Paper short abstract

This paper explores how Ippen’s doctrine of pre-determined rebirth shaped the jishū’s social and ritual life, showing how the paradox between destined salvation and active communal practice reconfigured the structure and function of medieval Japanese Pure Land Buddhism.

Paper long abstract

This paper investigates the intricate relationship between Ippen’s doctrine of pre-determined rebirth (yotei ōjō) and the social organisation of the jishū movement within the broader landscape of medieval Japanese Pure Land thought. While previous scholarship has often treated Ippen’s soteriology as an idiosyncratic extension of Hōnen’s nembutsu tradition, its structural implications for communal practice and religious agency have remained insufficiently theorised.

Ippen’s doctrine of predetermined rebirth functioned as a social technology that enabled a radically open and mobile communal structure. The author argues that Ippen’s affirmation of an already-determined salvific destiny did not diminish religious practice; rather, it generated a distinctive mode of collective enactment in which practice operated as the performative manifestation of a pre-inscribed spiritual trajectory. Through close readings of the Ippen Hijiri-e, itinerant preaching records, and early jishū regulations, the study demonstrates how the tension between inevitability and performativity fostered a communal ethos grounded in openness, mobility, and ritual inclusivity.

By situating Ippen’s thought within contemporaneous Buddhist debates—particularly the contrasting emphases of Shinran’s interiorised faith and Nichiren’s polemical exclusivism—the study highlights how Ippen articulated a third path in medieval Japanese soteriology: one that united radical universalism with robust ritual participation. This analysis shows that yotei ōjō operated not merely as a doctrinal claim but as a social technology that shaped modes of belonging, authority, and interaction within the itinerant community.

Moreover, the jishū’s flexible engagement with local cults, pilgrimage economies, and combinatory kami–Buddha practices suggests that predetermined rebirth facilitated a porous religious identity capable of adapting to diverse ritual environments. This positions Ippen’s soteriology as a catalyst for religious hybridity rather than a doctrinal constraint.

Overall, this study contributes to current discussions on practice theory, community formation, and the performativity of belief in East Asian Buddhism, offering a revised assessment of Ippen’s place within Japanese religious history.

Keywords: Ippen, Predetermined Rebirth, Jishū, Pure Land Buddhism, Medieval Japanese Religion

Paper short abstract

This study explores youth conversions in Kirishitan Japan, using Chikatora Simão as a case study. Based on an examination of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Jesuit annual letters, I argue that these accounts shed light on both Ignatian rhetoric and children's experiences in the mission.

Paper long abstract

In the scholarly examination of early modern Catholic missions in East Asia, the functions assumed by local actors have attracted interest. While the contributions of these individuals to the advancement and preservation of such initiatives have been a focal point, the emphasis has predominantly been on adults, thereby marginalising the role of youth.

Against this backdrop, this paper will analyse Jesuit accounts of youth conversion found in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century annual letters of Japan, using as a case study the narrative of the conversion of Chikatora Simão (the adopted son of Tawara Chikakata, an important vassal of daimyo Ōtomo Sōrin of Bungo and his brother-in-law) around 1577.

Building on Pia Jolliffe’s work, I identify recurring motifs associated with children to discuss the rhetorical instrumentalisation of these testimonies. However, I will also move beyond this to retrieve markers of youth agency in this context. By juxtaposing Chikatora Simão’s case with other episodes, I aim to demonstrate how these descriptions functioned simultaneously as evidence of local conduct and as persuasive devices targeting European readers.

With this, I propose a synthesis between perspectives emphasising Jesuit rhetoric and those recovering children’s experiences, capable of offering a more comprehensive view of the proselytising enterprise and a richer understanding of the nature and impact of the narratives intended to describe it. By repositioning youth as historical actors in the Japanese mission, I also demonstrate the value of “age” as an analytical category alongside “gender” and “social status” in studying global Catholic missions. Finally, I argue that Chikatora Simão’s case operates as a missionary microcosm, condensing the Ignatian ideals and the local responses to the surrounding sociocultural landscape through which Christian belonging was created in early modern Japan.

Paper short abstract

This presentation focuses on the cosmic diagrams depicted in two movements that emerged during Edo period. One was Buddhist calendar movement, and the other was Kokugaku movement. Both movements created cosmic diagrams which were based on Western astronomy introduced by Jesuit missionaries.

Paper long abstract

From the late 18th century through the 19th century, new cosmologies emerged and spread by two movements throughout Japanese society. One was the Buddhist calendar movement, spearheaded by the Tendai sect monk Entsū, which attempted to revive the theory of Mount Sumeru. The other was Kokugaku movement which created cosmic diagram by Hattori Nakatsune and Motoori Norinaga. Both Entsū and Hattori were inspired by You Yi's Tianjing huowen, an introductory text on Western astronomy, to create new cosmologies. Jesuit missionaries brought tools like world maps, globes, and telescopes to China and Japen, but also Aristotelian solar system diagrams and natural philosophy, utilizing them for missionary work. Yu Yi was not a Christian but rather held Confucian views; nevertheless, he became an introducer of Western astronomy brought by the Jesuit missionaries. Tianjing huowen illustrated the solar system, a spherical Earth, and the mechanisms of solar and lunar eclipses, and it was widely read in Japan. Interestingly, while there is little evidence that Tianjing huowen was widely read in China, it became a bestseller in Japan.

Entsū, however, reacted against Western astronomy, asserting that the Mount Sumeru theory represented the authentic cosmos and advocating for the revival of the Buddhist calendar. Entsū's Buddhist calendar movement gained supporters across sectarian lines within the Buddhist community. Meanwhile, Hattori, a disciple of Motoori, illustrated the birth processes of the sun, moon, and earth based on Kojiki Den. This earned him Motoori's praise, and Norinaga incorporated Hattori's diagrams into Kojiki Den. But among Motoori's disciples, a serious controversy erupted over Hattori's diagrams.

The Buddhist calendar movement and Kokugaku movement have often been treated as unrelated and contradictory ideologies, yet they shared a common foundation in expressing their cosmologies through geometric models. Entsū sought to return Buddhism to its Indian roots by illustrating the Mount Sumeru theory, while Norinaga and Hattori attempted to unravel the secrets of cosmic creation using Kojiki, aiming to return to the utopian prehistoric Japan.

Paper short abstract

This paper reconsiders narratives of "modern Buddhism" in Japanese scholarship, focusing on the historiography of the field. By examining earlier foundational works, the paper aims to review how the modernization perspective is applied and to explore moments that complicate it from within.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines and problematizes the narrative of "modern Buddhism" in recent studies of Buddhism in modern Japan.

Since the 2000s, "modern Buddhism" studies in Japan have made significant progress in terms of both research objects and scope, and continue to develop in various directions, with some critical reflection on the very idea of "modern Buddhism" itself.

Considering what has been assumed to be "modern," some have already pointed out a modernization perspective characterized by that presupposes an evolutionary, progressive model of religion in the field, sometimes prioritizing the inner ethics or spirituality of the individual over the social and institutional activities of religious organizations. While this emphasis is understandable given the history of relations between the state and religious organizations—especially during the wartime period—it is notable that no major alternative perspectives have been presented.

To seek possible alternatives for writing the history of Buddhism in modern Japan, this paper will revisit some foundational works on "modern Buddhism," such as those by Ikeda Eishun, who pioneered research on the interaction between Buddhists and Christians in modern Japan, to reconsider their narrative frameworks and also to identify latent possibilities that complicate the modernization perspective.

These reflections must be made in light of the modernization perspective in the historiography of religion in general in the postwar period, which, to some extent, was established as a standard by historians of Christianity in modern Japan. This paper will consider the uniqueness of writing the history of Buddhism in modern Japan compared with writing the history of other religious traditions, such as Christianity and new religions in the same period.

Additionally, as Yoshinaga Shin'ichi and others already pointed out, one of the important developments in the field is to situate Buddhism in modern Japan within the dynamics of global Buddhism in the same period. This paper will examine the continuity and discontinuity between the narratives of "modern Buddhism" in Japanese scholarship and those of "Buddhist modernism" in anglophone works, aiming to offer a comparative examination of the historiographies and to seek better alternative(s) for writing the history of religions in modern Japan.

Paper short abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine, through the writings of Juan de Jesús, a Franciscan missionary active in Manila at the turn of the eighteenth century, the image of Japan that emerged within the Spanish missionary imagination in the decades following the country’s closure in the 1630s.

Paper long abstract

Juan de Jesús, OFM (†1706), was a Spanish Discalced Franciscan friar who spent nearly three decades in the Philippines, where he held several leadership positions and produced a remarkable yet almost entirely overlooked body of writings. His work consists of one major treatise and eight short opuscula, which address a wide range of missionary, linguistic, spiritual, and historical issues.

His main work, and the only one to have received sustained attention in recent scholarship, is the Arte de la lengua de Japón, a Spanish adaptation of Diego Collado’s Ars grammaticae Iaponicae linguae (Rome, 1632). Far from being a mere translation, Juan de Jesús’s Arte expands Collado’s grammar by incorporating original linguistic, missionary, and intercultural reflections, which make the text, to a significant extent, an autonomous work.

Among his eight opuscula, one particularly striking text offers a critical reassessment of earlier Philippine chronicles and provides an internal account of Jesuit and mendicant evangelization efforts in Asia, with a strong focus on Japan. Drawing on oral testimonies and personal experience, this treatise preserves valuable information absent from other contemporary sources and sheds light on intra-missionary debates during the period of Iberian presence in East Asia.

Across both his grammar and his shorter writings, Juan de Jesús reflects on the symbolic and spiritual significance of Japan within the Spanish missionary imagination, expressing a recurring longing to return to the land of martyrs, a territory that had been effectively closed to foreign contact for several decades.

The aim of this paper is to analyze through Juan de Jesús’s writings, and particularly through these two works, the image of Japan that took shape within the Spanish missionary imagination in the decades following the sakoku. It examines how this image oscillates between critical reflection on the actions of the different religious orders during the period of Iberian presence in Japan, the idealization of Japan as a land of martyrdom, and the persistent hope of a future return.

Keywords: Early Modern Japan, Catholic Missions, Franciscans, Religious Historiography, Spanish Philippines

Paper short abstract

I examine wartime Japanese religion-state relations through the lens of Konkōkyō, a Japanese new religion and Shinto sect. I focus on the state’s role in resolving Konkōkyō’s internal conflicts to show how the Religious Organizations Law of 1939 was not just oppressive but potentially liberative.

Paper long abstract

This paper analyzes religion-state relations in wartime Japan (1931-1945) through a case study of Konkōkyō, a Japanese religious organization founded in 1859. Although traditionally classified as a new religion and/or folk religion, in 1900, Konkōkyō obtained recognition as a Sect Shinto religion under the Meiji state. While some new religions, such as Ōmotokyō and Sōka Gakkai, faced violent state persecution in wartime Japan, Konkōkyō expanded at this time, becoming one of the largest Sect Shinto groups by the end of WWII. However, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, Konkōkyō became embroiled in a series of internal conflicts and media scandals that threatened the group’s survival. My paper shows how Konkōkyō leaders utilized the Religious Organizations Law (hereafter ROL) of 1939 to demand state intervention in internal affairs and resolve these conflicts.

In traditional English-language scholarship, the ROL of 1939 has often been dismissed as a wartime measure to oppress religious organizations. Konkōkyō’s case reveals a complicated dynamic: For Konkōkyō leaders caught in an internal stalemate, the ROL was a surprisingly fortuitous event. The ROL’s requirement for a new charter enabled Konkōkyō leaders to push for internal reforms, including a more democratic leadership selection process. Konkōkyō utilized the ROL as a reason to demand Ministry intervention in Konkōkyō’s internal affairs. State religious policy changes such as the ROL of 1939 necessitated increased communication exchanges between religious organizations and the state, opening the door for Konkōkyō leaders to use such policies as an impetus for drastic internal reforms. Konkōkyō faction leaders leveraged the ROL’s pressure to comply and the threat of potential disbandment to end internal disputes.

This paper demonstrates how historical case studies of particular religious organizations complicate understandings of wartime Japan and state religious policy. Many studies rely on established narratives that focus on state oppression of marginalized groups. While the historical experience of Ōmotokyō and other persecuted organizations show the danger that the Japanese wartime state and police posed toward so-called new religions, a case study of Konkōkyō suggests a more complex, diverse array of religion-state relations that challenges dominant narratives in the field.

Paper short abstract

The presentation explores Tanaka Ippei’s representation of the Prophet Muhammad as a militant leader, a sage, a hero and a saint. Analysis of his early writings illuminates the indigenisation strategies through which Tanaka adapted Islamic theology to the Japanese context.

Paper long abstract

Tanaka Ippei 田中逸平 (1882–1932) is recognised as the pioneer of Islam in Japan, having established the foundation for the religion’s development. The present research analyses the image of the Prophet Muhammad that Tanaka depicts in “The Journey of the Wandering White Cloud: Islamic Pilgrimage” account and accompanying essays (“Islam and Pan-Asianism”, “Future of Chinese Muslims and Japanese Shintō”, 1924), which he completed during his pilgrimage to Mecca.

Tanaka Ippei converted to Islam in 1924 in Jinan, China, after a range of meetings with the local Muslim community, following Liu Zhi’s (劉智, 1660-1739) interpretation of Islam. Before converting to Islam, Tanaka was working on the translation of the Chinese philosopher Guan Zhong’s (管仲, 720-645 BCE) legacy while teaching Confucianism to the Chinese students in the local school. His sustained engagement with Confucian thought, together with the background in the Misogi-kyō, provided the framework for the conscious attempt to indigenize Islam in the Japanese context. The project started by reimagining the basic concepts of Islamic thought – the deity, the Prophet, the society (Arab. ummah) and the ritual.

Tanaka employed seijin (sage) to introduce Muhammad at the beginning of the pilgrimage account – following Liu Zhi's Neo-Confucian framework – to position Muhammad among five universal sages alongside Confucius, Jesus, Shakyamuni, and Laozi. At the same time, he neglected standard Japanese terms for “prophet” (yogensha, senchi). The following portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad operates across three dimensions: Muhammad as sage (moral exemplar accessible through Confucian cultivation vocabulary), as saint (drawing on Liu Zhi’s Sufi-influenced Akbarian concept of the “Light of Muhammad”), and as political leader – the “Man with Sword and Qur’an” whose disciplined militancy could fortify Japan against Western influence.

The research focuses on Tanaka’s strategies of indigenisation of the image of the Prophet Muhammad in the Japanese context. By positioning him as a cultural mediator whose vision of “Japanese Islam” anticipated the 1930s kaikyō seisaku (Islamic policy), the work illuminates both Japan’s cultural integration approach and explores Islam’s adaptability within diverse contexts.

Paper short abstract

This talk examines the deity Kisshōten. It discusses her role in eighth-century Nara repentance rituals, workshops that created her statues, and her depiction in sutra as a Buddhist sovereign, arguing that she was a model of female rulership for Fujiwara women such as Empresses Kōmyō and Shōtoku.

Paper long abstract

This talk aims to conceptualize the Buddhist deity Kisshōten 吉祥天 (known in India as Lakṣmī) in classical Japan, extending into the medieval period. It explores her role in Buddhist repentance rituals (keka 悔過) at the eighth-century Nara court, the artistic workshops that produced her statues, and the textual foundations of her devotional worship and iconography as a female sovereign. Using the hidden Kisshōten statue (hibutsu 秘仏) and its cabinet shrine (zushi 厨子) in Kōfukuji’s 興福寺 Central Golden Hall 中金堂 in Nara as a case study, this talk demonstrates that this hibutsu and its zushi are based on earlier representations of Kisshōten and her sacred realm that developed in the Nara period, drawing on concepts of female rulership from ancient India and Tang China.

In Japan, as in the ancient Indian court, Kisshōten was venerated alongside the king, embodying the qualities of a divine queen. Physically and symbolically, she represented an imperial ideal of feminine virtue. Her popularity grew among women in the court, including Empress Consort Kōmyō 光明皇后 (701–760) and her daughter, Empress Kōken / Empress Shōtoku 孝謙天皇・称徳天皇 (718–770). Both devoutly worshipped the Golden Light Sutra (Konkōmyō kyō 金光明経), in which Kisshōten is presented as a divine provider, supplying the people with their basic needs, from cloth to grain. In this capacity, Kisshōten served as a model for these elite Fujiwara women, who sought to legitimize their authority through the Dharma (i.e., Buddhist law), much like the ideal male universal monarch, the Cakravarti (tenrinjōō 転輪聖王, or Wheel-Turning King).

During this period, a repentance rite (keka) also developed around Kisshōten, based on the Golden Light Sutra and keka brought from mainland China (e.g., Yakushi keka 薬師悔過). As this keka was the first to focus on a female deity, elite women in the Nara court—including Empress Shōtoku—drew on this ritual, the goddess, and her statuary to consolidate their power in this politically turbulent period.

Paper short abstract

The presentation examines five museums founded by Japanese NRMs, conceptualizing the museum as a medium of religion. It shows how NRMs use the art museum format to communicate religious doctrines, practices, and worldviews through not only exhibits, but also architecture, and geography.

Paper long abstract

For the past decades, Japanese New Religious Movements (NRM) have become active participants in civil society. Incorporating secular institutional forms, they not only show interests in schools and universities, but also employ the educational potential of museums.

Within religious studies research, museums have long been of interest. Approaches of material religion explore the (re)contextualization of religious objects and their employment as historical, ethnographic, or aesthetic specimens in order to disseminate knowledge about religion.

My research investigates five museums founded and curated by NRM. Drawing on the close reading and analysis of museum ephemera, participant observations, and museum visits, as well as ethnographic encounters and formal interviews with staff, curators, and practitioners on site, I show that these organizations employ the seemingly impartial and secular format of the art museum to reflect on religious doctrines, practices, and worldviews. Rather than relying on the presentation of religiously significant objects, meaning is not only embedded in the exhibits, but also in the museum format itself.

As my findings show, the curating organisations envision their museums as singular experiences to be presented to prospective visitors. Among the deliberate choices made in founding a museum, geography and architecture are as important as the collection and curation of objects. Spatial interactions beyond the boundaries of the museum building include the proximity to places of religious significance, the interaction of architecture and nature in accordance with religious doctrine, and the placement of museum buildings within whole neighbourhoods dominated by the respective NRM.

This approach not only sheds light on the motivations and strategies of religious organisations employing the institutional format of the museum, but also invites us to consider how architecture and geography contribute to the lasting appeal of museums in the 21st century.