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Tenrikyo

ten-REE-kyoh
New Religious Movement

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Origin 1838

Tenrikyo is a Japanese religion centred on God the Parent, Tenri-O-no-Mikoto, believed to have revealed teachings through the founder Nakayama Miki for the salvation and joyous life of humankind. It teaches that human beings are given their bodies on loan from God and that clearing away mental dust, such as greed and arrogance, allows a joyous life to flourish. Central practices include a sacred dance and service performed at its temples, the gift of healing through the granting of divine protection, and pilgrimage to the site held to be the origin of human creation, called the Jiba. It stresses gratitude, mutual help, and single-hearted devotion to God the Parent.

History & Origin

Tenrikyo teaches that God the Parent revealed the path to a joyous life through Nakayama Miki, centred on the Jiba, a sacred spot in Tenri, Japan, held to be the place of human creation.

Facts
Trajectory
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs counted 1,121,541 Tenrikyo followers in Japan in 2025, less than half the 1974 peak. 4
Membership Over TimeSourced to the subject's own account
Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs counted 2,298,420 Tenrikyo followers in Japan in 1974, the tradition's historic peak. This is Japan's annual religious corporations statistical return, a government administrative count of registered followers rather than a household census. 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
1974-01-01 4
Membership Figure As OfSourced to the subject's own account
2025-01-01 4
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
Church-Reported Rolls 4
Basis of the Membership FigureSourced to the subject's own account
National Census 4
Belief
Theology
Monotheistic: one God 1
Status
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Giving
Standing Giving Expectation
Tenrikyo asks no fixed financial due of its members. Its central giving practice, hinokishin, literally a daily dedication, is voluntary service rather than money: sweeping a sanctuary, guiding pilgrims in wheelchairs, or performing disaster relief work, offered spontaneously out of gratitude and open equally to a follower of any means. Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own social welfare materials describe this labor, not a monetary rate, as the tradition's standing expression of giving. 3
How the Expectation Is Enforced
Customary Norm 3
Origins
Origin Period
1838 1
Place of Origin
Shoyashiki, in what is now Tenri, Nara prefecture, Japan 1
Founder
Nakayama Miki (1798-1887) 1
Reach
Adherents Today
Commonly reported at around one point seven five million in Japan and more than two million worldwide, though these figures come from church registration records tracking household affiliation rather than from independently counted active practice, a distinction Tenrikyo's own statistics do not separate out. 2
Registration based figure, not an independently audited practising membership count; stated with that caveat rather than as a bare number.
In Other Languages (15 names)
  • تنريكيوية
  • Tenrikyō
  • טנריקיו
  • 天理教
  • 덴리교
  • Tenri-kyō
  • Тэнрикё
  • เท็นริเกียว
  • Тенріїзм
  • 天理教 (日本)
  • تنريكيويه
  • Tenrikjó
  • Tenrikjo
  • Tenrikiô
  • Тенрикјо
Learn More
A Body on Loan

Tenrikyo teaches that God the Parent, Tenri-O-no-Mikoto, created human beings in order to see them live joyously, and that the world exists for that purpose. The obstacle is not sin in the sense of guilt requiring atonement, but accumulated self-centredness that clouds the mind.

The central image is kashimono-karimono, a thing lent and a thing borrowed. The body is on loan from God; only the mind is one's own. Illness and misfortune are read not as punishment but as guidance, God pointing out where the borrowed thing is being misused.

What clouds the mind is described as dust, which settles daily and must be swept daily. Eight dusts are named: miserliness, covetousness, hatred, self-love, grudge-bearing, anger, greed and arrogance. None of them is a great crime, and that is the point. The teaching addresses the ordinary accumulation of small selfishness rather than dramatic wrongdoing, and the remedy is correspondingly ordinary and repeated.

Innen is causality carried across lives. It explains present circumstance without excusing it, since the mind one keeps today alters the causality of tomorrow. The goal state is yokigurashi, the joyous life, understood as a condition of the whole world rather than of the individual, which is why the teaching is not satisfied by private contentment.

Two practices follow directly. Hinokishin is voluntary work performed as an expression of gratitude for the borrowed body, from sweeping streets to disaster relief. The Sazuke is a healing administration bestowed on members who complete a course of instruction, performed with set hand movements and a set prayer, and given without charge.

The Jiba and the Service

Tenrikyo has a fixed geographical centre in a way few religions do. The Jiba is a specific spot inside the main sanctuary at Tenri, held to be where humanity was conceived. It is marked by the Kanrodai, a hexagonal wooden stand which the founder described in detail and which the faith holds will one day receive the dew of heaven. The sanctuary is built around it on four sides so that worshippers face inward from every direction, and the building is open day and night. Pilgrimage is described as returning to the Jiba rather than visiting it, because the site is understood as the parental home of every human being.

Three scriptures govern practice. The Ofudesaki, written by the founder between 1869 and 1882, is 1,711 poems in the thirty-one syllable waka form. The Mikagura-uta, the Songs for the Service, is the liturgical text, set to music and to hand movements. The Osashizu collects oral directions given between 1887 and 1907.

The central rite is the Service. In its fullest form, the Kagura Service, it is performed only at the Jiba, by ten masked dancers each taking the part of an aspect of divine providence in the creation of humanity, moving around the Kanrodai. The Teodori, a hand dance performed to the Mikagura-uta, is done in every church. Services are held morning and evening daily, and a larger service is held on the twenty-sixth of each month, the day of the founding.

The music is played on Japanese instruments and the text is sung in Japanese wherever in the world the Service is performed.

An Institution and Its Numbers

Tenrikyo built an unusually solid institutional base and is now watching it contract.

The headquarters at Tenri in Nara prefecture is a religious town of a kind Japan has few of: the sanctuary complex, dormitories for pilgrims, Tenri University, a large hospital, a research library of several million volumes with important manuscript holdings, a museum with substantial archaeological and ethnographic collections, and a high school known nationally for its sports teams. Members serve terms of residential work there. The Disaster Relief Hinokishin Corps deploys to earthquakes and floods in Japan and abroad and is among the better organised religious relief bodies in the country.

Mission began early and overseas: the United States in 1896, Taiwan in 1897, Korea in 1898, China in 1901, with later work in Brazil, Africa, Nepal and elsewhere. The foreign presence is real but small, and remains concentrated in Japanese emigrant communities.

The numbers are falling and the organisation does not conceal it. Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs recorded 2,298,420 Tenrikyo followers in 1974 and 1,121,541 in 2025. Tenrikyo itself reports roughly two million worldwide, and around 16,800 local churches operate in Japan.

One caveat applies to all Japanese religious statistics. Affiliation is generally reported by the organisation on a household basis and counts people who may never attend, so official totals across all Japanese religions greatly exceed the population of the country. The direction of the trend is nonetheless clear, and it matches the wider decline of the Japanese new religions founded in the nineteenth century.

Spread History
Tenrikyo Spread Map Afghanistan Albania Algeria Angola Argentina Armenia Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Benin Bhutan Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Brazil Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cabo Verde Cambodia Cameroon Canada Chile China Colombia Costa Rica Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Democratic Republic of the Congo Denmark Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Estonia Eswatini Ethiopia Federated States of Micronesia Fiji Finland France French Polynesia Gabon Georgia Germany Ghana Greece Guam Guatemala Haiti Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Israel Italy Ivory Coast Jamaica Japan Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kuwait Laos Latvia Lebanon Libya Lithuania Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Mali Malta Mauritius Mexico Moldova Mongolia Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nepal Netherlands New Zealand Nigeria North Macedonia Norway Oman Pakistan Palestine Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Romania Russia Rwanda Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Samoa Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands South Africa South Korea South Sudan Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Sweden Switzerland Syria Taiwan Tanzania Thailand Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates United Kingdom United States Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Vatican City Venezuela Vietnam Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Nakayama Miki Founds Tenrikyo, Japan, 1838 to 1908, ArrivedNakayama Miki Teaches the Service for the First Time, Japan, 1866, EstablishedOyasama Identifies the Jiba, Tenrikyo's Sacred Center, Japan, 1875, EstablishedMeiji Japan Surveils Tenrikyo, Japan, 1885 to 1896, SuppressedTenrikyo Wins Independence As Sect Shinto, Japan, 1908, EstablishedTenrikyo's Nankai Grand Church Sends Missionary Families To Brazil, Brazil, 1927 to 1936, EstablishedTenrikyo's First Church Opens In Honolulu, United States, 1929, EstablishedImperial Japan Suppresses Tenrikyo Again, Japan, 1935 to 1939, SuppressedTenrikyo Sheds State Shinto Doctrine After The War, Japan, 1945 to 1966, RevivedConstruction Begins on the Oyasato-yakata, Japan, 1954, EstablishedTenrikyo Establishes the Oceania Centre in Brisbane, Australia, 1997, EstablishedTenrikyo Opens Its UK Centre in Wembley, London, United Kingdom, 2000, EstablishedTenrikyo's Disaster Relief Corps Responds to the Great East Japan Earthquake, Japan, 2011, EstablishedTenrikyo Observes Oyasama's 130th Anniversary Service at Church Headquarters, Japan, 2016, EstablishedJapan's Agency for Cultural Affairs Counts Tenrikyo's Following in the Reiwa 7 Religious Yearbook, Japan, 2025, Established

Marker size and shape show how established Tenrikyo was there: a small filled dot for an arrival, a larger one for an established or dominant presence, and a hollow, distinct marker where it was suppressed or nearly disappeared, never simply absent.

1 event has a recorded place with no map coordinate yet, so it is not marked above: Tenrikyo Establishes Its Mission Center in Paris (Paris).

View the Full Spread Map

  1. Nakayama Miki Founds TenrikyoJapan, 1838 to 1908, Arrived
  2. Nakayama Miki Teaches the Service for the First TimeJapan, 1866, Established
  3. Oyasama Identifies the Jiba, Tenrikyo's Sacred CenterJapan, 1875, Established
  4. Meiji Japan Surveils TenrikyoJapan, 1885 to 1896, Suppressed
  5. Tenrikyo Wins Independence As Sect ShintoJapan, 1908, Established
  6. Tenrikyo's Nankai Grand Church Sends Missionary Families To BrazilBrazil, 1927 to 1936, Established
  7. Tenrikyo's First Church Opens In HonoluluUnited States, 1929, Established
  8. Imperial Japan Suppresses Tenrikyo AgainJapan, 1935 to 1939, Suppressed
  9. Tenrikyo Sheds State Shinto Doctrine After The WarJapan, 1945 to 1966, Revived
  10. Construction Begins on the Oyasato-yakataJapan, 1954, Established
  11. Tenrikyo Establishes Its Mission Center in ParisParis, 1970, Established
  12. Tenrikyo Establishes the Oceania Centre in BrisbaneAustralia, 1997, Established
  13. Tenrikyo Opens Its UK Centre in Wembley, LondonUnited Kingdom, 2000, Established
  14. Tenrikyo's Disaster Relief Corps Responds to the Great East Japan EarthquakeJapan, 2011, Established
  15. Tenrikyo Observes Oyasama's 130th Anniversary Service at Church HeadquartersJapan, 2016, Established
  16. Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs Counts Tenrikyo's Following in the Reiwa 7 Religious YearbookJapan, 2025, Established
Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "The Tenrikyo Europe Centre's own account of its founding in 1970 at Antony, south of Paris, registered as a religious association under France's 1905 law, and its ongoing services and community..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own account, published on its official news site, of the Oyasama 130th Anniversary Service conducted on 26 January 2016 in the Main Sanctuary at Church Headquarters..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "article on the Oyasato-yakata, the Tenrikyo Church Headquarters building complex at Tenri, documenting construction beginning in 1954 following Nakayama Miki's prophecy that the Divine Residence..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Wikipedia's dedicated article on the Tenrikyo Service, a continuously edited tertiary source with no fixed publication year, accessed 2026-08-14."

Source Service (Tenrikyo) (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own published social welfare page, naming the 1971 nationwide establishment of the Disaster Relief Hinokishin Corps and its training and dispatch system."

Source Social Welfare (TENRIKYO, Own Website)Tenrikyo Church Headquarters

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "community-edited article on Tenrikyo, the Japanese new religious movement."

Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "This is Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own newsletter for October 2005, reporting on the Disaster Relief Hinokishin Corps, its volunteer relief organization, published on the religion's official..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "This is Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own healthcare page, published on its official website, tenrikyo.or.jp."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own published overseas mission history page, documenting the 22 July 1970 establishment of the Mission Center in Paris, later renamed the Europe Centre, among the..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own newsletter article documents the UK Centre's May 2000 founding in Wembley, London, its 2001 charitable registration, its 2006 relocation to Hendon, and its growth..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own news portal, contemporary report published 25 April 2011 and updated 27 April 2011, on the Disaster Relief Hinokishin Corps' work in Miyagi Prefecture after the 11..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "in Cogent Social Sciences examines how Tenrikyo has been spread, suspended and re-established across different historical stages in the United Kingdom, finding its following there has grown more..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "Tenrikyo Church Headquarters' own newsletter page on the Oyasato-yakata building complex, documenting construction under way since 1954, the planned sixty eight interconnected wings arranged on a..."

This source names Tenrikyo directly: "independently corroborating that Tenrikyo's Disaster Relief Hinokishin Corps campaign, running for more than four months, involved roughly 18,600 corps members and several thousand ordinary..."

Founded By

Tenrikyo teaches that God the Parent revealed the path to a joyous life through Nakayama Miki, beginning in 1838.

Objects and Practices of This Tradition

Jiba, Sacred Sites
Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

The Tenri Yorozu-sodansho Foundation is Tenrikyo's own medical foundation, explicitly retaining Tenrikyo teachings as its basis and staffing a Religious Guidance Department alongside medicine, so linked to Tenrikyo at the religion level.

The Disaster Relief Hinokishin Corps is Tenrikyo's own organized volunteer relief structure, reported on by the religion's own Church Headquarters, so linked to Tenrikyo at the religion level.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Spread Events

Adds a specific, dated institutional milestone between the postwar doctrinal restoration completed by 1966's declaration that Tenrikyo is nothing but Tenrikyo already recorded here and the 2011 disaster relief response to the Great East Japan Earthquake already recorded here: the 1954 start of construction on the Oyasato-yakata, the building complex Tenrikyo Church Headquarters continues to build around the sacred Jiba at Tenri today.

Closes a nine year gap since 2016's Oyasama 130th Anniversary Service, moving the map from the faith's own commemorative calendar to the Japanese state's own annual count of its following.

Source Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source History Of Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors
Source History Of Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

Adds a milestone in Tenrikyo history between Nakayama Miki's 1838 founding revelation and her 1875 identification of the Jiba, both already recorded here: Miki teaching the Service, the movement's central ritual practice, to her followers for the first time in 1866.

Source The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of TenrikyoTenrikyo Church Headquarters (Tenrikyo Overseas Department, translator)

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Tenrikyo's history between Nakayama Miki's 26 October 1838 founding revelation and the Osaka governor's 29 April 1885 denial of Tenrikyo's first petition for recognition, both already recorded here: Oyasama's 1875 identification of the Jiba, the spot Tenrikyo holds to be the place where God the Parent created the first human beings, marked today by the Kanrodai at the center of Church Headquarters' Main Sanctuary.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Tenrikyo's institutional history between construction beginning on the Oyasato-yakata in 1954 and its Disaster Relief Corps responding to the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, both already recorded here: the 22 July 1970 founding of Tenrikyo's Mission Center in Paris, its first standing institutional presence in continental Europe.

Adds a milestone in Tenrikyo history between Tenrikyo establishing its Mission Center in Paris in 1970 and Tenrikyo opening its UK Centre in Wembley, London, in 2000, both already recorded here: Tenrikyo opening the Oceania Centre in Brisbane, Australia, on 14 December 1997, its first dedicated base across Australia and the wider Oceania region.

Closes a 15 year gap, tied with the Moravian Church, since 2011's Tenrikyo's Disaster Relief Corps Responds to the Great East Japan Earthquake, the most recent event already on Tenrikyo's map, with the faith's own headquarters observance of its foundress's own anniversary.

Adds a specific, dated milestone in Tenrikyo history between the Mission Center in Paris opening in 1970 and the Disaster Relief Corps responding to the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, both already recorded here: Tenrikyo opening its UK Centre in Wembley, London in May 2000.

Closes a 60-year gap since 1966's Tenrikyo Sheds State Shinto Doctrine After The War, the most recent event already on Tenrikyo's map, with the tradition's largest disaster relief mobilization in its history.

Source Tenrikyo Hawai Dendo Shi (McBride Rare Books)Tenrikyo Hawaii Mission (1957 original); catalogue description by McBride Rare Books
Sources
1. New Religions: A Guide, New Religious Movements, Sects and Alternative Spiritualities
Christopher Partridge (ed.), Oxford University Press, 2004Tenrikyo
2. Tenrikyo: A Pilgrimage Faith: The Structure and Meanings of a Modern Japanese Religion
Robert S. Ellwood, Tenri University Press, 1982
3. Social Welfare (TENRIKYO, Own Website)
Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, Tenrikyo Church HeadquartersView the Source
4. Tenrikyo (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, WikipediaView the Source
From Salvation to Spirituality: Popular Religious Movements in Modern Japan
Susumu Shimazono, Trans Pacific Press, 2004
The Life of Oyasama, Foundress of Tenrikyo
Tenrikyo Church Headquarters (Tenrikyo Overseas Department, translator), Tenrikyo Church Headquarters, 1967
Shukyo Nenkan (Religious Yearbook)
Agency for Cultural Affairs, JapanReported membership series
Quote, Reported membership series
Tenrikyo reported membership fell from 2,298,420 in 1974 to 1,121,541 in 2025; these are household-reported figures, not headcounts.
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