Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburo, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan

Nancy K. Stalker is a historian of modern Japan, not a member of Omoto, and her study of Onisaburo Deguchi was published by an independent university press rather than by the movement itself. It is treated across Japanese religious studies as the standard English-language academic account of Onisaburo's leadership, his strategies for building Omoto in the 1920s, and the two waves of state suppression the movement survived, in 1921 and 1935. The book draws on Japanese-language primary material including Omoto's own publications and government suppression records, read critically rather than reproduced as the movement's own voice. This record has not independently traced a documented history of scholarly rebuttal to Stalker's specific historical claims. Use it for the documented history of Deguchi Nao's and Onisaburo Deguchi's leadership, Omoto's scriptures, and its persecution and survival; a claim resting on Omoto's own theological reading of its founder's revelations needs the movement's own published teaching alongside it.