パナウェーブ研究所
notes on panawave
In 2002, an arctic bearded seal was sighted in Tokyo’s Tama River, drawing small crowds of adoring fans and photographers to nearby river systems. He was affectionately nicknamed Tama-chan, after the river in which he was discovered. Media outlets flocked to broadcast this rare event, and Tama-chan quickly became a national celebrity. In March 2003, a group of people clad in all-white clothing gathered near Tama-chan’s new home, the Arakawa River. Believing Tama-chan to have been lost and potentially at risk due to negative effects of radio waves, they had come to Arakawa River in an attempt to rescue him. The memory of the Tokyo subway sarin gas attacks still fresh in the minds of Tokyo residents, the appearance of yet another eclectic group of people was sounding the alarms. The existing media presence drew in a frenzy of speculation, and it came to be known that this group called themselves the Pana Wave Laboratory.
What is particularly curious about Pana Wave is that the phenomenon itself is enraptured amongst a matrix of myths and mythologies. First is the mythological world of Chino Shōhō. Second is the reception of Pana Wave by the public, which heavily mythologized the group after Aum Shinrikyo. Both of these subjects are encapsulated in a broader, societal conversation on myth, science, and reality. The Pana Wave Laboratory is the “research and science” division of Chino Shōhō, which formed as an offshoot of the God Light Association . Chino Shōhō was formed by Yuko Chino, who separated from the aforementioned GLA after rising dissatisfaction with the organization’s successor. Chino Shōhō can be described as an eclectic mix of mythologies, personal experiences, memories, so on and so forth. Chino appropriated mythological ideas from across the world and neatly packed them up in Tengoku no Tobira, the first book in the Tengoku series.
Chino Shōhō constructs a number of myths, some regarding the GLA and its members, some regarding the institutions of religion and science as a whole— and uses them as a backdrop for the stories found in its doctrine. The basic structure of Chino Shōhō, as described by Chino, is that each person is assigned 2-3 “spirits from Heaven”– they are called the “in-dwelling”, “protective”, and “guiding” spirits. These spirits can sometimes be talked to or sometimes reside within the soul of a person. In the case of Chino herself, these are frequently angels (Michael and Sariel feature prominently in the exposition of the text) and other religiously important figures, such as Jesus. Despite the heavily mythological characteristics of Chino’s book, the Pana Wave Laboratory remains concerned with the subject of the natural sciences.
When Chino became ill, members of Chino Shōhō worked together to form the Panawave Laboratory in order to protect her, working on projects involving “electromagnetic wave warfare, flying saucers, spirits, and clairvoyance”. They concluded that Chino could be getting sick from radio waves. Perhaps the Pana Wave Laboratory is best remembered today for their stark white clothing, donned to repel scalar radiation. Their strong apprehension towards radio technology, fearing mind-control by neighbouring Communists, is a key component of their mythology– one that intersperses “scientific rationality” amongst decidedly religious imagery. To put it another way, the Panawave Laboratory “merely reflected an aura of science, rather than contributing to mainstream concepts of science”. The “scientific” nature of the laboratory’s activities are a stark contrast to the worldbuilding of Chino Shōhō’s central doctrine. Yet, these two seemingly oppositional methods are conjoined, and one is conflated with the other.
The way that Chino speaks of iconic religious imagery with rational concepts in the same breath speaks to the grander idea of myth. Both of these types of explanations come from the same desire to know, from the frantic escape of what we cannot confront. But mythologizing comes with the process of emptying an idea of its original concept, and transforming it into something else. This is perhaps one of the reasons why members of the Pana Wave Laboratory can claim that radio waves can control minds, a seemingly extraordinary idea, and furthermore, believe in it wholeheartedly.
Belief is undoubtedly a central component in the function of myth. A cursory glance at The Door To Heaven shows a preoccupation with “truth” and “reality”. In a section entitled “Institutions Possessed by Evil Spirits”, Chino states, “I seek to provide a text to teach the real form of Shoho… Members of the GLA have refused to correct those mistakes revealed by re-awakened memories and revelations concerning their past lives, contending that truth was false and that which was false was the truth”. Such extensive concern over the subject of truth is important for two reasons. The first is that such a concern between falsity and reality is a distinctly modern preoccupation. The second is that the effect that discussing the “truth” has on readers is enormous. These things, truth and reality, speak to the very core of who we are, what we know, how we live. The capacity of language and myth to capture this core feeling and use it for some sort of purpose has many implications, one of which is the affective capability of myth to problematize our everyday knowledge. Whether this problematization is grounded in something considered “fantastical” or not, whether one believes that this problematization is a benefit or detriment to humanity– they nonetheless hold significant affective sway over our interactions with the world.
Prior to the introduction of scientific rationalism, whose ubiquitous nature allows it to contend that it is most consistent with reality, premodern peoples constructed and used mythologies to make sense of the world. There was no question about what was truth and what was not– there simply was. By contrast, Smith describes that doctrines of New Religious Movements often posit that “they are supra-religions, non-denominational, perhaps mono-theistic but transcending any one religion”. These sorts of claims make it easier to reach for the biggest one of all– that something considered “The Truth” is attainable. They are characteristic of one the 20th century’s most dominant themes: “reckoning with science”. NRMs that have a rational flavour make particular use of our modern conceptions, and ask of casual audiences and fanatics alike to question what reality is or should be. In referencing this grander sense of myth, the Pana Wave Laboratory is sending the message that they are as just as trustworthy as the scientists whom the rest of the modern world places their belief in.
The activities of the Pana Wave Laboratory therefore blur the existent distinction between the religious and the scientific. Whether or not this was the aim of Chino Shoho and her followers at the time, it certainly was a result. In the foreword of beginning of the print edition of the Door to Heaven, written by a formerly unaffiliated head librarian named Hiroaki Ichikawa, Ichikawa writes that “in this book there is not a single sentence which says that ‘you should believe’, ‘you should worship’, that ‘you should pray’... In fact, if anything it severely criticizes the wrongs of religion… it would not be too much to say that this is ‘a book stranger than truth’... My wish is that you should…read it with the practical, calm, and analytical mind of a scientist”. That someone could come to this conclusion after having read Chino’s rather fantastical account of demonaic and spiritual encounters is fascinating. One can presume that this is both the effect and purpose of modern-day mythmaking–to gain verisimilitude amongst a vast, rolling sea of mythologies.
images sourced from shutterstock + across the web, images of panawave are pretty rare. ask me if you’d like credit or want to know where they’re from. thanks.