My latest short piece is now up over at the Nonreligion and Secularity Research Network blog.

The piece offers some background on Faking Liberties while hitting some of the main points of the book. There was only so much I could do in ~800 words so I had to leave a LOT out. For example, I didn’t have room to talk about Japanese American Buddhists in Hawai`i, the postwar birth of human rights in occupied Japan, the role of Christian missionaries, land reform policy, anti-Communism efforts in Occupation policy, and so on. That will all have to await the book (which is now fully indexed on Google books for those who want a sneak peek).

My next public-facing piece should be out in the couple of weeks over at Killing the Buddha, and I’ve got a podcast episode with Tristan Grunow of Meiji at 150 that should drop in that time frame as well. Updates soon!