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Rel14


Japan and the Others: Islam, India, and Christianity in the Construction of Modern Japan 
Convenor:
Paride Stortini (The University of Tokyo)
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Chair:
Mick Deneckere (Ghent University)
Discussant:
Hans Martin Krämer (Heidelberg University)
Section:
Religion and Religious Thought
Sessions:
Thursday 26 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Brussels

Short Abstract:

The panel investigates how, in the intellectual history of the Meiji to early Shōwa, the confrontation with religions considered "foreign" to Japan—Christianity, Islam, and the religions of India—shaped ideas of modernity and Japanese identity, informing nationalist ideologies and policies.

Long Abstract:

The conceptualization of religion has played an essential role in the construction of a modern national identity in Japan. Scholarship in the last decade has extensively investigated the modern intellectual history of Shintō and Buddhism against the reception and reconception of Western ideas of religion. However, this panel will shift the focus on religions considered "foreign" or "other" to Japan, and show how the production of knowledge on them intersected with debates on modernity and civilization and shaped definitions of what "Japanese" means, which also translated into interwar ideology and policies. We will particularly examine the cases of Christianity, Islam, and the religions of India in a variety of sources from Meiji to early Shōwa periods.

The first paper investigates the knowledge of Indian religions beyond ancient Indian Buddhism in the works of understudied priest-scholars. It will show how the reimagination of the Indian civilization was at the same time subsumed into nationalist discourses but also used as a critical tool to rethink social relations.

The second contribution focuses on a less-known but very influential religious nationalist group of the Meiji period, The Society of the Great Way, which reacted against Western models of Christianity and liberalism in defining community and individual development. The group played an important role in the formation of the interwar nationalist ideologues.

The third paper analyzes intelligence sources of the 1920s-1940s period on the Muslim Tatar refugees who fled to Japan after the Russian Revolution. The way in which these sources defined and regulated the religious and ideological identity of the refugees will shed light on the ideological construction of Japanese nationalism.

Drawing on a variety of sources and discussing different forms of the religious "other," this panel will shed light on important and lesser-known aspects of the intellectual history of modern Japan. These case studies will foster the debate on the role of religion in conceptualizing Japanese identity and modernity. Rather than being limited to the intellectual history of the concept of religion, the debate will show how religious identities and ideas informed debates on individual and community, social relations and morality.

Accepted papers:

Session 1 Thursday 26 August, 2021, -