"Religion, Networking, and Social Issues in Japan: The Case of the Kyōdan Fuchi Kenkyūsho Konwakai." Japanese Religions 35/1-2 (2011): 87-100 (original) (raw)
Related papers
One of the fascinating characteristics about the study of religion in general is how quickly change occurs regarding the topics we think are important and the methods we use to investigate them. For scholars working on religions in Japan, new discoveries, situations, understandings, and affiliations nurture fresh perspectives on projects ranging from the historical to the contemporary. The following summary of the roundtable discussion at the IAHR conference in Erfurt, Germany references some of these themes and ideas. (The speakers appeared in alphabetical order based on their surnames). course, scholars must satisfy critical academic standards within their disciplines, but this does not preclude finding other venues for communicating the richness of Japanese religious cultures. To this end, John encouraged the creation of short videos as a way to engage and connect with younger and more diverse audiences. He also suggested Academia.edu as a kind of public commons for disseminating published and seminar-level work. Finally, echoing a point raised by Jørn, John said he would like to see more collaborative projects between researchers, citing the example of Christoph Brumann's "temple economies of Asia" initiative sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle, Germany).
New Religious Movements: New Panorama of Japanese Religion
New religions have been especially appealing to people in a rapidly changing society. Conservative and traditional moral values are often articulated in such a changing society. In a changing Japanese society, conservative and traditional moral values are often articulated; modes of hopes, understanding and meaning are provided; meaningful teaching and promises of salvation for people are offered. It should be mentioned that the various Japanese traditional ways of religious practices, such as magical healing, spirit possessions, and the gaining of worldly benefits, are the standard features of almost all of the New Religious Movements in Japan. This article contributes to the discussion on the background of New Religious Movements, the meaning of NMRs, their standard features, and persistent themes from a Japanese perspective. Thus, this paper proceeds by presenting some of the different socio-historical contexts based on which new religious movements emerged. It is an attempt of the current paper that can help us explain and evaluate the socio-historical facts of the rise of New Religious Movements in Japan. In addition, the current paper presents how New Religious Movements demonstrate their magnetic attraction for the ordinary people in Japan and create a new panorama providing the opportunity of being treated in a particular way. Finally, as for implication, this paper gives importance to some crucial issues that focus on further study of religion in Japan from different approaches in future that cannot be avoided the significant problems of democratisation, secularisation, and atheism in Japan. Keywords New Religious Movements. Persistent Themes. New Panorama. Democratisation. Secularisation. Organisational development. Multiplicity of religions .
The first gathering of the year of the neighborhood association in downtown Kyoto (where I live) took place in January 2014. About twenty members of the association (chōnaikai) were present and participated in the Atagokō ritual, which was held at the association's assembly house (chōya). Here, we received religious-related objects including sacred sake (miki) and rice and an amulet (mamori fuda) from the Atago Shrine.¹ It was as if we had paid a ritual visit (sanpai) to the shrine without ever leaving the neighborhood. The ritual was followed by the customary shinnenkai, or New Year's party, in a restaurant in the vicinity. Such a mixture of secular and religious elements in the activities of neighborhood associations seems to be at odds with the common self-description of Japanese people as "non religious" (mushūkyō). As a matter of fact, there is a high degree of participation in Japan in certain rituals and religious events, such as visiting temples and shrines at New Year's, ancestor veneration, taking care of the neighborhood's street votive shrine, and organizing festivals.² In this chapter, I analyze how the borders between the secular and the religious are perceived and blurred at the community level in Kyoto. What emerges from the fieldwork I conducted in the city from 2004 to 2010, and more recently, since September 2013, is the ambiguous attitude of Japanese people towards the articulation of the secular at the local level, despite, or perhaps also because of, their self-description as "non-religious."
"Japanese Religions, Inclusivism, and the Global Context." Japanese Religions 36/1-2 (2011): 83-99.
Japanese Religions 36/1-2: 83-99 , 2011
The analysis of various discourses emerging from contemporary Japanese religions shows that the endorsement of religious pluralism ("all religions have equal dignity") may not go beyond a formal stage, and that the underlying pattern in interreligious communication is rather that of religious inclusivism ("other religions are approximations to the truth and therefore inferior"). Th is attitude toward the religious ' other' may be found in Shintō, Japanese Buddhism, and in new religious movements, and is meaningfully related in many cases to the nihonjin-ron and nihonkyō-ron discourses and the critique of monotheism. Th is article also illustrates how the option for religious inclusivism in Japan may be related to the dynamics of globalization in various ways. On the one hand, it counts as a repositioning of 'native' religious traditions within a global society characterized by the progressive relativization of religious values, and shows an awareness of the world as a ' single place.' On the other hand, it may be closely related to the push toward glocalization and the role of religion as a resource for the solution of global problems.
2004
T h e N a n z a n I n s t i t u t e fo r Religion a n d Culture w as e s ta b lis h e d as a research center in 1974. Through the years it has published widely in the area of religious studies, including the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, a number of series of books on Asian religions in Western languages and in Japanese, and a series of books in Japanese with the contents of symposiums conducting interreligious dia logue. The Institute is also active in supporting inter-religious organizations and networks such the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, CORMOS (Conference on Religion and Modern Society), and Inter-religio. The ideal of the Nanzan Institute is for a relatively small number of scholars to work together intimately in close cooperation to promote dialogue through aca demic research. Thus, for many years, as an Institute we focused on working closely with small groups such as the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies and its Japanese counterpart, the Tozai S...
New Religious Movements of Japan: An Overview of New Paradigm
A new stratum of religious affiliation emerged in Japan from the first half of the nineteenth century onward and quite a large number of movements were formed as a result of social, cultural, economic and political changes in Japan. To make a distinction from old fashioned religious traditions a wave of brash new and lively religious movements (known as " new new religious movements) has come into prominence in Japan, during the 1980s. Attracting equally the attention of the media and intelligentsia these new religious groups expanded their membership rapidly. They successfully appealed the Japanese populace because they emerged expressing anti modern and Japanocentric sentiments as well as focusing on miracles, spirit possession and a view of causation that is rooted very firmly in Japanese folk tradition in the midst of a rapidly changing Japanese society in terms of technology, modernization and internationalization. This paper aims to answer the question how religious discourse in contemporary Japan tends to keep pace with the changing patterns of society, highlighting the common characteristics and the dynamic role of new religious movements in media, politics and their penetration across the globe. It is hoped that this humble effort will help students of religion to some scholarly ways of looking at new paradigms of religious thinking in Japan.
Religion as a social problem: The 11th Nanzan symposium
2002
In the spring of 2002, a symposium on Religion as a Social Problem was held at the Nanzan Institute, bringing scholars of religion into dialogue with representatives from the media and the legal profession, all of whom have taken an interest in the question of cults in contemporary Japanese society. The papers, responses, and a resume of the discussions are to be published later this year in Japanese. What follows is a brief synopsis of the event.