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Zen practice is often associated with aloof silence and introspection. However, any visitor to a Japanese Zen training temple will be surprised by the abundance and richness of the acoustic environment. In effect, every moment of the training schedule is accompanied, chronicled, and choreographed by percussions and chanting vocals. This paper will introduce this sonic environment and explain how different sounds construct the training experience. In particular, I will focus on sound instruments that coordinate daily activities, such as bells, gongs, drums, and the like, arguing that they are essential to Zen practice. The first part of the paper explains the unique characteristics of a Japanese Zen training temple, focusing on ritual sound instruments and their place within the monastic soundspace. The second part examines the meaning of these instruments as described in Zen canonical writing, focusing mainly on Baizang's monastic regulation and different references to it by Japanese masters throughout history. The third part explores how contemporary monastics understand sound instruments and their function in regulating the body, conveying values, and evoking spiritual transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The maritime route connecting the Chinese continent and the Japanese archipelago facilitated a significant exchange of commercial goods and sociocultural knowledge throughout the Southern Song dynasty. Within this context, Japanese pilgrim monks traveling along this route acted as key conduits for the transmission of Buddhist teachings. Their journeys profoundly influenced the establishment and development of new Buddhist monasteries in Japan. Focusing on biographical accounts that portray the experiences of these pilgrim monks during their twelfth- and thirteenth-century sea voyages, this paper aims to explore how these accounts drew on intertextual links with existing Buddhist records to fulfill the compilers' intentions. Specifically, this paper examines the structure and sources of biographical accounts detailing miraculous encounters between pilgrim monks and Buddhist deities during perilous situations at sea. By interpreting the role of these deities in the corpus of Buddhist literature and within Japanese Buddhist monasteries founded by pilgrim monks, this paper argues that the increasing emphasis on pilgrim monks' attainment of divine protection in their biographical records suggests a growing concern for reinforcing the authority of their dharma lineages. Moreover, the composition and reception of these miraculous accounts reflected the changing religious needs and reshaped strategies for promoting specific Buddhist sects in subsequent periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues how the study of religion in Japan influenced the nation's conduct during the Asia-Pacific War (1931–1945). Specifically, the paper addresses the wartime national indoctrination texts of Katō Totsudō 加藤咄堂 (a.k.a. Katō Yūichirō 加藤熊一郎, 1870–1949). Although Katō was not strictly a religious scholar, analyzing Katō's texts is significant in understanding the influence of religious theory and religious studies discourse on Japanese society during the war. To illustrate this point, this paper introduces previous studies that have discussed the movements of religious scholars during the war. It then clarifies the significance of discussing Katō's texts, followed by an introduction to what has been revealed about Katō so far. The paper then examines Katō's wartime texts that discuss the relationship between war, faith and the readiness to die. The East–West comparison of views of life and death used by Katō was characterized as a wartime application of comparative religion. It was intended to emphasize Japan's superiority over other countries. Such features agitated Japanese readers to proactively enter the fight to the death through spiritual mobilization in a total war system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the utilization of the mantra of light and its associated maṇḍala practices by Wang Hongyuan 王弘願 (1876–1937), a Chinese Buddhist during the Republican Period, and his adherents, which has not yet been noticed by previous scholars. With the import of esoteric Buddhist doctrines and practices from Japan, the mantra of light, which was a rarely used mantra in pre-modern China, gained renewed significance. This led to the widespread adoption of the ritual practices of this mantra by Wang Hongyuan and his surrounding Buddhist groups in early modern China. The rituals of this mantra were used as a supplement or substitute for near-death Pure Land practices. This paper presents Pure Land Buddhist practices intertwined with esoteric Buddhist elements or "esoteric" approaches to Pure Land rebirth in modern Chinese Buddhism which have been overlooked by previous scholars. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the local beliefs of the sea gods in Japan, represented by the Sumiyoshi Sanjin 住吉三神, and their acceptance of the foreign culture of Mazu 媽祖. While there are many differences between the two in terms of their backgrounds, functions, and identities, the evolution of Japanese sea god beliefs has been characterized by a gradual acceptance of Mazu culture, culminating in the co-culturing of the two in shrines. This paper adopts an empirical research design to compare the local beliefs of the sea gods in Japan with the culture of Mazu and to analyze the reasons for their acceptance of Mazu culture from the perspective of the other. This article argues that the Japanese sea gods accepted Mazu for two reasons: the tangibility of Mazu's beliefs and the superb spirituality of Mazu's beliefs. Superb spirituality means effective protection, both in terms of safety at sea and swiftness in rescuing shipwrecks, and in terms of the smooth running of the fishing industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kōfuku no Kagaku is a most visible new religious actor in contemporary Japan thanks to the vast publishing activities of its founder and its widespread professional use of new media. This paper examines how Kōfuku no Kagaku engages with the COVID-19 pandemic in practical and doctrinal terms. Notably, early in the pandemic, Kōfuku no Kagaku's international promotion of spiritual cures and vaccines even prompted The New York Times to feature the group in a widely circulated article in April 2020. This paper outlines these "spiritual technologies" and examines their doctrinal rationale as well as the wider doctrinal appropriation of the COVID-19 pandemic. It will be shown how the latter is instrumentalised to echo Kōfuku no Kagaku's millenarian agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three Japanese Buddhist scriptural manuscripts related to the practice of calling back the soul are kept in Nanatsudera, Hōbodaiin in Toji, and Kōshōji, respectively. They show complex lineage connections that have been discussed little. This paper discusses the relations between the two sutras contained in the three manuscripts, traces their respective origins, and analyzes how Japanese authors transformed the apocryphal sutras into a liturgical text. Both the Nanatsudera and the Hōbodaiin manuscripts consist of the Sutra on Calling Back the Soul, while the Kōshōji manuscript comprises the Duxing Sutra. All of them were classified as Buddhist apocrypha written by Chinese authors. While the two sutras share similar text structures and the use of words, their contents reveal remarkable differences. The Sutra on Calling Back the Soul focuses mainly on how to release the souls of the dead and how to prevent fulian (reconnection with the dead), while the Duxing Sutra focuses on the healing of diseases and the alleviation of disasters through the restitution of the souls of the living. The Sutra on Calling Back the Soul has exerted a long-lasting effect in Japan where it was paraphrased into a liturgical text for the removal of disasters and the prolongation of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article gathered and analyzed the Daodejing (DDJ) translations in Korean that appeared after the liberation from Japan and classified them into four perspectives: the perspective continuing Gyeonghak 經學 (Traditional Confucian exegetics), the literary and linguistic perspective, the religious perspective, and the philosophical perspective according to the academic perspective and methodology of translation. Simultaneously, this paper clarified the translation characteristics by comprehensively examining the formation process of each perspective in their historical contexts. Although Daoism had been excluded from the academic curriculum during the pre-liberation era along with Buddhism as heresy, it was later hastily embraced within the category of Oriental Studies to build a cultural consensus when the modern and contemporary educational system was established. In the post-liberation era, the formation of each DDJ translation perspective is directly related to the academic status of Daoism during the modernization of the Korean educational system—a process in which the years 1990 and 2015 stand out as essential turning points. The characteristics of DDJ translations in Korean can be analyzed from five perspectives depending on the Ur-text, ideological perspective, linguistic methodology, national characteristics, and relation to Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The beginning of the construction of Japan's first large-scale Buddhist temple, Asukadera 飛鳥寺, in 588, marks an important turning point in the ancient history of Japan. The construction of a Buddhist temple was a major event through which Japanese people, who had believed in traditional indigenous religion, came to embrace Buddhism, one of the major world religions. Inscribed śarīra reliquaries were discovered from the wooden pagoda site at the Wanghŭng-sa 王興寺 in Puyŏ. According to these inscriptions, Wanghŭng-sa was built in 577, 11 years before the establishment of Asukadera in 588. Based on this data, both Korean and Japanese academics have raised the possibility that Wanghŭng-sa might have provided inspiration or even a model for Asukadera in Japan. In this paper, I briefly examine reliquaries and roof tiles that have been excavated from the wooden pagoda site within the Wanghŭng-sa site and the arrangement and characteristics of the temple's building sites, including the sites of the main hall and corridors. Next, I discuss the similarities and differences between ancient Buddhist temples in Korea and Japan by comparing Wanghŭng-sa with ancient Japanese temples such as Asukadera. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legend of Empress Jingū's conquest of the Korean peninsula is well-known for its many divine elements. However, the legend's successful conquest of a foreign enemy has also been key to its longevity. In particular, the Mongol Invasions of the late thirteenth century inspired a renaissance of the Jingū legend in the fourteenth, with the addition of several new motifs. One such motif is Jinrin, a red demon with multiple heads and immense power from the continent who threatens Japan before being slain by Jingū's husband Emperor Chūai. In this paper, I argue that the Jinrin motif plays an important role in reenvisioning Jingū's conquest as a war against evil. Though Jinrin may have antecedents in the Buddhist Canon and Japanese mythology, this "fierce god" emerges in the medieval Hachiman tradition in origin narratives and later in regional kagura. Jinrin serves as a visual representation of the threat of the Korean kingdoms and an opportunity for Chūai's heroism and honorable death, creating a clear juxtaposition between a depraved Korean peninsula and an ethical Japan. Thus, Jinrin provides a vibrant example of how the belief in Japan as land of the gods (shinkoku shisō) galvanized a reinterpretation of Japan, its world, and its history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If the Christian Church prioritizes its existence and expansion, it will turn to the entity that approves of it and protects it. When the Modern Japanese emperor's state approached the church as his grace, the Japanese Christian Church showed its gratitude and pledged its allegiance to the emperor. In the Sino-Japanese War, which assisted modern Japan in becoming an imperial-ist country, the Japanese Christian community was in favor of a war under the pretext of a "righteous war" to maintain a lasting peace in the East. However, during the Russo-Japanese War, when most of the Christians were actively in favor of the war, there were a few anti-war voices among small groups of Christians that had not been heard during the Sino-Japanese War. There was a tension that could not be easily resolved in the Japanese Christian Church. In particular, Gokyō, a Christian journal published by the Japanese Methodist Church, one of the major Protestant denominations, simultaneously presented two interesting and conflicting stances regarding the Russo-Japanese War (just war vs. anti-war). In this paper, we examine the diverging perspectives presented in Gokyō and explore various patterns of religion–war relations. Through this, we can see an example of two opposing arguments of just war and anti-war that coexisted and competed on the grounds of Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how young Japanese women in contemporary Soka Gakkai (SG) navigate Japan's continuous gender stratified society that remains culturally rooted in the 'salaryman-housewife' ideology. How are young SG members reproducing or contesting these hegemonic gender norms that few seek to emulate? While SG has long proclaimed that it stands for gender equality, its employment structure and organization in Japan until recently reflected the typical male breadwinner ideology that came to underpin the post-war Japanese nation-state and systemic gender division of labor. As shown here, this did not mean that SG women were without power; in fact, in many ways they drove organizational developments in the Japanese context. The recent imposition of the global framework for Sustainable Development Goals of 2015 has enabled SG to more substantially challenge its own patriarchal public front. Based on long-term fieldwork, in-depth interviews and multiple group discussions with SG members in their 20s, this article explores how SG-Japan is being challenged to follow its own discourse of 'globalism' and 'Buddhist humanism', promoted by Daisaku Ikeda since the 1990s. Using Bourdieu's analysis of symbolic power, the research shows how Japan's powerful doxa of 'genderism' that held sway over earlier generations is currently being challenged by a glocalized Buddhist discourse that identifies Nichiren Buddhism as 'humanism' rather than Japanese 'genderism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting out from Okakura Kakuzō and Ernest Fenollosa's famous "discovery" of the Yumedono Kannon, this article will trace the contested construction of the categories of "religion" (shūkyō) and "fine art" (bijutsu) in Meiji Japan. In religious studies circles, it has become commonplace to think of "religion" as the only disciplinary master category with issues. However, not only was "religion" invented in Japan, but "fine art" was invented there too. Indeed, categories from "culture" to "society" to "politics" have similar issues. Attending to these will help refocus crucial debates away from an obsession with translation and onto more fundamental issues about "cultural categories" as such. This paper will advance the debate by explaining the attendant constructions of "religion" and "fine art" as process social kinds. In doing so, it will showcase the museum and the temple as central sites of materialized disputation over global categories and their local instantiation. It will show how assimilation to the world-system in the long nineteenth century was a complex multi-generational process of negotiation and contestation, producing new hybrid spaces, returns, transformations, and innovations that then reflected back on global systems, changing them in subtle but profound ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the Japanese Nichiren Buddhist organization, Soka Gakkai (SG), whose members have supported the political party known as Kōmeitō, or Clean Government Party, in Japan for over half a century. SG members have often been criticized as 'impure' political actors, undergoing frequent public questioning of their motivations for engaging in electoral politics in light of their 'religious' status. The paper shows how the SG members' support for Kōmeitō at a qualitative level indeed transcends the typical demarcations of the 'secular-religious' binary system. However, they also simultaneously challenge the term 'religion' that has functioned as an ideology in the creation of statecraft and in their competition for legitimacy. The current paper is based on long-term fieldwork, extensive interviews, and doctrinal analyses that highlight how socially productive this discourse on religion has been. It also shows how a counter-episteme, rooted in Nichiren's theory of the Risshō Ankoku Ron and the idea of kōsen-rufu, sought to bring a 'Buddha' consciousness to bear on individual and collective action as a model for alternative 'politics'. Contrary to many claims, this did not entail contesting the modern institutional separation of 'church' and 'state', but is rather an attempt to find legitimacy for participating in 'Japan-making' in ways that cannot easily be understood or confined to explanations framed within the 'religious-secular' binary system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similarly to China, Japan has a long history of worshiping fortune gods. The act of making offerings and praying to these deities has been practiced since ancient times. Fortune gods are figures in Japanese folk religion that are believed to bring happiness, hope, and good luck. When speaking of fortune gods in Japan, people will first think of the Seven Lucky Gods. Apart from them, there are also some local fortune gods such as Fukusuke and Sendai Shiro. These gods share some common traits and also have connections with the Japanese folk belief in Fukuko (fortune child). This study adopts a comparative methodology to compare Japan's Seven Lucky Gods with the local Japanese fortune gods as well as Fukuko, and then analyze their similarities. This article argues that the Japanese fortune gods have two major common characteristics: the super power to bring good fortune, and their distinctive appearance. By systematically analyzing the common features of Japanese fortune gods, this study will clarify the mechanism behind their deification as fortune deities and also help us to gain a better insight into the Japanese conceptions of deities and spirits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a critical review of the results of the Asuka Historical Museum's excavation of the Asukadera wooden pagoda site in Japan since 2015, and its implications for Buddhist cultural exchange in East Asia. The second section examines the Asuka Historical Museum's categorization and scientific analysis of the beads, pearls, horse gear, earrings, gold and silver artifacts, mica, and śarīra containers. We assert that most objects excavated from the Asukadera wooden pagoda site are relics from the Asuka era (538–710), when the pagoda was first established in 593, and only a limited number of artifacts, such as the śarīra [relics] container, were added after the wooden pagoda was burned down in 1196. The third section compares the archeological remains from the Asukadera wooden pagoda site and the reliquary objects from the Paekche Wanghŭng-sa site (577) and Mirŭk-sa site (639), which have been conventionally considered to be its models. What the relics from these three historical sites have in common is that they include clothing accessories nobles wore as they participated in the Buddhist rituals of enshrining the śarīra in a wooden pagoda. However, some differences in the metallic craft items, such as crowns and belts, were still found between Paekche and Japan, which was due to the difference in costume styles in the respective countries at the time. Also, horse gear and lamellar armor unearthed from Asukadera sites was not found in Paekche temple sites, but is similar to earlier Japanese kofun (megalithic tumuli) grave goods, which provides evidence that as Buddhism was transferred to Japan from Paekche, it was not accepted in completely the same form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visits to the palace of the sea god are a recurring theme in premodern Japanese narratives, and comparing these stories across time periods reveals shifting perceptions of the supernatural world. The earliest sources for narratives of travel to the palace of the sea god in Japan date from the eighth century, most notably in the stories of Luck of the Mountain and Urashima Tarō. In these stories, the descriptions of the sea god's palace, the relationship of the sea god to the natural world, and even the location of the palace were tied to eighth-century understandings of kingship, weather, and geography. Later adaptations of these stories incorporate features of Buddhist geography, Chinese architecture, Buddhist narrative motifs, and even an alternative vision of supernatural time. These alterations occurred because the eighth-century narratives required adaptation to fit a new political, social, and religious reality. This comparison demonstrates that our vision of the supernatural world is inextricably tied to our understanding of the natural. When our fundamental grasp of the nature of reality changes, our imagination of the supernatural transforms in turn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the appearance of Buddha, texts and images depicting his life have circulated across Eurasia, serving as significant mediums for disseminating Buddhist ideology. Japan has historically been influenced by the canon of Chinese Buddhism while concurrently striving to promote the indigenization of Buddhism. This endeavor reached its peak during the Edo period, notably exemplified in the Shaka goichidaiki zue, illustrated by the world-renowned artist Hokusai Katsushika. Originating from Buddhist believers, it presents an adaptation based on the socio-historical context of pre-modern Japan, particularly manifesting evident shifts in emphasizing royal authority, the salvation of females, and ethical relationships. Entering the Meiji era, this pre-modern illustrated manuscript underwent repeated printing, playing an important role in the modernization of Buddhism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catholicism prides itself on being a 'global religion'. However, just how this 'religion' is contextualized into a specific culture has led to intercultural and intergenerational problems. In Japan, the Filipino–Japanese struggle to fit into a society that sees, in their Catholic upbringing, 'religious' activity that it deems un-Japanese. The concept of 'religion' (shūkyō) in Japan has been largely associated with congregational activity, an aspect that neither Shinto nor Buddhism stress. As a result, the Japanese people label acts such as the purchasing of lucky charms, temple and shrine pilgrimages, visits to power spots, and performing birth or death rituals as 'non-religious' (mushūkyō). On the other hand, they label similar Christian acts as 'religious'. Associating Christianity with 'religion' has had consequences for Japan's Filipino residents and their international families. This paper considers the role the concept of 'religion' plays in the acculturation of Filipino–Japanese children into Japanese society. Through qualitative interviews of four Filipino–Japanese young adults, it delineates, in eight sections, how the discourse of 'religion' isolates Filipino mothers from their 'non-religious' children and husbands. This begins at adolescence and culminates with the children's absence from the Roman Catholic Church of Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tales of Times Now Past (Konjaku Monogatarishū 今昔物語集) is a Japanese setsuwa (anecdotes) collection dating from the early twelfth century. Originally contained in 31 volumes, it includes more than one thousand systematically arranged tales from India, China, and Japan. Despite the fact that Daoism was rejected by the Japanese imperial court as an organized religion, Daoist philosophies and practical systems found their ways into Japan, having a significant and profound influence over Japanese esoteric cosmology and folk beliefs. This article takes the Lord of Mount Tai (CN: Taishan Fujun; JP: Taizan Fukun 泰山府君) as the focus and examines two pertinent stories in Tales of Times Now Past. By placing the texts in a broader historical, religious, and comparative Japan–China perspective, I examine the reshaping of Daoist elements and traditional Chinese philosophical principles in these two stories and thus demonstrate how the Daoist fragments transmitted to Japan were transformed into an integral part of the orthodox structure by the time of the late Heian period in the pursuit of a more organized form of government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on post-WWII developments and the current state of church-related diaconal initiatives in Japan. Pioneering Christians have made significant contributions to the development of social welfare since the Meiji Era (1868–1912). Despite still being a radical minority of around only 1 percent of Japan's population, the nationwide network of Japanese Christian churches, educational institutions, and social welfare organizations makes Christianity's presence felt on a much wider scale. With its focus on postwar efforts, this article gives a brief overview that ranges from education to social reform and medical care, all of which were traditionally incorporated under the notion of "Christian Social Welfare" (Kirisutokyō Shakai Fukushi). The research integrates Japanese and English sources in a methodical, rigorous literature study in response to the following main question: Why is there a complicated relationship in postwar Japan between church practices defined as diakonia and the work of Christian-based social welfare organizations? This article discovers how diakonia as a theological concept is re-orientating the core identity and mission of churches in Japan. A case study from the Reformed Church of Japan's diaconal activities is presented to highlight the conclusion that a complex relationship remains between social welfare organizations and wider church practices enacted under the rubric of diakonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In both Pāli and Chinese vinaya literature, there are various patriarchal lineages of vinaya transmission in which Upāli is honored as the first patriarch. These lineages that start with Upāli can be categorized into two types. The first type is found mainly in Indian vinaya texts, including two groups of texts: the Mohe sengqi lü 摩訶僧祇律 (Skt. Mahāsāṃghika-vinaya), and the Samantapāsādikā, a Pāli Vinaya commentary, as well as its parallel Chinese version, the Shanjianlü piposha 善見律毗婆沙. The second type was constructed by Chinese Vinaya school masters in the Northern Song dynasty, who aimed to establish an orthodox Indian origin for the Vinaya school. After their introduction into China and Japan, the first type of lineages experienced transformation in later Vinaya school works composed by medieval Chinese and Japanese Buddhist monks. A comparative philological study on the Samantapāsādikā and Shanjianlü piposha shows a "mistranslated" Tanwude 曇無德 (Skt. Dharmagupta) in the patriarchal lineage of vinaya transmission in the Shanjianlü piposha, the parallel of which is "Buddharakkhita" in the Pāli sources. Further investigation on the Vinaya school reveals that both Dingbin 定賓 and Gyōnen 凝然, monks from the Vinaya school in later periods, identified the Shanjianlü piposha as a commentary on the Dharmaguptaka-vinaya, and they consequently considered the patriarchal lineage in the Shanjianlü piposha as the patriarchal genealogy of the Dharmaguptaka school, with the purpose of establishing an orthodoxy of the Vinaya school that could be traced back to Upāli. Furthermore, in the genealogy in the Mohe sengqi lü, Gyōnen associated the master Fahu 法護 with the Dharmaguptaka school. Yuanzhao 元照, an eminent Vinaya school monk, criticized the second type of lineages as false construction. Instead, he established a patriarchal lineage that starts with Tanwude, the editor and compiler of the Dharmaguptaka-vinaya, for the Chinese Vinaya school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wartime propaganda slogan Hakkō Ichiu 八紘一宇 ("Unify the whole world under one roof") was loaded with historical meaning: Japan was glorifying the aggression and colonization of war by fostering a specific interpretation of the narrative about how Jimmu, the first emperor, founded the nation in State Shinto mythology. In this article, I consider this slogan as central to a religious rhetoric with nationalistic overtones and I analyze it in terms of etymology, connotation, and rhetorical devices. First, the expression Hakkō Ichiu originated in ancient East Asian cosmology, before becoming one of the rhetorical expressions of State Shinto, emphasizing the extent of the imperial reign. Second, the Nichirenist activist Tanaka Chigaku rediscovered it and gave it an expansionist connotation, fostering a syncretistic approach mixing Buddhist and Shinto features. Finally, during wartime, in official documents, lyrics, trademarks, etc., the slogan gave way to a number of graphic and monumental expressions, reinforcing its connections with militarism and ultranationalism. The most notable of these material expressions was the Hakkō Ichiu Tower, erected to commemorate the 2600th anniversary of the foundation of the nation and perpetuate the State Shinto rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the 740s in Japan, the emperor established Buddhist temples in nearly all the provinces, in which three Buddhist scriptures were chanted to avert natural disasters. Tōdaiji, in the recently constructed capital, was the head temple of a network of Temples of Bright Golden Light and Four Heavenly Kings to Protect the State. The principal Buddhist scripture followed in these temples was the Golden Light Sūtra, translated from Sanskrit into Chinese in Tang China at the beginning of the 8th century. This article investigates the history of an understudied example of one of these temples, called Bonshakuji. Emperor Kanmu (r. 781–806) repurposed it in 786 after the introduction from China of novel rituals to protect the state. It had among the most important Buddhist temple libraries, which came to rival perhaps only that of Tōdaiji through the 12th century. I also examine how and why scholar officials and powerful monastics, particularly those associated with the so-called esoteric Tendai and Shingon temples of Enryakuji and Miidera, and Tōji and Daigoji, respectively, utilized the library of Bonshakuji and older and novel state protection texts kept there to preserve early Japanese state-supported Buddhist worldmaking efforts long after that state had become virtually bankrupt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kyoto's Gion festival has arguably the best-documented history of all festivals (sairei) in Japan, and studies of its development have heavily influenced our understanding of festivals in general. Yet we must expect that our knowledge of this history is partial at most. Extant archives on its late classical and medieval history derive from a narrow group of festival actors, and are therefore intrinsically biased. This article looks at current reconstructions of the festival's origin and development, addressing primarily the following questions: Which groups of actors are the historical record hiding from us? Is there a world of ritual action, beliefs, and concerns that we are missing entirely? Origin legends have been used throughout history to attribute meaning to the festival procedures. Today as in the past, these legends are always accompanied by narratives of continuity: at its core, it is implied, the festival remains unchanged. Such legends reflect the interests of actors and patrons of different ages, and changes in the festival's context have required origin tales to be updated or even replaced. What do such narrative innovations reveal about the festival's changing place in society at different historical junctures? Do such legends contain traces of the activities of actors who have since disappeared, taking their archives with them? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I connect the invention of Japanese 'religion' since the Meiji era (1868–1912) with the invention of other modern imaginaries, particularly the Japanese Nation State and Japanese History. The invention of these powerful fictions in Japan was a specific, localised example of a global process. The real significance of this idea that religion has always existed in all times and places is that it normalises the idea of the non-religious secular as the arena of universal reason and progress. The invention of Japanese 'religion' had—and still has—a significant function in the wider, global context of colonial capital and the continual search for new 'investment' opportunities. Meiji Japan illustrates, in fascinating detail, a process of cognitive hegemony, and the way a globalising discourse on 'progress' transformed the plunder of colonial sites into a civilising mission. The idea that there is a universal type of practice, belief or institution called 'religion' as distinct from government, 'politics' or 'science' was not only new to Japan. It hardly existed in England or more widely in Protestant Europe and North America until the eighteenth or even 19th century. The idea of a secular constitutional nation state was only emergent in the late 18th century with the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. Most of Europe—including the colonial powers England and France—were still Christian confessional church states through most of the 19th century. The franchise was granted only to Christian men of substantial property, and denied to women, servants, wage labour, colonised subjects, and slaves. This critical, deconstructive narrative helps us to see more clearly the ideological function of the generic category of religion in the wider configuration of modern secular categories such as constitutional nation state, political economy, nature, history, and science. I also discuss the relation between History as a secular academic science, and the invention of 'the Past' in universal Time. I argue here that the invention of the Past by professional Historians has a significant role in transforming modern inventions such as 'religion' and the secular categories into the inherent and universal order of things, as though they have always been everywhere. I reveal this on-going process of ideological reproduction by close readings of some recent 'histories of Japan' and the way they uncritically construct 'the Past' in the terms of contemporary configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates two issues regarding the Buddhism of premodern Japanese martial arts. The first issue concerns the historical channels through which Buddhist elements were adopted into martial lineages, and the second pertains to the general character of the Buddhism that can be found in the various martial art initiation documents (densho). As for the first issue, while previous scholarship underscored Shugendō (mountain asceticism) as an important factor in the earliest phases of the integration process of Buddhist elements in martial schools, this study focuses on textual evidence that points to what is referred to as "medieval Shinto"—a Shinto tradition that heavily relied on Esoteric Buddhist (Mikkyō) teachings—in scholarship. Regarding the second issue, although numerous studies have already shown the indebtedness of premodern martial schools to Buddhist teachings drawn mainly from the Esoteric Buddhist or Zen traditions, this article sheds more light on the nature of these teachings by drawing attention to the fact that they often emphasize the Buddhist thought of isshin or "One Mind". The article illustrates how this thought was adopted in premodern martial art texts and in doing so clarifies the reasons why Buddhism was valued in those arts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines a talismanic culture in Japanese religions through the case of the Chintaku reifu 鎮宅霊符 ("numinous talismans for the stabilization of residences"). Whereas previous scholarship viewed the set of seventy-two talismans as having an ancient Korean origin or connection to the Onmyōdō 陰陽道 tradition in Japan, my analysis of the talismans suggests that they arrived in Japan directly from Ming China around the late Muromachi period. Once introduced, the talismans were widely adopted across different religious traditions such as Buddhism, Shinto, Confucianism, and Shugendō under the name Chintaku reifujin 鎮宅霊符神 (the god of Chintaku reifu talismans) in Japan. Locating the talismans as a major force that shaped the medieval and early modern Japanese religious landscape, this article argues that the worship was not an extension or variation of Chinese Big Dipper worship but a sophisticated form of religious mosaic, which allowed an array of different forms of doctrinal thinking, cosmological knowledge, and ritual logics to coexist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post-World War II era, Sōka Gakkai has deployed the terminology and concept of "religion" (shūkyō 宗教) in a variety of contexts and to a variety of ends. Do these positions simply reflect a post-war strategic stance? Do they have deeper historical and philosophical roots? A careful reading of key texts by founding president Makiguchi Tsunesaburō 牧口常三郎 (1871–1944) suggests that, from its inception as the Value-Creating Education Society (Sōka Kyōiku Gakkai 創価教育学会) in the 1930s, the movement has occupied an ambiguous space, relative to the conceptualization and practice of "religion", as these were imported at the start of the Meiji Era (1868–1912), adopted and indigenized to respond to the cultural, social and political exigencies of modernizing Japan. Examples of Makiguchi's heterodoxy, relative to the established understanding of "religion" and its role, include: the rejection of specific ideas of "religion", in relation to education and science, as represented in the writings of such intellectuals as Inoue Tetsujirō 井上哲次郎 and Ishiwara Atsushi 石原純; refusal to accept the official definition of Shintō as non-religion; positing an essential continuity between faith/trust among human subjects and faith directed at ideas and objects typically considered "religious"; promoting the idea of worldly benefit, as a result of faith in and practice of "religion". A careful reading of Makiguchi's complex, and often heterodox, discourse, relative to the conceptual category of "religion", can frame a more nuanced interpretation of his ultimate heterodoxy—his rejection of the Ise Shrine amulet, an act for which he was arrested and confined to prison in July 1943. It can also clarify the basis for the Sōka Gakkai's post-war deployments of the concept of religion, and create a more flexible and expansive interpretative space for considering the organization's discourse and praxis in the post-war era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of Japanese religion have recently drawn attention to the global repositioning, "greening", and international popularization of Shinto. However, research on Shinto ritual practice and material religion continues to focus predominantly on cases located within the borders of the Japanese state. This article explores the globalization of Shinto through transnational practitioners' strategic glocalization of everyday ritual practices outside of Japan. Drawing upon digital ethnographic fieldwork conducted in online Shinto communities, I examine three case studies centering on traditional ritual offerings made at the domestic altar (kamidana): rice, sake, and sakaki branches. I investigate how transnational Shinto communities hold in tension a multiplicity of particularistic understandings of Shinto locality and authenticity when it comes to domestic ritual practice. While relativistic approaches to glocalization locate the sacred and authentic in an archetypical or idealized form of Japanese tradition rooted in its environment, creolization and transformation valorize the particularities of one's personal surroundings and circumstances. Examining these strategies alongside recent and historical cases in Shinto ritual at shrines within Japan, I propose that attending to processes of "parallel glocalization" helps to illuminate the quasi-fictive notion of the religious "homeland" and close the perceived gap in authenticity between ritual practices at home and abroad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the research and practice developed during my doctorate and fieldwork in Japan. In this work, I consider the implication of using the critical religion approach and the visual ethnographic methodology for critically investigating what is commonly labelled as religion and its representation as observed in Japan with particular reference to my fieldwork in Tohoku. I begin by reviewing the concept of religion in Japan, in particular the character of the idea and the use of the critical religion approach. I continue with an analysis of ethnographic filmmaking, focusing on cases that inspired my visual ethnographic filmic approach. I discuss how the two methods informed each other, creating a visual ethnographic technique founded on the critical religion approach as well as sensory, participatory and creative ethnographic filmmaking methods I developed and applied to my documentary, Tohoku Monogatari—A Story from the Northeast of Japan. With this article, I contend the necessity of a critical approach to the representation of religions which could be achieved with what I named the critical visual religion approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The jindai moji (神代文字—"characters of the Age of the Gods") are pseudocharacters (疑字: "giji") created in the early modern period, which purport to be an ancient Japanese writing script. One of the most famous examples of literature written in the jindai moji is the epic poem Hotsuma Tsutae, which is regarded as an account of the development of medieval mythology in the early modern age. It includes tales of evil lords known as the hatare (rendered as 魔王 in Kanbun), who bring chaos to the land and are vanquished by a divine army led by gods. Ultranationalists in early modern Japan enthusiastically embraced these jindai moji writings. This article examines the significance of the divine battles in the early modern jindai moji literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]