Japanese Religions and Globalization

The progressive relativisation of religious values increasingly prompts Japanese religions to reposition themselves on the world religious map in relation to other religions. This book analyses the variety of ways through which Japanese religions (Buddhism, Shint, and new religious movements) contribute to the dynamics of accelerated globalisation in recent decades. The book looks at how Japanese religions provide material to cultural global flows, thus acting as carriers of globalization, and how they respond to global cultural flows by shaping new glocal identities. It highlights how, paradoxically, these processes of religious hybridization may be closely intertwined with the promotion of cultural chauvinism. The book shows how on the one hand religion in Japan is shown to be engaged in border negotiation with dominant 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.