East Asian Religions

The aim of this book is to acquaint its reader with the rich thought traditions of Asia (India, China, Japan, Korea, Tibet and South-East Asia), which have mutually influenced each other throughout history and consequently share large parts of their intellectual heritage. It can serve both as an introductory textbook for the future specialist and as a source of background knowledge for those whose primary interest lies outside Asian studies, be it religious studies, Western philosophy, political scienceor anything else. No previous knowledge of the history or cultures of this region is presupposed, entanglement in specific debates is avoided and names and terms have been kept to the minimum. If you think that an educated person anywhere in the world should know who are St.Augustine, Luther and Mother Theresa, or Aristotle, Kant and Wittgenstein, or Machiavelli, Rousseau and Marx, or what is the meaning of "cardinal sin", cogito and "separation of powers", the names and terms printed bold in this book are those you should be familiar with from a range of Asian points of view. I have done my best to keep the scope of the book equally balanced throughout and to maintain a more or less similar level of coverage in all areas. The book thus addresses all teachings, schools and individuals that have usually been included in the range of such introductory intellectual histories. However, the reader will notice that some authors and ideas not always present in similar overviews, such as feminist theorists, have been given more space here than has been customary up to now. [Extract from the preface]

The “Sōtō Kyōkai Shushōgi [The Meaning of Practice-Realization in the Sōtō Fellowship],” known more widely simply as “Shushōgi,” first appeared in 1890, partly in response to the quickly evolving changes and tumult of the Meiji era.  It essentially consists of interwoven passages selected from Dōgen’s voluminous magnum opus, SHŌBŌGENZŌ [THE TRUE DHARMA EYE].  ENGAGING DŌGEN’S ZEN: THE PHILOSOPHY OF PRACTICE AS AWAKENING offers series of critical reflections on "Shushōgi" and an extended commentary on Dōgen’s “Fukanzazengi” that would be helpful to those who are cultivating a Zen practice, other forms of Buddha Dharma practice, or even non-Buddhist spiritual practice. Opening with a series of introductory essays regarding various facets of “Shushōgi” and Dōgen more generally, this volume divides “Shushōgi” into thirteen sections and links each of these sections to the fascicles in SHŌBŌGENZŌ from which they are drawn. Thirteen scholar-practitioners provide commentaries on these sections that aim to speak to contemporary practice needs while at the same time being intellectually stimulating.

This essay focuses on the later writings of Heidegger, with his radical attempt
to rethink religion, and Folk Shinto. The first two sections outline the gods and
the fourfold in Heidegger’s later thought, while the subsequent sections discuss
the resonances these have within Shinto, particularly kami 神 and shrines.

This paper explores the distinctive funerary tradition of the Unification Movement, a globally active South Korean new religious movement founded in 1954. Its funerary tradition centres on the so-called Seonghwa (formerly Seunghwa) Ceremony, which was introduced in January 1984. The paper traces the doctrinal context and the origin narrative before delineating the ceremony itself in its Korean expression, including its preparatory and follow-up stages, as well as its short-lived adaptation for non-members. Notably, with more and more first-generation adherents passing away-most visibly in respect to the leadership culminating in the Seonghwa Ceremony of the founder himself in 2012-the funerary tradition has become an increasingly conspicuous property of the Unificationist lifeworld. This paper adds to a largely uncharted area in the study of East Asian new religious movements, namely the examination of their distinctive deathscapes, as spelled out in theory and practice.

For several centuries, Japanese scholars have argued that their nation’s culture—including its language, religion and ways of thinking—is somehow unique. The darker side of this rhetoric, sometimes known by the English term “Japanism” (nihon-jinron), played no small role in the nationalist fervor of the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While much of the so-called “ideology of Japanese uniqueness” can be dismissed, in terms of the Japanese approach to “religion,” there may be something to it. This paper highlights some distinctive—if not entirely unique—features of the way religion has been categorized and understood in Japanese tradition, contrasting these with Western (i.e., Abrahamic), and to a lesser extent Indian and Chinese understandings. Particular attention is given to the priority of praxis over belief in the Japanese religious context.

Des siècles durant, des chercheurs japonais ont soutenu que leur culture – soit leur langue, leur religion et leurs façons de penser – était en quelque sorte unique. Or, sous son jour le plus sombre, cette rhétorique, parfois désignée du terme de « japonisme » (nihon-jinron), ne fut pas sans jouer un rôle déterminant dans la montée de la ferveur nationaliste à la fin du XIXe siècle, ainsi qu’au début du XXe siècle. Bien que l’on puisse discréditer pour l’essentiel cette soi-disant « idéologie de l’unicité japonaise », la conception nippone de la « religion » constitue, quant à elle, un objet d’analyse des plus utiles et pertinents. Cet article met en évidence quelques caractéristiques, sinon uniques du moins distinctives, de la manière dont la religion a été élaborée et comprise au sein de la tradition japonaise, pour ensuite les constrater avec les conceptions occidentale (abrahamique) et, dans une moindre mesure, indienne et chinoise. Une attention toute particulière est ici accordée à la praxis plutôt qu’à la croyance dans le contexte religieux japonais.

This essay provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic ideology of “Gōmanism” in the manga of Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), particularly "Yasukuniron" (On Yasukuni, 2005) and "Tennoron" (On the Emperor, 2009), in order to flesh out the implications of the author’s “revisionist” approach to Japanese religion, politics and
history.

Research on religion and globalization is revealing that religious responses to global dynamics have been highly varied, positioned across a broad spectrum that ranges from the defensive to the open and creative. However, attempts to engage this area of studies in the case of Japanese religions have been unexpectedly few and fragmentary; the use of full-scale globalization theory remains underdeveloped. Sometimes an underlying conceptual obstacle is that the dominating perspective is reduced to the dimension of worldwide institutional expansion, which prevents a full engagement with the much more complex dynamics. In other cases, there may simply be resistance to the application of contemporary globalization theories to concrete case studies in religion. Possibly also some features peculiar to Japanese history have delayed the application of globalization perspectives to its religious worlds. Based on these premises the articles by Inoue Nobutaka, Ugo Dessì, Galen Amstutz, Victoria Rose Montrose, Girardo Rodriguez Plasencia, Regina Yoshie Matsue, and Rafael Shoji and Frank Usarski collected in this special issue address several examples and themes in this diversified, complex world as part of the ongoing work of addressing our existing gaps in awareness.

Asia, Europe and the United States, this paper sheds light on the latest historical and doctrinal developments in the South Korean Unification Movement, following the passing of its founder and self-proclaimed Saviour, Mun Sŏn-myŏng, in September 2012. Recent personnel changes resulting in the uncontested leadership of Mun's wife, Han Hak-cha, as well as the two key events of 2012 and 2013-Mun's funeral and Foundation Day-will be briefly outlined. Concomitant doctrinal alterations in the interpretation of the movement's integral millenarian vision, fleshing out as 'Cheon Il Guk 2.0' and entailing a revised notion of Foundation Day and the newly launched Vision 2020 scheme, will also be discussed. Ultimately, this paper shows how the Unification Movement has rendered its executive and theological base apt to preserve its systemically constitutive millenarian agenda for a post-Mun and post-Foundation Day era.

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.

TABLE  OF CONTENTS
Introduction
1 Approaching Religion under Globalization
2 Religious Others at the Door: Inclusivism and Pluralism as Forms of Global Repositioning
3 Glocal Environmentalism: Unpacking the Greening of Religion in Japan
4 Meditation à la Carte: Glocal Change in Hawaiian Jōdo Shinshū
5 Global Repositionings: Risshō Kōseikai, Japan, and the World at Large
6 Towards an Integrated Approach: The Global Repositioning Model
Conclusion
Bibliography
Glossary
Index

In contemporary Japan it is clear that postwar attitudes toward religion are largely “nonreligious” (mushūkyō) and a substantial majority of Japanese claim no particular faith or affiliation. These trends are perennially attested to in a vast number of sociological surveys and investigations where a consistent majority of Japanese describe their religious disposition as nonreligious. However, similar surveys suggest that these same individuals do also continue to engage in behaviors that might otherwise still be considered religious.  Despite the prevalence of nonreligiousness among the members of contemporary Japanese society there exist very few explorations into how nonreligiousness functions “on the ground” as a part of people’s lives or how to treat religious acts when these acts are undertaken by nonreligious individuals.  In this paper, I use my investigation of contemporary Christian weddings to problematize claims of nonreligion and highlight the most salient features of nonreligious attitudes as they play out within the context of wedding ceremonies.

The Presbyterian missions and medical missions in 19th-century Taiwan were successful enterprises that over time developed into the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, which stands today as the largest Christian minority church in this country. Through a Foucauldian biopolitical perspective, this paper analyzes the roles of female missionaries in the management of bodies and the subjective experiences of both foreign and Native women in the missions. Going beyond descriptive narratives and control-versus-agency reductionist frames, the paper points the polyvalent semantics of such roles and experiences. It also explores the complex relations between the women’s biopolitical functions, the PCT’s industrial type of biopolitical apparatus, and the biopolitical regimes of the late Qing dynasty and the Japanese colonial government in the early  20th century. The conclusions remark on the analytical relevance of biopolitical perspectives in the study of gender and body-related phenomena in Christian missions and Christian religions beyond Western societies.

This course is a graduate seminar on Chinese religions, open also to upper-level undergraduate students. This seminar examines important or recent scholarly studies on the histories, doctrines, and rituals of medieval Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religions. The focus is primarily on the intersection of cultic traditions and Chinese culture, with special attention to several themes: Chinese gods and the problem of unity vs. diversity; patterns of authority in Chinese religions; diviners, shamans, and priests; and death, mortuary rites, and salvation.

The mechanics of Japanese Buddhist temple management have long constituted an important topic of public and scholarly debate in Japan, particularly in the postwar period, when the legal transformations relating to the temples' legal status and their incorporation under the Religious Juridical Person Law (Sh ū ky ō h ō jin h ō) solidified the inherited model of temple ownership and forced Buddhist priests to pay closer attention to earning a living. Already in the 1920s, Morita Torao (1925) declared an economic crisis of Buddhist temples and pushed for a debate on the impact of modernization, urbanization, and ruralto-urban migration, among other issues, on the secular management of temples. The language of crisis and economic fragility of Buddhist institutions became a new status quo for Buddhist temples in the postwar period (

The aim of this article is threefold: It attempts to 1) identify the characteristics of East Asian forms of meditation, as compared to meditation in other parts of the Eurasian continent; 2) test the usefulness of a definition of meditation as a self-administered technique for inner transformation; and 3) test the usefulness of a classification of meditation techniques based on generic features of the meditation object, in particular location (external vs. internal), agency (spontaneous vs. produced), and faculty (cognitive vs. sensory). While the variation among East Asian forms of meditation is considerable, they (along with Indic forms) are often more technical and less consistently devotional than their Western counterparts, and less often sound-based than their Indic counterparts. In a number of ways, both the definition and classification system suggested turn out to be helpful in the analysis of East Asian forms of meditation.