Journal Articles
Why Religious Studies?
Religious Studies Review 50, no. 2 (2024). Open access.
[Editor’s note. 50#2 is our second anniversary issue, marking the fiftieth year of RSR’s publication. To mark this wonderful milestone, we have asked a select group of religious studies scholars, nominated by our over forty RSR area editors, to write about the state of the field of religious studies from their particular disciplinary or area perspective. What follows is the second tranche of essays of this project. Each essay considers what the field of religious studies looks like today, where it is going theoretically, topically, and thematically, what issues are critical to addressing, and why the study of religion should remain a vital part of the academy and undergraduate students’ education. Our thanks to the contributors for making this second special issue possible. Although we originally aimed to complete this project over two issues, we want to publish several more, which will appear in our third anniversary issue (50#3).]
Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form
(co-authored with Levi McLaughlin, Aike P. Rots, and Chika Watanabe)
Journal of the American Academy of Religion
A growing body of research describes connections between religion and economic activity through the language of commodification and marketization. Although this scholarship rightly challenges the assumption that religion is or should be divorced from worldly concerns, it still relies on distinctions between religion and the economy as isolable, reified entities. Rejecting this binary approach as untenable, we argue that studying the corporate form enriches the academic study of religion by providing concrete examples of how people create institutions and how organizations turn human bodies into resources while also fostering individuals’ devotion to collective agendas. Attention to the corporate form enables us to keep money and power in view as we trace historical formations and current manifestations of religious organizations. We investigate Japanese genealogies of the corporate form to elucidate some generalizable principles for how nonprofit religions and for-profit companies alike generate missions, families, individuals, and publics.
Varieties of Religious Freedom in Japanese Buddhist Responses to the 1899 Religions Bill
Asian Journal of Law & Society vol. 3, no. 1 (May 2016): 49-70
ABSTRACT: Historians have often described early-twentieth-century Japanese Buddhists as ignorant of the importance of religious freedom, myopically focused on their parochial agendas, and sycophantically aligned with the state. Such depictions assume that the attitudes of a minority of elite Buddhist clerics represent majority Buddhist opinion; they also problematically treat religious freedom as a universal principle rather than a historically contingent concept subject to the conflicting claims of competing interest groups. This article highlights the contingency of religious freedom law and the diversity of its interpretation by introducing three discrete attitudes that surfaced in Buddhist responses to a controversial Bill advanced by the Japanese government in December 1899. Tracing differences between statist, corporatist, and latitudinarian interpretations of religious freedom, it shows that religious freedom is never unitary or uniform in any time or place.
Keywords: Japan, Buddhism, religious freedom, legislation, activism
A promo video for my forthcoming article in Material Religion. For more info on Ryohoji, see the temple website (www.ryohoji.jp) or visit the temple's YouTube channel: 松栄山了法寺.
The Buddhist Virtues of Raging Lust and Crass Materialism in Contemporary Japan
Material Religion 11, no. 4 (2016 [2015]): 485–506
ABSTRACT: The idea that Japanese Buddhism is in a state of inevitable decline is widely accepted by scholars, clerics, and journalists as both demographic fact and doctrinal truth. However, this analysis fails to capture the complicated dynamic between the longstanding narrative of decline and the equally longstanding reality of Buddhist survival. Using animated music videos, plastic figurines, and illustrated merchandise created in collaboration between the for-profit company Hachifuku and the small Tokyo temple Ryōhōji as examples of a broader trend, this article shows that the very things that are taken as evidence of Buddhist decline – crass materialism, raging lust, and blissful ignorance of the finer points of doctrine – are actually the things that allow Buddhism to survive and thrive in contemporary Japan. I conclude with a critical analysis of the political economy of the decline narrative, showing that religious studies scholars, mass media, and Japanese ecclesial institutions all benefit from a story that is only provisionally true.
Keywords: Japan, Buddhism, anime, sex, consumerism, decline, otaku, manga
Errata: The video links listed in the article are incorrect due to a copyediting error. See companion videos to the article below:
An English translation of the song "Tera Zukkyun" by Toromi a.k.a. ToroBenten, produced in collaboration with ARM (IOSYS) in 2009. ©Hachifuku. This translation is purely for academic purposes and is solely intended to serve as an accompanying media file for my forthcoming article "The Buddhist Virtues of Raging Lust and Crass Materialism in Contemporary Japan," (Material Religion).
An English translation of the song NamuXCyun by Toromi a.k.a. ToroBenten and Kikōden Misa a.k.a. KissYouTen Misa. Music and lyrics by ARM (IOSYS) and Tano Yoshimi. ©Hachifuku. This translation is purely for academic purposes and is solely intended to serve as an accompanying media file for my forthcoming article "The Buddhist Virtues of Raging Lust and Crass Materialism in Contemporary Japan," (Material Religion).
Katō Totsudō speaks to a rapt audience at Aoyama Hall.
Free Inquiry and Japanese Buddhist Studies: The Case of Katō Totsudō
Japanese Religions 39, nos. 1–2 (2015 [2014]): 31–51.
ABSTRACT: This paper argues that an influential but hitherto largely unexamined strain of Japanese Buddhist studies emerged from the ideal of “free inquiry” (jiyū tōkyu 自由討究) advocated by the Fraternity of New Buddhists (Shin Bukkyōto Dōshikai 新佛教徒同志會), a group of lay intellectuals and disaffected priests primarily active in Tokyo from 1900 to 1915. Although this group disbanded in the late 1910s, the New Buddhist project of “free inquiry” reached its zenith in the 1920s, when former members such as Katō Totsudō 加藤咄堂 (1870-1949) prodigiously published evidentiary scholarship on Buddhism while also advocating normative policy aims such as the eradication of superstition and the inculcation of “a sound Buddhist faith” in the populace. Katō’s “free inquiry” upheld the ideal of academic freedom as a way of countering sectarianism and superseding clerical authority, but as an example of activist Buddhist studies scholarship that clearly influenced contemporary religions policy, it was hardly politically neutral.
Keywords: Free inquiry – New Buddhism – Katō Totsudō – social edification – politics of religious freedom
Religions Policies during the Allied Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952
Religion Compass 8, no. 9 (2014): 275–286.
ABSTRACT: Religion played a prominent role in the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) that followed the brutal Pacific War (1941–1945). Officially, the occupiers were to promulgate religious freedom, separate religion from the state, and encourage the Japanese people to develop a ‘desire for religious freedom’. Promulgating religious freedom was the easy part. Separating religion from the state without infringing on religious freedom was far more challenging, and the ambiguous objective of instilling a desire for religious freedom in the Japanese populace was nearly impossible to measure. This review article provides a brief overview of trends in Occupation research, traces historical changes and paradoxes in Occupation religions policy and examines the unexpected and frequently ironic outcomes of that policy. It provides a cursory look into the postwar efflorescence of ‘new religions’ and the politically fraught category of ‘State Shintō.’ It closes with an overview of archives and records on the Occupation.
Keywords: Japan, United States, military occupation, religious freedom, new religions, State Shintō
Detail from Shindo Fuyuki et al. Karisuma, vol. 1
Horrific "Cults" and Comic Religion: Manga after Aum
Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39, no. 1 (2012): 127–151
ABSTRACT: After the 1995 Aum Shinrikyō オウム真理教 sarin gas attacks, influential commentators suggested that enthralling apocalyptic narratives characteristic of manga (illustrated serial novels) made Aum members prone to extremism and violence. This article inverts this interpretation, showing that popular manga published after 1995 have exhibited—and reflected—morbid fascination with the sensational fodder provided by the Aum incident itself. Early manga responses advanced variations on a horrific “evil cult” trope in which marginal religions modeled on Aum were graphically depicted as hotbeds of sexual depravity, fraud, and violence. Over time, equally chilling—if less sensational—psychological thrillers appeared that interrogated the aspects of human nature that allow for “cult-like” behavior. Finally, one very recent manga has sublimated the formerly popular “evil cult” trope by divorcing “religion” from “cults” and rehabilitating the former through mildly irreverent comedy.
Keywords: Aum Shinrikyō—manga—“evil cult” trope—Believers—Death Note—Saint Young Men—Twentieth Century Boys
Detail from Urasawa Naoki's Twentieth Century Boys
マンガと宗教の現在－『二十世紀少年』と二十一世紀の宗教意識
『現代宗教２００８』
See the abstract for "Horrific 'Cults' and Comic Religion" above for the general gist of this article, which focuses particularly on Urasawa Naoki's magnum opus Twentieth Century Boys.
Still from Miyazaki Hayao's film Princess Mononoke
Shūkyō Asobi and Miyazaki Hayao's Anime
Nova Religio 10, no. 3 (2007): 73–95
ABSTRACT: This article attempts to address the lack of terminology concerning the long-standing but often overlooked relationship between religion and entertainment in Japan, arguing that these two seemingly discrete and opposing fields are often conflated. Examining the underlying thought behind the animation films of director Miyazaki Hayao, and investigating audience responses to those works, the article suggests that this conflation—religious entertainment or playful religion—can best be described by the neologism shūkyō asobi. Composed of the words "religion" and "play" in Japanese, shūkyō asobi jettisons the artificial distinction between popular entertainment and religion in favor of describing the common space between them, as well as describing the utilization of that space by various interest groups. This deployment of simultaneously religious and playful media or action can result in the creation of entirely new religious doctrines, interpretations, rituals, and beliefs.
This article won the Thomas Robbins Award for Excellence in the Study of New Religious Movements.
Erratum: Ishii Kenji's given name is mistakenly rendered as "Kendo" in the notes.