An offshoot of unitarianism founded by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Per Andrew J. Brown, James Martineau’s Rationale of Religious Enquiry had a profound influence to the development of transcendentalism. According to Brown, most contemporary unitarian ministers “see themselves primarily as descendants of this Transcendentalist movement.” And since Shinichiro Imaoka has explicitly mentioned the influence Emerson had on him, it will also be an inspiration of his jiyu shukyo.
This connection between transcendentalism and free religion makes sense why I have always been attracted to Henry David Thoreau and why my desired life work is a combination of philosophy, contemplation, writing (and other art forms like photography), and facilitating.
References
Brown, A. J. (2017, June 25). The Free Mind and the “Rationale of Religious Enquiry.” Caute — Making Footprints Not Blueprints. https://andrewjbrown.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-free-mind-and-rationale-of.html
Ripley’s positive review of Martineau’s book had a profound influence upon the subsequent development of the Transcendentalist movement and it began to help it definitively to move away from a biblically derived Christian Unitarianism.
it seems important to note that most modern British and American Unitarian ministers — including me — see themselves primarily as descendants of this Transcendentalist movement