Shinshukyo shrine town: the influence of Japanese immigration on the formation of religious spatiality in the municipality of Arujá

Abstract

This article aims to propose a concept that Rosendahl initiated and opened up to new possibilities. For the author, sanctuary cities are a category of analysis that classifies spatialities with a marked presence of pilgrims and religious temples with a continuous flow of people. The category was applied to the municipality of Arujá, in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo, and the possibility of classifying it by religiosity other than Christianity was checked. The results of the research show that the strong influence of Japanese immigration on Arujá's soil classifies it as a unique city in the Eastern religious context, and we sought to classify it as a shinshukyo shrine city, a neologism designated to new religious movements of Japanese origin. Through symbolic interactionism, we investigated the strong presence of Japanese religiosity in the territory, and through the theoretical framework of the Geography of Religion, we built a conjecture to crystallise this possibility.