Beyond Belief: Japanese Approaches to the Meaning of Religion

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.

The Body of Margaret Atwood: Sex Work and Prostitution within Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Oryx and Crake, and The Year of the Flood

In this paper, I will argue that Canadian author Margaret Atwood uses fiscal and socially conservative dystopias to show how sex work and prostitution are choices that women would never have to make in a world with true gender equality. In these radically different worlds, women have no agency beyond their sexuality and no ability to express themselves as equals within either society. And while the structures of both societies, the society of The Handmaid’s Tale and that of both Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood, are inherently different, they both stem from modern conservative philosophies: for example, the country of Gilead in The Handmaid’s Tale holds Christian conservative beliefs on the role of religion in the state and the culturally designated roles of women. I define social conservatism as the idea that government organizations are used to pursue an agenda promoting traditional religious values such as “public morality” and opposing “immoralities” such as abortion, prostitution, and homosexuality. I define fiscal conservatism as an agenda promoting privatization of the market, deregulation and lower taxes. In this paper I argue that because these philosophies are incompatible with gender equality, they drive women to occupations such as sex work. Women find that they have no choices and sex work provides something to “trade.” For Offred, this “trading” is more limited, because she is a sex slave. For Oryx, this trading allows her to travel to the West, yet not before her childhood is marked by prostitution and pornography. Sex work allows for Ren to reclaim some agency over her life, yet she only chooses sex work because she is presented with few other options. All of these issues stem from the philosophies that define these dystopias.

Be United, Be Virtuous: Composite Culture and the Growth of Shirdi Sai Baba Devotion

In one popular devotional poster the Indian god-man Shirdi Sai Baba (d. 1918) gazes out at the viewer, his right hand raised in blessing. Behind him are a Hindu temple, a Muslim mosque, a Sikh gurdwara, and a Christian church; above him is the slogan, “Be United, Be Virtuous.” In his lifetime, Shirdi Sai Baba acquired a handful of Hindu and Muslim devotees in western India. Over the past several decades, he has been transformed from a regional figure into a revered persona of pan-Indian significance. While much scholarship on religion in modern India has focused on Hindu nationalist groups, new religious movements seeking to challenge sectarianism have received far less attention. Drawing upon primary devotional materials and ethnographic research, this article argues that one significant reason for the rapid growth of this movement is Shirdi Sai Baba’s composite vision of spiritual unity in diversity, construed by many devotees as a needed corrective to rigid sectarian ideologies.

Marx and the Bible: José Miranda’s Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression

This paper critically examines the liberation theology of José Porfirio Miranda, as expressed in his Marx and the Bible (1971), with a focus on the central idea (and subtitle) of this work: the “Critique of the Philosophy of Oppression.” Miranda’s critique is examined via certain key tropes such as “power,” “justice,” and “freedom,” both in the context of late twentieth-century Latin American society, and in the state of the “post-Christian” and “post-Marxist” world more generally, vis-à-vis contemporary liberal justice theory. Close examination of the potentialities, paradoxes and subtle evasions in Miranda’s critique leads not to the conclusion that Miranda does not go far enough in his application of Christian principles to justice theory.

The Pursuit of Tangible Happiness: Religion and Politics in a Japanese New, New Religion

The decline of traditional religions in Japan in the past century, and especially since the end of World War Two, has led to an explosion of so-called “new religions” (shin shūkyō 新宗教), many of which have made forays into the political realm. The best known—and most controversial—example of a “political” new religion is Sōka Gakkai 創価学会, a lay Buddhist movement originally associated with the Nichiren sect that in the 1960s gave birth to a new political party, Komeitō 公明党 (lit., Clean Government Party), which in the past several decades has emerged as the third most popular party in Japan (as New Komeitō). Since the 1980s, Japan has also seen the emergence of so-called “new, new religions” (shin shin shūkyō 新新宗教), which tend to be more technologically savvy and less socially concerned (and, in the eyes of critics, more akin to “cults” than the earlier new religions). One new, new religion known as Kōfuku-no-Kagaku 幸福の科学 (lit., Institute for Research in Human Happiness or simply Happy Science), founded in 1986 by Ōkawa Ryūho 大川隆法, has very recently developed its own political party, Kōfuku Jitsugentō 幸福実現党 (The Realization of Happiness Party). This article will analyse the political ideals of Kōfuku Jitsugentō in relation to its religious teachings, in an attempt to situate the movement within the broader tradition of religio-political syncretism in Japan. In particular, it will examine the recent “manifesto” of Kōfuku Jitsugentō in relation to those of New Komeitō and “secular” political parties such as the Liberal Democratic Party (Jimintō 自民党) and the Democratic Party (Minshutō 民主党).

Tempering the EU? NGO Advocacy in the Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice

The European Union’s (EU) area of Freedom, Security and Justice (AFSJ) portfolio comprises policy areas such as immigration and asylum, and police and judicial cooperation. Steps were taken to bring this field into the mandate of the EU first by the Maastricht Treaty, followed by changes implemented by the Amsterdam and Lisbon Treaties, the last one ‘normalizing’ the EU’s erstwhile Third Pillar. As the emergent EU regime continues to consolidate in this field, NGOs of various kinds continue to seek to influence policy-making and implementation, with varying success. This article seeks to establish the context in which NGOs carry out their work and argues that the EU-NGO interface is impacted both by the institutional realities of the European Union and the capacities of EU-oriented NGOs to seize and expand opportunities for access and input into the policy cycle. Using EU instruments representing three different policy bundles in AFSJ (immigration, asylum and judicial cooperation in criminal matters), the article seeks to map out NGO strategies in engaging and oftentimes resisting European Union policy instruments.