Naikan than abstract ones such as “She showed me love and supported me in my studies.”

When the naikansha is finished reporting his answers, the mensetsusha says, “During the next period of time what will you examine yourself on?” The naikansha responds by saying, “During the next period of time I will examine myself on my mother between the ages of 11 and 13.” The mensetsusha then says “Thank you,” bows, closes the screen, bows again, then stands up and leaves the room. After about two hours, seven or eight times a day, he will return again and the ritual will be repeated.

For examining relationships, three year increments of time, as used in the example above, are common, but not mandated. Depending on how old the naikansha is and the number of years he interacted with his mother, the time intervals may be shorter or longer. A twenty-year-old, for example, may examine his relationship with his mother in one- or two-year intervals, while a fifty-year -old whose mother is still alive may do it in five-year intervals, particularly when he is remembering his adult years. After he finishes doing Naikan on his mother, the naikansha does Naikan on his father from the first years of elementary school until the present or up to his father’s death. After he is done with his father, he will do Naikan on his spouse, if married, or some other important person in his life.

During mid-week the naikansha might be invited to do Naikan on occasions when he lied or stole. He reflects on his life at different time periods and tries to remember instances of lying or stealing. He then reports on some of these during interviews. The terms “lying and stealing” are broadly defined. Lying may include not telling the whole truth, exaggerating, or giving a false impression. Stealing may include listening to or looking at


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something intended for others, not paying taxes, or not compensating someone for some service.

The mensetsusha do not counsel or console the naikansha. In general the guidance offered is restricted to the method. For example, if the person’s answers are abstract or vague the interviewer may suggest the naikansha be more concrete and specific in their reporting. If the naikansha is having a hard time coming up with answers for the third question, the mensetsusha may recommend spending more time on it. Yoshimoto recommended giving 20 percent of time to the first question, 20 percent to the second, and 60 percent to the third.

To foster deeper Naikan, mensetsusha with extensive experience sometimes ask questions outside those in the format, such as “Why did you do that?” or “How did you think the person felt?” They may also suggest that the person do a non-Naikan activity. For example, Yanagita Kakusei 柳田鶴声, who ran a major Naikan training center called “Meisō no Mori” 瞑想の森 (literally, “meditation forest”), used to have naikansha make lists of resentments (uramichō うらみ帳) against a person they were having difficulty doing Naikan on as a way of reducing resistance to Naikan.

Although individual responses to Naikan differ, naikansha commonly have few and only hazy memories during the first two or three days. Consequently, their Naikan is said to be “shallow” (asai 浅い). On the third and fourth days, after the mind has quieted, memories arise in greater frequency and intensity. Because of this, in the latter half of the week the

naikansha does Naikan again on his or her mother. After several days in quiet the

naikansha often remember things that they had forgotten or have ideas about the past that never occurred to them before. During Naikan it is very common for people to cry. This is evident in Naikan testimonials. Crying is not encouraged and is discouraged if a person’s crying takes too much time away from doing Naikan.

At the end of the week, the naikansha are asked to share their impressions or experiences doing Naikan. This may be done in an individual meeting or in a group of those who have just finished intensive Naikan. Those doing Naikan for the first time might also be given reading materials. The mensetsusha may recommend daily Naikan, which involves reflection on the three Naikan questions in daily life. Yoshimoto recommended doing this for two hours a day. In the first hour he suggested reflecting on an earlier period of life in relation to a particular person. Then in the second hour the naikansha would use the three questions to examine herself during the previous twenty-four hours. Answers to the questions might be written down in a diary, either during or right after the period of meditation. When this is done, it is called “journal Naikan” (kiroku naikan 記録内観).

Despite Yoshimoto’s recommendation, few people do Naikan daily for two hours. Doing daily Naikan regularly, however, even for short periods of time is encouraged. One Naikan practitioner compared it to taking a daily bath. He suggested that just like the body has


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to be cleaned on a regular basis, so too does the mind need to be purified and Naikan is a way of doing that.

Naikan Calculation Exercises

In addition to the intensive and daily Naikan methods described above, Naikan practitioners have formulated calculation exercises to encourage self-reflection. These might be done before, during, or after intensive Naikan. One such exercise poses the question, “How many meals did your mother make for you?” For this, a person can first calculate on average how many meals his mother (or his primary caretaker if it was not his mother) made for him a week when he was a particular age; then multiply that number by 52, the number of weeks in a year, to get an approximation of how many meals she made in total when he was that age. So if the person’s mother made 16 meals on average for him when he was ten years old, he would multiply 16 by 52 to get 832. He would then do this for ages eleven, twelve, and all other ages during which his mother made him meals. Then he would add the totals for each age to get an approximation of how many meals his mother made throughout his life.

He can go deeper by calculating the amount of time she spent making meals for him, and how much time it took her to go shopping for food. The person might point out that his mother made these meals not just for him but also for herself and others in the family as well. The truth of this is acknowledged and the Naikan guide or interviewer might say nothing in response so the person could form his own conclusions about his mother’s labor. Or the guide might suggest the person simply reflect on how his life might have been if his mother had not been alive to make those meals.

Some calculation exercises might deal with money. For example, a person might calculate how much money it cost to raise her. To do this, the person would look at the cost of food, clothing, schooling, medical care, and anything else for which she needed financial support.

Money-focused calculation exercises can be used to target a particular problem such as destructive alcoholic drinking or gambling. Alcoholics, for example, might be asked at a Naikan training center or a hospital to calculate the financial costs of alcohol. To do this, the alcoholic would come up with an approximation of how much he spent on alcohol each year of his drinking, then add up the totals for each year of drinking to get a grand total of how much money he spent on alcohol. Then, he might be asked to calculate how much money the consequences of his drinking costs. For example, if he was arrested for drunk driving, he would add to the total spent on alcohol, how much he spent on lawyer fees and increased car insurance as a result. He would also add in the costs of any hospitalizations or rehabilitation programs, and money lost from not being able to work. The alcoholic may have a vague sense that alcohol cost him a large amount of money, but

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Naikan advocates say that calculating and seeing a number can allow him to realize how much he gave to drinking and help him overcome any denial he may have about the seriousness of his drinking problem.

Review of the Literature

In 2010 the Japan Naikan Association published a list of sources on Naikan in Japanese that included over 750 items. It was composed mostly of books and issues of journals. It did not include titles of individual articles in journals or the titles of essays in edited book collections; if it had, the list would have been much longer. The scholarly literature in English on Naikan is not nearly as voluminous, but as with much of the Japanese scholarship, it most commonly refers to Naikan as a therapy or treatment to achieve some social or psychological goal.

Early studies on Naikan characterized it as a moral treatment. The sociologist John Kitsuse, who first introduced Naikan to English readers, studied the use of it in prisons. He explained that Naikan led prisoners to take responsibility for their actions and provided them with a coherent interpretation of their lives. He also argued that Naikan’s purpose in prisons was to “produce conformance through reformation.” The anthropologist Takie Sugiyama Lebra, who was the first to do ethnographic fieldwork at Yoshimoto’s training center, built on Kitsuse work. She claimed that Naikan was a “moralistic type of therapy” and “the rehabilitation method that . . . best elucidates the core values of Japanese culture.” Legal scholars who studied Naikan in prisons have also seen it as a method for re-socializing inmates.

These studies set the tone for later studies of Naikan that depicted it as an indigenous psychotherapy that reveals Japanese cultural values and ideas about social relations.Such studies characterize Naikan as being appropriate for the Japanese because of their particular cultural understandings of the self and human relationships. Yet some studies have argued that Naikan is not a culturally bound psychotherapy. Ozawa-de Silva, for example, has argued based on her research at Naikan centers in Austria that Naikan’s mechanisms are based on social relationships (e.g., mother-child) that have relevancy in other cultures, even if their social valence is different from Japan.

A number of writings on Naikan compare it to others therapies, particularly with those that originated in the West. Psychoanalysis has been contrasted with Naikan. While the former uses free association and a counselor who has expertise in complex theories of the mind, Naikan uses a simple structure and no academic expertise is necessary to be an interviewer. Some have argued that Naikan has similarities with Victor Frankl’s meaning-focused logotherapy, in that both assume a moral self.

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There are research reports by psychiatrists and psychologists on how Naikan has been used to treat a wide variety of problems, including addiction (particularly alcoholism and gambling addiction), eating disorders, personality disorders, schizophrenia, psychosomatic disorders, dissociative disorder, and depression. Most are based on case studies. They all tend to give a positive assessment of Naikan, but it could be argued that the numbers are not statistically significant to make any definitive conclusions.

Social scientific and psychological studies of Naikan provide a range of theories for how Naikan works to effect change. Non-Japanese scholars tend to point out how Naikan deals with anger and frustration that may be subconscious. Japanese scholars tend to emphasize the role of guilt and discovered love.

There are a small number of studies in English that examine Naikan’s relationship with religion. Shimazono shows how Naikan is similar to New Spirituality movements. Unno Taitetsu sees it as exhibiting a “utility-value of religion” that seeks practical benefits such as happiness, prosperity, peace of mind, and good health. He contrasts this with religious “truth value.” Kawahara Ryuzo and Ozawa-de Silva show how Naikan relates to Pure Land Buddhism in particular.

Primary Sources

Almost all primary sources on Naikan are in Japanese. Yoshimoto’s autobiographical writings are the sources most important for understanding Naikan’s history. Both scholars and Naikan advocates considered Yoshimoto’s writings as key primary sources for understanding Naikan. His autobiographical account titled Naikanhō 内観法 (Naikan method) in particular is a core text for understanding Naikan. Very few of Yoshimoto’s writings, however, have been translated. Also, of historical significance is a collection of articles on Naikan that appeared in various newspapers and magazines from 1964 to 1979.

There are videos of Yoshimoto and a large number of audiocassettes of naikanshainterviews during intensive Naikan, some of which are available through the Naikan Center in Nara. There is a printed two-volume collection of testimonials in Japanese.Testimonials of non-Japanese who have done intensive Naikan are available in David Reynolds’s Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters: Japanese Psychotherapies, Morita and Naikan; and Gregg Krech’s Question Your Life: Naikan Self-Reflection and the Transformation of Our Stories.

Further Reading

Blum, Mark. “Shin Buddhism in the Meiji Period.” In Cultivating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology. Edited by Mark Blum and Robert F. Rhodes, 1–52. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011.

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Chervenkova, Velizara. Japanese Psychotherapies: Silence and Body-Mind Interconnectedness in Morita, Naikan and Dohsa-hou. Singapore: Springer, 2017.

Chilson, Clark. “A Joyful Awaking to Depravity: The Shin Buddhist Origins of Naikan Psychotherapy.” In The Buddhism of Pure Lands: A Thematic Anthology of Primary Sources. Edited by Richard Payne and Georgios Halkias. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming.

Ishida, Rokuro. “Naikan Analysis.” Psychologia 12 (1969): 81–92.

Japanese Naikan Medical Association and Japanese Naikan Association, eds. Naikan Therapy: Techniques and Principles for Use in Clinical Practice. Fukuoka, Japan: Daido Gakkan, 2013.

Kawahara, Ryuzo. “Japanese Buddhist Thought and Naikan Therapy.” In Asian Culture and Psychotherapy. Edited by Wen-Shing Tseng, Suk Choo Chang, and Masahisa Nishizono, 186–198. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005.

Kitsuse, John. “Moral Treatment and Reformation of Inmates in Japanese Prisons.”

Psychologia 8 (1965): 9–23.

Krech, Gregg. Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2002.

Lebra, Takie Sugiyama. “Culturally Based Moral Rehabilitation: The Naikan Method.” In

Japanese Patterns of Behavior, 201–214. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1976.

Murase, Takeo. “Naikan Therapy.” In Culture-Bound Syndromes, Ethnopsychiatry, and Alternate Therapies. Edited by William Lebra, 388–397. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1976.

Murase, Takeo. “Sunao: A Central Value in Japanese Psychotherapy.” In Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy. Edited by Anthony J. Marsella and Geoffrey M. White, 317–329. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1982.

Ozawa-de Silva, Chikako. Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan. London: Routledge, 2006.

Ozawa-de Silva, Chikako. “Demystifying Japanese Therapy: An Analysis of Naikan and the Ajase Complex through Buddhist Thought.” Ethos 35 (2007): 411–446.

Ozawa-de Silva, Chikako. “Mindfulness of the Kindness of Others: The Contemplative Practice of Naikan in Cultural Context.” Transcultural Psychiatry 52 (2015): 524–542.

Ozawa de-Silva, Chikako, and Brendan Ozawa-de Silva. “Secularizing Religious Practices: A Study of Subjectivity and Existential Transformation in Naikan Therapy.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49 (2010): 147–161.


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Reynolds, David. The Quiet Therapies: Japanese Pathways to Personal Growth. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1980.

Reynolds, David. Naikan Psychotherapy: Meditation for Self-Development. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Sengoku, Mari, Hiroaki Murata, Takanobu Kawahara, Kaori Imamura, and Kazuyuki Nakagome. “Does Daily Naikan Therapy Maintain the Efficacy of Intensive Naikan Therapy against Depression?” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 64 (2010): 44–51.

Shimazono, Susumu. “From Salvation to Healing: Yoshimoto Naikan Therapy and Its Religious Origins.” In Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan. Edited by Christopher Harding, Iwata Fumiaki, and Yoshinaga Shin’ichi, 150–164. London: Routledge, 2015.

Suwaki, Hiroshi. “Naikan and Danshukai for the Treatment of Japanese Alcoholic Patients.” British Journal of Addiction 74 (1979): 15–19.

Notes:

(1.) Kōsetsu Bukkyōgo daijiten 広説仏教語大辞典, ed. Nakamura Hajime 中村元 (Tokyo: Tokyo Shoseki, 2001), 1272.

(2.) I would like to thank Paul Swanson for pointing this out to me.

(3.) The last of these four thoughts Hakuin articulated is as follows: “[Contemplate] the elixir field located in the sea of vital energy—it is all the Amida Buddha of my own self. How could Amida Buddha preach the Dharma apart from that self?” (Hakuin Ekaku, Wild Ivy, trans. Norman Waddell [Boston: Shambhala, 2001], 118).

(4.) Mark Blum, “Shin Buddhism in the Meiji Period,” in Cultivating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology, eds. Mark Blum and Robert Rhodes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011), 1–52; and Jeff Schroeder, “The Empirical and Esoteric: The Birth of Shin Buddhist Studies as a Modern Academic Discipline,” Japanese Religions 39 (2014): 95–118.

(5.) Blum, “Shin Buddhism in the Meiji Period,” 38. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewer of this article for pointing out the relevancy of Kiyozawa’s naikan-shugi.

(6.) Shiozaki Ichirō 塩崎伊知朗, “Naikanhō wa dono yōni henkashita ka: Taikan-an mishirabe, zenki naikan, sanmon naikan no hikaku 内観法はどのように変化したか：諦観庵身

調べ、前期内観、三問内観の比較,” Naikan Kenkyū 内観研究 12 (2006): 63–71.

(7.) Jan Van Bragt translated shukuzen kaihotsu as “opening up of past good karma.” See page 141 of “Lectures on the Tannishō” by Soga Ryōjin in Cultvating Spirituality: A Modern Shin Buddhist Anthology, eds. Mark Blum and Robert Rhodes (Albany: State


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University of New York Press, 2011). Yoshimoto refers to shukuzen kaihotsu as “gaining englightenment” (satori wo uru koto 悟りをうること) on page 25 of Naikan he no shōtai 内観への招待 (Osaka: Toki Shobō, 1996).

(8.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikan no michi 内観の道 (Koriyama, Japan: Naikan Kenshūjo, 1977), 126.

(9.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikanhō 内観法 (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2000), 130–131.

(10.) Yoshimoto Inobu, Self-Reflection Will Guide You to the Right Way (Nara, Japan: Nara Boys’ Prison, 1958), 8. (“Inobu” is an alternative reading of “Ishin.”)

(11.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikanhō no tsutaekata 内観法の傳え方 (Nara, Japan: Naikan Dōjō, 1957), 21.

(12.) Iwaoka Masashi 岩岡正, Naikanhō no genryū o tazunete: Yoshimoto Ishin no iitakatta koto 内観法の源流をたずねて：吉本伊信の言いたかったこと (Sendai, Japan: Sōei Shuppan, 2002), 103.

(13.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikan no michi 内観の道 (Koriyama, Japan: Naikan Kenshūjō, 1977), 63.

(14.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikanhō no tsutaekata (Koriyama, Japan: Naikan Dōjō, 1957), 25–27.

(15.) Iwaoka Masashi, Naikanhō no genryū o tazunete: Yoshimoto Ishin no iitakatta koto内観法の源流をたずねて：吉本伊信の言いたかったこと (Sendai, Japan: Sōei Shuppan, 2002), 117; Okumura Nikichi 奥村二吉, Satō Kōji 佐藤幸治, and Yamamoto Haruo 山本晴雄, eds., Naikan ryōhō 内観療法 (Tokyo: Igaku Shoin, 1972), 1.

(16.) The title of this article is Naikanhō no shiri-teki kadai 内観法の心理的課題 (Psychological Topics for Investigation in the Naikan Method).

(17.) The title of the article is Naikanhō to ningen kaizō 内観法の人間改造 (The Naikan Method and the Creation of a Person).

(18.) The title of the article is Naikanhō ni yoru jinkaku kaizen katei ni tsuite no oboekaki内観法による人格改善過程についての覚え書き (Notes on the Improvement Process of Personal Character through the Naikan Method).

(19.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikan he no shōtai 内観への招 (Osaka, Japan: Tokiwa Shobō, 1996), 83.

(20.) For an article in English on Naikan analysis, see Ishida Rokuro’s “Naikan Analysis,”

Psychologia 12 (1969): 81–92.

(21.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikanhō (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2007), 203.


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(22.) A transcription of this talk and the questions and answers are available in Yoshimoto, Naikanhō, 225–259.

(23.) Naikan nijūgo nen no ayumi 内観二十五年の歩み (Nara, Japan: Naikan Kenshūjo, 1980), 60, 155, 112, and 171.

(24.) In 2016 the Japan Naikan Association, according to its website, had 300 members; Retrieved from http://jpnaikan.jp/guide/kaiin.html.

(25.) Miki in 2008 said over 250 people a year did intensive Naikan training in Austria. See Miki Yoshihiko 三木善彦, “Ōbei ni okeru Naikan no hatten” 欧米における内観の発展 in

Naikan ryōhō 内観療法, eds., Miki Yoshihiko 三木善彦, Maeshiro Teruaki 真栄城輝明, and Takemoto Takahiro 竹元隆洋 (Kyoto: Mineruva Shobō, 2008), 47–55, 49. Johanna Schuh estimates that between 6000 and 7000 people have done Naikan in Europe (Personal correspondence, May 2017).

(26.) Hatano Fumihiko 波多野二三彦, Naikanhō wa naze kiku ka: jiko dōsatsu no kagaku 内

観法はなぜ効くか：自己洞察の科学, 5th ed. (Tokyo: Shinzansha Shuppan, 2014).

(27.) Zucheng Wang, “Chūgoku ni okeru Naikan ryōhō no hatten” 中国における内観療法の発

展 Naikan Igaku 内観医学 16 (2014): 7–11.

(28.) National Catholic Reporter, Dec. 15, 2006, 5a.

(29.) The author would like to thank Johanna Schuh for her guidance on the history and state of Naikan in Europe today.

(30.) This description is based on personal experience of doing Naikan at a Naikan training center in Tokyo; on visits to several places that do intensive Naikan in Japan; websites of different training centers; and on two published academic sources: Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, Psychotherapy and Religion in Japan: The Japanese Introspection Practice of Naikan (London: Routledge, 2006); and David Reynolds, Naikan Psychotherapy: Meditation for Self-Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). There is some variation among centers.

(31.) Miki Yoshihiko’s Naikan training center is one of the few places that does not use screens or the ritualistic format. Miki said he prefers not to use them because it makes Naikan seem somewhat separate from normal daily interactions. (Interview December 1, 2014.)

(32.) A worksheet for this is published in Yoshimoto, Naikan no michi 内観の道, 156.

(33.) See Dai 33 kai Nihon Naikan Gakkai puroguramu, shōrokushū 第３３回日本内観学会プ

ログラム抄録集 (Program for the 33rd Conference of the Japan Naikan Association).

(34.) John Kitsuse, “A Method of Reform in Japanese Prisons,” Orient/West 7, no. 11 (1962): 17–22.


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(35.) See page 11 of John Kitsuse, “Moral Treatment and Reformation of Inmates in Japanese Prisons,” Psychologia 8 (1965): 9–23.

(36.) See page 201 of Takie Sugiyama Lebra’s Japanese Patterns of Behavior (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1976).

(37.) Akira Ishii and Dieter Bindzus, “Prisons in Japan: Resocialization by the Means of Treatment,” Aoyama Hōgaku Ronshū 29 (1987): 328–362.

(38.) See Murase Takeo, “Naikan Therapy,” in Culture-Bound Syndromes, Ethnopsychiatry, and Alternate Therapies, ed. William Lebra (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1976), 388–397; Murase Takeo, “Sunao: A Central Value in Japanese Psychotherapy,” in Cultural Conceptions of Mental Health and Therapy, eds. Anthony J. Marsella and Geoffrey M. White (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: D. Reidel, 1982), 317–329.

(39.) Chikako Ozawa-de Silva and Brendan Ozawa-de Silva, “Secularizing Religious Practices: A Study of Subjectivity and Existential Transformation in Naikan Therapy,”

Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49 (2010): 147–161. Also see Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, “Mindfulness of the Kindness of Others: The Contemplative Practice of Naikan in Cultural Context,” Transcultural Psychiatry 52, no. 4 (2015): 524–542; and Makino Rumi, “Naikan Psychotherapy in the West: A Survey of Naikan Participants,” Psychologia 39, no. 2 (1996): 94–101.

(40.) Murase Takao and Frank Johnson, “Naikan, Morita, and Western Psychotherapy: A Comparison,” Archives of General Psychiatry 31 (1974): 121–128.

(41.) Adeline Van Waning, “Naikan—A Buddhist Self-Reflective Approach: Psychoanalytic and Cultural Reflections,” in Freud and the Far East: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on the People and Culture of China, Japan, and Korea, ed. Salman Akhtar (Lanham, MD: Jason Aronson, 2009), 255–273.

(42.) Takeuchi Katashi, “On ‘Naikan’ Method,” Psychologia 8 (1965): 2–8.


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(43.) For examples of these types of articles, see the following: Komoto Yasunobu, “The Efficacy of Group Naikan Therapy Using a Journal for Alcoholism,” in Naikan Therapy: Techniques and Principles for Use in Clinical Practice, eds. Japanese Naikan Medical Association and Japanese Naikan Association (Fukuoka, Japan: Daido Gakkan, 2013), 151–166; Sengoku Mari, Hiroaki Murata, Takanobu Kawahara, Kaori Imamura, and Kazuyuki Nakagome, “Does Saily Naikan Therapy Maintain the Efficacy of Intensive Naikan Therapy against Depression?,” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 64 (2010): 44–51; Komoto Yasunobu, “Brief Intervention Based on Naikan Therapy for a Severe Pathological Gambler with a Family History of Addiction: Emphasis on Guilt and Forgiveness,” Asian Journal of Gambling Issues and Public Health 5 (2015): 1–8; Sasano Tomohisa, “A Case of a Person with Dissociative Disorder who Managed to Overcome Mourning with the Help of Naikan Therapy,” Kawasaki Journal of Medical Welfare 7, no. 1(2001): 43–47; Sasano Tomohisa, “An Attempt at Treating a Patient with Dysthymic Disorder and His Wife Using Naikan Therapy,” Kawasaki Journal of Medical Welfare 8, no. 2 (2002): 81–84; Zhang Hong, Chenhu Li, and Liyu Zhao, “Single-Blind, Randomized Controlled Trial of Effectiveness of Naikan Therapy as an Adjunctive Treatment for Schizophrenia Over a One-Year Follow-up Period,” Shanghai Archives of Psychiatry 27 (2015): 220–227.

(44.) See David Reynolds, Naikan Psychotherapy: Meditation for Self-Development(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).

(45.) See the studies in Naikan Therapy: Techniques and Principles for Use in Clinical Practice.

(46.) Shimazono Susumu, “From Salvation to Healing: Yoshimoto Naikan Therapy and Its Religious Origins,” in Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan, eds. Christopher Harding, Iwata Fumiaki, and Yoshinaga Shin’ichi (London: Routledge, 2015), 150–164.

(47.) Unno Taitetsu, “Naikan Therapy and Shin Buddhism,” in Buddhism and Psychotherapy Across Cultures, ed. Mark Unno (Boston: Wisdom, 2006), 159–168.

(48.) Ryuzo Kawahara, “Japanese Buddhist Thought and Naikan Therapy,” in Asian Culture and Psychotherapy, eds. Wen-Shing Tseng, Suk Choo Chang, and Masahisa Nishizono (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005), 186–198; and Chikako Ozawa-de Silva, “Demystifying Japanese Therapy: An Analysis of Naikan and the Ajase Complex through Buddhist Thought,” Ethos 35 (2007): 411–446.

(49.) Yoshimoto Ishin, Naikanhō (Tokyo: Shunjūsha, 2007).

(50.) Two of the few translations of Yoshimoto’s writings can be found in Yoshimoto Ishin, “The Naikan Introspection Exercise,” Interpersonal Development 5 (1974/75): 164–170; Clark Chilson’s “A Joyful Awaking to Depravity: The Shin Buddhist Origins of Naikan Psychotherapy,” in The Buddhism of Pure Lands: A Thematic Anthology of Primary Sources, eds. Richard Payne and Georgios Halkias (University of Hawai‘i Press,


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forthcoming). The latter source gives a translation of Yoshimoto’s description of his experience doing mishirabe.

(51.) This work, titled Naikan nijū go nen no ayumi, was published by Yoshimoto’s Naikan Kenshūjo in 1980.

(52.) See the website http://naikan.jp/.

(53.) Naikan taiken 内観体験, vols. 1–2, ed. Yoshimoto Ishin (Nara, Japan: Naikan Kenshūjo, 1980).

(54.) David Reynolds, Flowing Bridges, Quiet Waters: Japanese Psychotherapies, Morita and Naikan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989); and Gregg Krech, Question Your Life: Naikan Self-Reflection and the Transformation of Our Stories(Monkton, VT: ToDo Institute, 2017).

Clark Chilson

University of Pittsburgh

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