Editors' Introduction: Gendering Religious Practices in Japan: Multiple Voices, Multiple Strategies

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)This special issue represents a combination of efforts by Japanese and Canadian scholars in such fields as traditional Buddhism, Christianity, Japanese mountain religion, new religions, and spirituality. The contributors' aim is to approach their subjects critically from a perspective and perform an examination or analysis in light of their criticism or their reframing of interpretations that have been accepted as standard.As Kobayashi argues in this special issue, the image of women as actors in religious history has been romanticized. In other words, attention has focused mainly on women of exceptionally heroic quality, and the images of those women have been amplified, in an attempt to overturn the image of women as sacrificial victims of oppression. An approach that seeks to substantiate the agency of women in this way, however, can only be futile. Consider, for example, the body of past studies on Japanese women and Buddhist history. This research has illuminated the existence of women, both priestly renunciates and lay practitioners, who had never before been recognized on the public stage of history, and it has shown how, despite the constraints imposed by their times, women have independently and actively engaged in religious activity. Folklore research has also been carried out with the aim of presenting women's place in religion in terms of their spiritual power. It is true that studies of this kind have contributed to the advances made in research on women in Japanese religion. It is also true, however, that in placing their emphasis on accounting for women's energy and spiritual power, these studies have excessively romanticized women's roles in religion in Japan, and they have mainly failed to place women in relation to the woman-excluding ways of thinking and patriarchal mechanisms that (must have) existed in the background (Kawahashi 2005). It is also troubling that research on Japanese women and religion from this perspective is still considered valid in the study of history, folklore, and religion. Moreover, there is a significant tendency to credulously situate any and all research that takes women as the main topic, as well as all research conducted by scholars who are women, as research. As King (2005) declares, however, the word gender is not synonymous with woman. Nevertheless, the present situation is that the woman's perspective and the perspective are commonly equated uncritically one with the other.At the real-world locus of their activity in religion, women face a range of conflicts and difficulties that arise from discrimination and androcentrism. However, these problems are treated as the women's personal problems, thereby rendering them invisible. This special issue pursues a reexamination by directly addressing the idealized image of women in religion from critical perspectives in terms of the interpretation of Japanese women and religion, a topic that has been widely studied since the 1980s. We hope to shed new light where previous research has not adequately grasped the complexity of diverse problems involved in women's practice of religion in Japan. Our purpose in this is not to concentrate solely on activities seeking a radical equality, but to conduct multi-perspective explorations of the possibilities for reform and transformation that emerge out of women's everyday challenges and negotiations.1Theoretical BackgroundReligion is ambiguously significant for women in that it represents both liberation and bondage. On the one hand, religion excludes women, and on the other it is understood to be trying to include women. Women are regarded as though they are symbolic reservoirs of the unique spiritual essence of their ethnic groups and nationalities, and debates on the rights and wrongs of such practices as the veil and suttee have therefore grown complicated. As Narayan (1997) points out, however, there are instances of Western feminists who avoid any negative view or moral criticism of non-Western women and cultures for fear of being accused of racism or colonialism, and who take a stance of cultural relativism for that reason. …