1979

1979 marks a decisive institutional turn in the history of the Pioneers: the group received official approval to organize as a religious corporation. The designation strengthened the legal protection around its secluded grounds just as its founder, Fukada, had become difficult to contact and the community was shutting itself off from outsiders.

Isolation Before Recognition

Before 1979, Professor Ebisuno had already noticed that Fukada’s long, detailed letters about the community and his own feelings had stopped arriving. Phone calls became nearly useless: conversations were brief, and Fukada spoke as though someone were listening. Ebisuno tried repeatedly to visit the Pioneers to discuss Eri, but the members turned him away. A high fence had been built around the grounds, and outsiders were barred from entering.

The change was striking because the Pioneers had once practiced organic farming peacefully and maintained friendly relations with the surrounding community. Their neighbors, like Ebisuno, were now bewildered by the group’s transformation into what appeared to be a fortress. Ebisuno feared that something had happened to Fukada and his wife, but could not establish what was going on inside.

Legal Status and Its Consequences

In 1979 the Pioneers received approval from Yamanashi Prefecture to become a religious corporation. The group had therefore moved beyond its earlier identity as a farming community and could formally invoke the protections associated with religious freedom. According to Ebisuno, this made it exceptionally difficult for police to enter and investigate the private grounds without evidence of a crime. He reported his loss of contact with the Fukadas to local police and raised the possibility that they might be held against their will, but the police had no basis to intervene; from 1979 onward, an investigation inside the property was effectively impossible.

The approval astonished Ebisuno. He had known Fukada for years and regarded him as a political, rational man with a near-physical aversion to religious systems. Even after seeing documents confirming the new status, Ebisuno struggled to accept that Fukada could have agreed to it, even for strategic reasons. The legal change thus deepened, rather than resolved, the uncertainty surrounding the community and its founder.

A Public Doctrine and a Hidden Center

The Pioneers publicly described themselves as a community without a fixed sacred text or codified doctrine. Their account emphasized practical exercises, austere training, work, and individual, spontaneous awakening; rules and doctrine, they said, emerged afterward from members’ experiences. They presented self-sufficient agricultural life and spiritual practice as alternatives to materialism, attracting educated specialists who sought a different kind of intellectual and spiritual achievement.

That public account sat uneasily beside reports of a growing organization with abundant funds, new land, increasingly sophisticated facilities, and formidable walls. Its official structure was described as collective, with personal worship prohibited, yet accounts of the group also placed an unidentified, charismatic leader at its center. He was said to possess supernatural powers, while remaining unseen by the outside world; a nominal president appeared at official occasions. The contrast between collective governance in public and concealed personal authority inside the group gives the 1979 recognition wider significance: legal status made the organization harder to scrutinize even as its actual structure remained obscure.

Significance in the Wider History

The year connects two developments that the novel keeps in tension: the Pioneers’ adoption of an official religious identity and the simultaneous closing of their community to outside observation. Their public explanations framed the group as disciplined, intellectually serious, and unlike conventional religions; reports of restricted access, internal hierarchy, and an unknown leader suggested a more opaque system. Recognition did not reveal what had happened to the Fukadas or clarify who held power. Instead, it helped make those questions harder for outsiders, including the police, to pursue.