This book analyzes the variety of ways through which Japanese religions (Buddhism, Shintō, and new religious movements) contribute to the dynamics of accelerated globalization in recent decades. It looks at how Japanese religions provide material to cultural global flows, thus acting as carriers of globalization, and how they respond to these flows by shaping new glocal identities. The book highlights how, paradoxically, these processes of religious hybridization may be closely intertwined with the promotion of cultural chauvinism. It shows how on the one hand religion in Japan is engaged in border negotiation with global subsystems such as politics, secular education, and science, and how on the other hand, it tries to find new legitimation by addressing pressing global problems such as war, the environmental crisis, and economic disparities left unsolved by the dominant subsystems. A significant contribution to advancing an understanding of modern Japanese religious life, this book is of interest to academics working in the fields of Japanese Studies, Asian history and religion and the sociology of religion.

Religion is resurgent across the globe. In many countries religion is a powerful source of political mobilization, and in some a potent social cleavage. In some religion reinforces the state, in others it provides the space for resistance. This book contains a series of detailed studies examining religion and politics in specific countries or regions. The cases include countries with one dominant religious tradition, and others with two or more competing traditions. They include Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam, Hinduism, Shinto and Buddhism. They include states where religion and politics are closely linked, and others with at least a low wall of separation between church and state. The cases are organized by the type of religious marketplace, but allow many other comparisons as well. We develop some generalizations from the cases, and hope that they will be a fertile source of theorizing for others.

This volume brings together the insights of theories of management and marketing to give an original, alternative view of the organizational dynamics of globalizing Asian New Religious Movements (NRMs) and established religions. It also provides insights into the way the traditional religions are fighting back as they lose numbers to NRMs and are forced to adopt innovative proselytizing strategies and a new global mindset. In order to develop this path-breaking theoretical perspective on globalizing Asian religions, eleven authors in this collection have recast their original empirical data on individual Asian religions to focus on the way these organizations are managed in an overseas or global context, by examining the structure, organizational culture, management style, leadership principles and marketing strategies of the religious movements they had hitherto studied from the perspective of the sociology of religion, or religious studies. Others have adopted a national, regional or global focus in relation to the transnational reach of specifically Japanese religions in North and South America, the EU and Africa. The book examines strategies for global proselytization in a variety of local ethnographic contexts, and thus contributes to the scholarly work on the "glocalisation" of religions.

Written by leading scholars in the field, this book provides new insights, based on original research, into the full spectrum of modern Japanese political-religious activity: from the prewar uses of Shinto in shaping the modern imperial nation-state to the postwar 'new religions' that have challenged the power of the political establishment.

The Global Repositioning of Japanese Religions: An Integrated Approach explores how Japanese religions respond to the relativizing effects of globalization, thereby repositioning themselves as global players. Organized around concrete case studies focusing on the engagement of Japanese Buddhism, Shinto, and several new religious movements in areas such as ecology, inter-religious dialogue, and politics, this book shows that the globalization of Japanese religions cannot be explained simply in terms of worldwide institutional expansion. Rather, it is a complex phenomenon conditioned by a set of pervasive factors: changes in consciousness, the perception of affinities and resonances at the systemic and cultural levels, processes of decontextualization, and a wide range of power issues including the re-enactment of cultural chauvinism. The author investigates these dynamics systematically with attention to broader theoretical questions, cross-cultural similarities, the definition of religion and the perils of ethnocentrism, in order to develop his Global Repositioning model, which constitutes an integrated approach to the study of Japanese religions under globalization. An empirically-grounded and theoretically-informed study of the effects of global trends on local religions, this book will appeal to scholars and students with interests in globalization, religious studies, Japanese studies, Hawaii, sociology, anthropology, and ecology.

This insightful volume dispels the common notion that Buddhism is not a missionary religion by revealing Asian Buddhists as active agents in the propagation of their faith. It presents at the same time a new framework with which to study missionary activity in both Buddhist and other religious traditions. Included are case studies of Theravada, Chinese, and Tibetan Buddhist teachers and congregations, as well as the Pure Land, Shingon, Zen, and Soka Gakkai traditions of Japan. Contributors examine both foreign and domestic missions and the activities of emigrant communities, showing the resources and strategies garnered by late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century Buddhists who worked to uphold and further their respective traditions, often under difficult circumstances. Based on anthropological fieldwork and historical research, the essays break new ground and provide better analytical tools for studying mission activity than previously available. They provide instructive comparisons with Anglo-American Protestant missionary thinking and offer insights into the internal dynamics of Sri Lankan and Japanese missions as they make their way in Protestant and Catholic societies. Also included are nuanced studies of two major missionary figures in late twentieth-century Chinese Buddhism and a fascinating look at the present Dalai Lama’s relationships with his devotees and the American government, viewed through an exposition of the abiding tradition within Tibetan Buddhism that combines mission activity with the political goals of exiled lamas. Contributors: Stuart Chandler; Peter B. Clarke; C. Julia Huang; Steven Kemper; Linda Learman; Sarah LeVine; Richard K. Payne; Cristina Rocha; George J. Tanabe, Jr.; Gray Tuttle.

After the introduction of the "long-term resident" visa, the mass-migration of Nikkeis (Japanese Brazilians) has led to roughly 190,000 Brazilian nationals living in Japan. While the ancestry-based visa confers Nikkeis' right to settlement virtually as a right of blood, their ethnic ambiguity and working-class profile often prevent them from feeling at home in their supposed ethnic homeland. In response, many have converted to Pentecostalism, reflecting the explosive trend across Latin America since the 1970s. Jesus Loves Japan offers a rare window into lives at the crossroads of return migration and global Pentecostalism. Suma Ikeuchi argues that charismatic Christianity appeals to Nikkei migrants as a "third culture"--one that transcends ethno-national boundaries and offers a way out of a reality marked by stagnant national indifference. Jesus Loves Japan insightfully describes the political process of homecoming through the lens of religion, and the ubiquitous figure of the migrant as the pilgrim of a transnational future.