Japanese Religions

This set, as a collection of representative studies on Japanese Religions, illustrates the diversity and complexity of the Japanese religious experience, past and contemporary, while at the same time offering an overview of the most updated research in the field. The themes selected promote avenues of analysis that place the religious phenomenon in its socio-historical and cultural context. The selection demonstrates the range of religious practices and the contexts in which these practices are performed, with the aim of counterbalancing the traditional foci on either theological (doctrinal) studies or ethnographic studies only.

This collection affords a more comprehensive and accurate understanding of the nature and practice of Japanese religiosity. The framework in which the material is presented also offers an alternative to the usual chronological organization of works on Japanese religions, and to traditional arrangements of works on East Asian religions in general according to the categories of Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto and Christianity. Although these traditional approaches are covered in the first volume, the set as a whole stresses the practice of religion, which stretches across traditions and denominations, and the pre-modern/modern divide.

Lucia Dolce is a senior lecturer in Japanese Religion and Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is a specialist of Japanese Religions and has spent a considerable time of fieldwork in Japan. She has published widely on different aspects of Japanese religious practice, and is regularly invited to deliver guest lectures at universities in Europe, US and Japan. She has created and has been in charge (since 1999) of the MA in Japanese Religions at SOAS (the only MA programme in Europe focused on Japanese Religions); she teaches three of the options on offer in the programme, including the core course. She is also the chair of the SOAS Centre for the Study of Japanese Religions and in this capacity convenes weekly guest lectures and postgraduate seminars, and has organized several international conferences on different aspects of Japanese religiosity.