Religion and Spirituality in Contemporary Japan

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue will focus on religion and spirituality in contemporary Japan.  There is a lot of literature on religion in modern Japan, somewhat less on contemporary Japan.  But there are gaps in coverage and certain biases in approach that this special issue seeks to redress.  For example, the most common approach to religion in Japan is to assume that Buddhism and Shintoism basically cover the topic, with an occasional nod to the small Christian minority.  And there is a growing interest in “New Religions.” For example, Swanson & Chilson’s authoritative anthology Nanzan Guide to Japanese Religions (Hawaii, 2006) is a good example.  After introducing “Shinto” “Buddhism,” “Folk Religion,” “New Religions” and “Japanese [sic] Christianity,”  the volume then surveys religion across historical periods before turning to various chapters on thematic issues like ritual, politics and gender.  Yet, like most of the literature on Japanese religion, there is a modernist bias that presumes either real Japanese religions (Buddhism, Shintoism) were things of the premodern era, or as other scholars have argued, Japanese don’t really have an understanding of “religion” (shūkyō) because the term was a modern neologism that never fit Japanese spiritual reality (Josephson, 2012; Kramer, 2013).  Only Shimazono addressed contemporary religion in Nanzan volume, and he has to do so in less than 10 pages. And his approach, like that of others who write on the modern period, emphasizes State Shintoism as an oppressive form of pseudo-religion that ended with the liberation of Japan in the postwar period by American military occupation.  This special issue will take a different, although not necessarily contradictory, approach.  Rather than emphasize traditional political issues like State Shinto and gender, it will look in depth at religious experience and spirituality in contemporary Japan on their own terms.  By no means will it ignore social and political representations of religions—especially minority religions.  But it hopes to captures those realities outside the master narratives which have defined the work on religion in modern Japan, especially in English literature. In order to achieve that goal, the special issue will emphasize contributions from Japanese scholars and non-Japanese scholars living in Japan who are in the best position to comment on religion in the contemporary moment.

Our focus and scope is on religion and spirituality in contemporary Japan.  We take a more informal approach to understanding “religion” than merely organized formal religions, seeking to capture religious experience beyond the usual categories of Buddhism and Shintoism as the mainstream religions in Japan.  To do so, we need to look to the margins of society. For example, Christian influences are important precisely because Christianity is marginal as organized religion but not at all marginal in broader social reality. Thus, we feel a need to look at Christian influence in contemporary Japan and to do so beyond the popular paradigm of indigenization or enculturation, looking instead at the influences of Christianity in museums and World Heritage Organization representations as part of a global religious reality.  This is part of our broader globalist approach that, in contrast to the nationalist paradigm, sees religious experience (or “spirituality”) in Japan as a concrete instance of a more universal, human phenomenon.  By the same token, we need to look at New Religions and other experiences that may not be easily categorized as “religious.” This broader, adventurous approach should grasp aspects of religious experience in Japan today that has often eluded scholars writing on the topic. One key point is to look to society rather than the state to discover a wealth of religious /spiritual experiences in contemporary Japan, especially “on the margins.”

Prof. Dr. Kevin M Doak
Guest Editor

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• Japan
• Contemporary
• Religion
• Spirituality
• Christianity
• New Religions
• Globalism
• Society
• Marginality