Asian Religions Research Articles

The Materiality of South Asian Manuscripts from the University of Pennsylvania MS Coll. 390 and the Rāmamālā Library in Bangladesh

The codex has become ubiquitous in the modern world as a common way of presenting the materiality of texts. Much of the scholarship on the History of the Book has taken this endpoint for granted even when discussing pre-modern writing and manuscript cultures. In this essay, I would like to open the discussion to other possibilities. I will draw on my research on medieval South Asian religions and from my hands-on work with manuscripts in two collections: the Rāmamālā Library in Bangladesh and the Indic collection at the University of Pennsylvania. Drawing examples from these two collections as well as noting broader patterns within them, this essay reflects on what South Asian manuscript traditions can contribute to our understanding of the materiality of texts. First, I consider how different articulations of orality, memory, ritual, and aesthetics in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism helped to shape the development and formation of manuscript traditions in South Asia with dynamics that might differ from medieval manuscript traditions shaped by Christianity in the West. Then, I turn to specific insights into the materiality of South Asian manuscripts in relation to the task of cataloguing, preserving, and digitizing materials in the Rāmamālā library.

The Sword That Cuts Two into One

The Sword That Cuts Two into One Jody Greene In returning to reread the work of Srinivas Aravamudan, I can’t stop thinking about the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī’s unusual (and delightfully perverse) choice of weaponry. Across diverse Buddhist traditions, Mañjuśrī is the Bodhisattva archetype associated with the quality of wisdom, and, in particular, the wisdom of non-duality. In its revelation of binary logics of affirmation and negation as the root of suffering, Mañjuśrī’s wisdom is understood to operate by other means. These means are epitomized and emblematized in iconographic form in the sword Mañjuśrī carries in his right hand in nearly all representations: the sword that cuts two into one. One need only think about Srinivas’s infamous penchant for portmanteau neologisms—Tropicopolitans, Theosophistries, Levantinization, to name only a few—to see the sword of two-into-oneness at work. Srinivas’s monstrous linguistic creations unite concepts that, when brought and thought together, bring into being “new” paradigms we nonetheless can’t imagine how we ever did without. The tongue may trip but the analytical faculties dance in the face of such shocking and yet weirdly familiar, weirdly necessary additions to our philosophical, historical, cultural, and literary critical vocabularies. It is no coincidence that the habit of breaking and remaking conceptual keywords after running up against the limits of the available lexicon is a persistent feature of the work of other celebrated practitioners of non-dualism, from Dōgen Zenji (1200–1253), the founder of the Sōtō Zen school of Buddhism, to one of Srinivas’s most significant teachers and influences, Jacques Derrida. Beyond his justly celebrated coinages, though, Srinivas’s method as a whole is consistent and rigorous in its generous expenditure of the currency of the non-dual. This feature of his work does not surprise, given his intellectual trajectory. His schooling exposed him to the ideas of Jiddu Krishnamurti, who taught that liberation could be attained not through established religion, psychological inquiry, or philosophical analysis, but through direct experience of our own consciousness beyond the workings of the conditioned, thinking, and image-making mind. “Total negation is the essence of the positive” is Kirshnamurti’s kōan-like summation of the pathless path to liberation.1 In subsequent years, Srinivas turned to the study of literature and the practice of rhetorical criticism via the longue durée of the Western non-dual critique of metaphysics that culminates in the work of thinkers like Derrida and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. As Srinivas puts it in Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language, the job of literary and cultural critics is “the study of rhetoric, not just as technique of communication, but as subjective disposition.”2 The particular rhetorical mode under study in Guru English is the voluminous and vague deployment in a vast array of non-Asian cultural contexts, over more than two centuries, of the teachings of South Asian religious and philosophical traditions, teachings disseminated in English in sites as diverse as Walden Pond, the novels of Kipling, the Trinity nuclear site, and the contemporary American self-help and yoga industries. In Srinivas’s characteristic brevity of capture, “Guru English derives its paradoxical power precisely from its referential inadequacy. Unable to refer adequately, it can conjure excessively” (267). This purported capacity to “conjure excessively” without referential exactitude might, and should, remind us of poststructuralist understandings of the workings of language and rhetoric, [End Page 107] as well as of definitions of the literary from Plato to Sir Philip Sidney to Georges Bataille. Guru English might thus be seen not as a departure from but as a kind of culmination of Srinivas’s better-known contributions to literary criticism and especially to eighteenth-century studies. Guru English is probably the least familiar of Srinivas’s works to readers of Eighteenth-Century Studies, yet in it we can see concisely revealed the full wealth of his brilliance, wit, rigor, and playfulness, as well as the depth of his ethical, political, and intellectual commitments. A section on “The Bhagavadgītā and the Bomb” exemplifies this reach, while also giving a hint of the sheer capaciousness of his literary...

Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan by Heather Blair

Reviewed by: Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan by Heather Blair David Quinter (bio) Real and Imagined: The Peak of Gold in Heian Japan. By Heather Blair. Harvard University Asia Center, Cambridge, Mass., 2015. xviii, 345 pages. $49.95. Heather Blair’s Real and Imagined is a rich analysis of the devotional activities and cultural imaginary surrounding Mt. Kinpusen in the Ōmine range, south of Nara. Blair focuses on the discourses and practices shaping Kinpusen as a pilgrimage destination and cultic site in early medieval Japan. The study can be situated within a series of recent monographs by religious studies scholars on mountain sites in East Asia, including D. Max Moerman’s Localizing Paradise, on Kumano (2005); Barbara Ambros’s Emplacing a Pilgrimage, on Ōyama (2008); and James Robson’s Power of Place, on Nanyue (2009). (That all four monographs were published by Harvard University Asia Center is, for this reviewer, a coincidence—though perhaps not for Blair or the press.) All four scholars leverage their focus on place to transcend sectarian boundaries that delimit much scholarship on East Asian religions. All (including Robson on China) have been influenced by Allan Grapard’s emphasis on studying Japanese religions in situ and particular cultic sites. All use such threefold formulations of space as Henri Lefebvre’s “perceived, conceived, and lived space” and Michel Foucault’s “utopia, dystopia, and [End Page 393] heterotopia.” Blair finds inspiration especially in Edward Soja’s model of “real, imagined, and real-and-imagined,” which helps transcend binary oppositions between physical and imagined space (pp. 2–3). And similarly to Robson on “Buddho-Daoism,” Moerman’s, Ambros’s, and Blair’s spotlight on combinatory cults of Buddhist deities and kami (the latter often analyzed as Shintō) transcends oppositions between Buddhism and “native” religions. Blair’s monograph also belongs to recent work applying and reformulating Kuroda Toshio’s theories of the “power-bloc system” (kenmon taisei) characterizing medieval rule. Kuroda viewed medieval Japan as dominated by competing but interdependent blocs associated with the court, warrior houses, and religious establishments. Within this system, leading temples and shrines played key ideological roles but were also military and economic powers. One ramification of Kuroda’s theories has been to promote more-integrated studies of medieval political and religious history, taking close account of the social and ideological dynamics among the power blocs. Blair’s work can be read fruitfully alongside similarly positioned studies such as Mikael Adolphson’s The Gates of Power (University of Hawai’i Press, 2000). In many ways, Real and Imagined is an extended case study of Kuroda’s power-bloc theory, using Kinpusen and shifting relationships among Fujiwara regents, retired emperors, and the Fujiwara house temple Kōfukuji as exemplar. Blair focuses on the periods of rule by Fujiwara regents (mid-tenth to late eleventh century) and retired emperors (1086–1221), showing how pilgrimage to Kinpusen was both devotional and political. Divided into three parts, Real and Imagined devotes part 1 to Heianperiod (794–1185) representations of Kinpusen, or “the mountain imagined” (p. 13). Chapter 1 shows tenth-century lay pilgrims to Kinpusen subverting divisions between the mountains as alien realm and the capital as civilized center. Starting with Fujiwara no Kaneie (929–90), successive regents undertook carefully orchestrated pilgrimages from the Heian capital to Kinpusen, appropriating the otherworldly charisma of the mountain “and expanding the domain of the civilized center” (p. 13). However, as Blair’s analysis aptly suggests, this appropriation simultaneously depended on such conceptual binaries to “bring home” the boundary-crossing benefits of pilgrimage. Blair places Kinpusen’s longstanding ban on women in this context (pp. 48–56). She suggests that “pushing women into the role of the excluded other” enabled male pilgrims “to imagine themselves as a single group united by gender” (p. 49). I found this contextualization, including the interweaving of past precedent and modern circumstance, compelling. But given the author’s invocations of Kinpusen as the only Japanese mountain still maintaining the ban year-round, I longed for some explanation of how Kinpusen does so despite the ban’s illegality under the postwar constitution. [End Page 394] Chapter 2 analyzes the mountain’s pantheon. It centers on...

Book Review: <em>Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt</em>

Book Review: <em>Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt</em>

Venerating, Personifying, Ordaining: Preserving Trees and Forests in Contemporary Asian Religions

Venerating, Personifying, Ordaining: Preserving Trees and Forests in Contemporary Asian Religions

Review of Vargas-O'Bryan and Zhou (eds.), Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia (2015)

Review of Vargas-O'Bryan and Zhou (eds.), Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia (2015)

Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations and Resistances, by Matthew Schmalz and Peter Gottschalk (eds.)

Engaging South Asian Religions: Boundaries, Appropriations and Resistances, by Matthew Schmalz and Peter Gottschalk (eds.). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2011. 253 pp. $75.00. ISBN 978-1-4384-3323-3 (hardback). $24.95. ISBN 978-1-4384-3324-0 (paperback).

Leonard Swidler: Dialogue Pioneer and Peacemaker

One of my most important teachers was Leonard Swidler, Professor of Catholic Thought and Interreligious at Temple University. At the forefront of interfaith dialogue for the last fifty years, he co-founded the Journal of Ecumenical Studies in 1964 and remains the editor today. Although he has written more than eighty books, he is perhaps best known for his article, Dialogue Decalogue: Ground Rules for Interreligious Dialogue, which has been translated into languages and is considered to be a foundational statement on interfaith dialogue. In this article Swidler presented ten commandments that he considered to be essential for genuine interfaith dialogue: 1. The primary purpose of dialogue is to learn, that is, to change and grow in the perception and understanding of reality and then to act accordingly. 2. Interreligious, interideological dialogue must be a two-sided project--within each religious or ideological community and between religious or ideological communities. 3. Each participant must come to the dialogue with complete honesty and sincerity. 4. In interreligious, interideological dialogue we must not compare our ideals with our partner's practice. 5. Each participant must define [her or] himself. 6. Each participant must come to the dialogue with hard-and-fast assumptions as to where the points of disagreement are. 7. can take place only between equals. 8. can take place only on the basis of mutual trust. 9. Persons entering into interreligious, interideological dialogue must be at least minimally self-critical of both themselves and their own religious or ideological traditions. 10. Each participant eventually must attempt to experience the partner's religion or ideology from within. (1) Swidler has also worked with Hans Kung to shape the important document, A Global Ethic: The Declaration of the Parliament of the World's Religions, which was signed by 200 world religious leaders at the 1993 Parliament of the World's Religions. The aim of this document is to lead people of all faiths to see that there is a common ethical core in all religious traditions, including humanism, and that this realization would encourage them to participate in genuine interfaith dialogue. (2) Kung has become well known for constantly stressing that there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the and no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions. (3) What stands out for me in the work of Swidler and Kung is their stress on the equality and dignity of every human being. Swidler's dialogue statement and Kung's global ethic statement are in perfect accord with a statement by Abraham Joshua Heschel, of the great Jewish pioneers of interfaith dialogue, that many things on earth are precious, some are holy, humanity is holy of holies. (4) For Heschel the fundamental statement about human beings, according to the Jewish tradition, is that human beings are created in the image of God. From this perspective it is clear to me that the real aim of dialogue is to develop friendship and and that, in the Abrahamic faiths, of God must manifest itself in for all human beings. Leviticus 19:33-34 tells us to love the stranger as yourself. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the chief rabbi of Britain, pointed out that in the Hebrew Bible only one verse commands, 'You shall your neighbour as yourself,' but in fewer than in 36 places commands us to 'love the stranger.' (5) The aim of interfaith dialogue is to make this command a reality. My claim that the ultimate aim of interfaith dialogue is for the stranger is fully in accord with the religious traditions I have studied. Although Swidler has written extensively on both the Abrahamic religious traditions and the religions of Asia, especially Buddhism, I will deal primarily with the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. …

“Never the ‘Twain Shall Meet”

This article explores the categories of "East" and "West" within teaching and scholarship on Asian religions. After reflection on both the problematic and useful aspects of these terms in classroom pedagogy, I analyze the life and work of Hirai Kinza (1859–1916), a Japanese lay Buddhist who experimented with Unitarianism and socialism in an attempt to bridge "East" and "West" in the context of Japanese modernization.

Suppressing the Mad Elephant: Missionaries, Lamas, and the Mediation of Sacred Historiographies in the Tibetan Borderlands

The late-nineteenth century was a time of Protestant missionary enthusiasm for the “great closed land” of Tibet. Their prodigious, oftentimes proto-ethnographic, writings continue to provide scholars with archives that document missionary perspectives on Inner Asian society and religion, but few sources have yet emerged that allow for these to be read alongside Tibetan accounts of Christian-Buddhist encounters. This article undertakes such a parallel reading of four accounts of an unsuccessful attempt by the British missionary Cecil Polhill to convert an eastern Tibetan Buddhist abbot, Māyang Paṇḍita, in late 1889. Understanding these texts as conflicting sacred historiographies, we note that these Christian and Buddhist writers shared a commitment to writing and to particular modes of emotional, material, and logical mediation as the “correct” path to religious certainty. Differences in genre, however, lead more to mockery and misunderstanding than to each side’s desired transformation of the other..

Asian Religions in British Columbia.Edited by Larry DeVries, Don Baker, and Dan Overmyer.

<i>Asian Religions in British Columbia.</i>Edited by Larry DeVries, Don Baker, and Dan Overmyer.

Asia en la España del siglo XIX: literatos, viajeros, intelectuales y diplomáticos ante Oriente by Joan Torres-Pou (review)

Torres-Pou, joan. Asia en la Espana del siglo XIX: literatos, viajeros, intelectuales y diplomaticos ante Oriente. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2013. 218 pp.In this monograph Dr. Joan Torres-Pou analyzes the unique orientalist discourse that appears in the different genres of writing by nineteenth-century Spanish authors who focus on Asia, predominantly the Far East (Philippines, China, Japan, etc.). In the book's introduction, Torres-Pou begins by giving a historical overview of nineteenth-century Western interest and colonization in the East. Then he proposes a question that will guide his analysis for the rest of the book: What was Spain's role in this European expansion into Asia? He partially answers this question by stating that, though Spain was not as materially invested as other European countries in the East, there was definitely a presence and interest in Asia at this time. In fact, he states that the main objective of his study is to convince readers of the need to look not just at the orientalism in Spain's literature but also at the presence of Asia in nineteenth-century Spanish society. Without the reevaluation and study of the texts generated by this presence and interest, he claims, it will never be possible to completely comprehend the complexity of Spanish history and literature during an era that was so decisive for the Spanish nation (21). And he manages, in the rest of the book, to masterfully accomplish this goal.The first chapter of the book deals with Juan Valera's writing on the Orient, in particular his novel Morsamor (1899). Based on in-depth research and knowledge of Valera's interest in Asian religions and history, Torres-Pou is able to demonstrate that Morsamor contains an orientalist subtext, in the sense given to it by literary critic Edward Said, hidden behind the sensational and parodie plot of the novel. Torres-Pou shows convincingly that the subtext, based on Valera's Eurocentric attitude common to that time, works to highlight the superiority of the Arian race. However, he also indicates that, due to the large amount of dialogue in the text, the reader is left to decipher the meaning of the passages, and therefore, this same racist and orientalist message is constantly put into question.A similar tactic and phenomenon is highlighted in chapter two, which deals with Luis Valera, Juan Valera's son, and his writing on his experiences as a diplomat in China. In Luis Valera's interesting text, Sombras chinescas (1902), dealing with a time in China just after the Boxer rebellions, Torres-Pou shows that, although Valera takes a stance of civilized superiority vis-a-vis the Orient, similar to that of his father, it is also evident in his writing that he questions the progress of a civilization that imposes itself on others in such a violent fashion. Torres-Pou points out that Luis Valera's texts contain similar sentiments of superiority and a desire to highlight the Arian origin of Western civilization, as his father did, but that because of the skeptical and sarcastic manner in which much of his writing is carried out, again, the orientalist messages become less straightforward and more questionable.The third chapter is a study of the cronicas of two principal participants in Spain's nineteenth-century Campana de Cochinchina (a Vietnamese military campaign): Father Francisco Gainza Escobas and Colonel Carlos Palanca Gutierrez. By analyzing the texts of these two figures as not just historical documents but also literary documents, Torres-Pou is able to demonstrate that once again there is a hidden message behind these apparent stories of military conquest. That message calls into question other European powers' colonial ambitions and at the same time Spain's political situation and its own colonial prowess, which is ambiguous at best. In doing so, the contradictions and ambiguities of Spain's colonial discourse are again revealed.Along similar lines, in chapter four of the monograph, Torres-Pou analyzes writings on the Philippines by the Spanish diplomat in China during the midnineteenth century, Sinibaldo de Mas y Sanz, and the Spanish General Director of Administration of the Philippines, Vicente Barrantes Moreno. …

“Ancestors We Didn’t Even Know We Had”: Alice Walker, Asian Religion, and Ethnic Authenticity

Author(s): Garton-Gundling, Kyle | Abstract: Recent debates about the ethics of identity in a global age have dealt with how to prioritize conflicting local and global allegiances. Guided by these concerns, the fiction of Alice Walker develops a distinctive view of how local cultures and global movements can fruitfully interact. This vision depends on concepts from Asian religions, a major influence that critics of Walker have largely overlooked. Walker promotes Hindu and Buddhist meditation in a context of widespread African American skepticism toward Asian religions. According to widespread notions of cultural authenticity, Asian religions cannot nourish an African American connection to ethnic roots. In response to this challenge, Alice Walker’s fiction portrays Hindu and Buddhist mystics as African Americans’ ancestors, thus positioning these faiths as authentically black.By creatively enfolding Asian religions into her sense of African American heritage, Walker builds a spiritual cosmopolitanism that relies on claims of ancestral affiliation even when these claims are not literal. This strategy is Walker’s effort to create a new paradigm of cultural authenticity, one that allows individuals and groups to choose their ancestors. Walker’s approach seeks to incorporate disparate global influences while still valorizing the figure of the ancestor. This innovative approach places Walker at the forefront of a growing number of African American artists and intellectuals who promote Asian religions to American minorities. Walker’s work vividly dramatizes larger concerns in transnational American Studies: Eastern philosophy’s relevance to identity politics, the tensions between universal ideals and cultural specifics, and the ethics of cross-cultural appropriation.

Japanese Religions and Globalization(Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy)

<i>Japanese Religions and Globalization</i>(Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy)

The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Others and Otherness, written by Diana Dimitrova (ed.)

The Other in South Asian Religion, Literature and Film: Perspectives on Others and Otherness, written by Diana Dimitrova (ed.)

Is Nessie a Naga?

In 2014 Lama Gelongma Zangmo of Scotland sparked curiosity when she suggested that the Loch Ness monster or “Nessie” is actually a naga––a fantastic creature from Buddhist mythology. Visitors to her Tibetan practice center on the shores of the Loch will be able to leave offerings to Nessie. Without exaggerating the significance of these offerings within the larger context of Zangmo’s practice, this article suggests that efforts to ritually incorporate Nessie into a Buddhist cosmology is an index of broader changes in Buddhism’s arrival to the West. First, Zangmo’s open discussion of cosmology, ritual, and supernatural beings is a marked distinction from “Protestantized” Western Buddhism, which has historically presented Buddhism as a rational and philosophical alternative to Christianity. This suggests that Buddhists in the West have become less concerned with conforming to Protestant notions of “proper” religion. Second, Zangmo’s praxis is significant to broader patterns of how Asian religions adapt to Western topography. Whereas Asian immigrants have sometimes re-imagined Asian sacred sites in Western countries, Zangmo was taken the opposite strategy of “Buddhicizing” a local monster. This suggests that similar transformative moves can be expected as a globalized world continues to transplant religious traditions from one continent to another.

Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body. Edited by GeoffreySamuel and JayJohnson. Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2013. Pp. xiv + 275. $155.00.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 40, Issue 4 p. 196-196 Comparative Studies Religion and the Subtle Body in Asia and the West: Between Mind and Body. Edited by Geoffrey Samuel and Jay Johnson. Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy. New York: Routledge, 2013. Pp. xiv + 275. $155.00. John L. Crow, John L. Crow Florida State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author John L. Crow, John L. Crow Florida State UniversitySearch for more papers by this author First published: 05 December 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.12166_5Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume40, Issue4December 2014Pages 196-196 RelatedInformation

Relics, liṅgas, and other auspicious material remains in south asian religions

ABSTRACTThis article reconsiders sites, practices, and ideas about the physical remains of the special dead in South Asian religions. Questioning the common notion of “relics” as a point of distinction between “Buddhism” and “Hinduism,” it explores the constellation of ideas and practices surrounding the remains of gods, demons, people, and animals in South Asian religions. Archaeological and literary evidence for liṅgas, stūpas, and related sites and structures are used to explore shared discourses and practices among Buddhists and Śaivas in particular. Through such test cases, it shows how bones and other physical remains of the special dead could become areas of engagement, especially when linked to sacred landscape. Attention to these contact zones reveals sharing, borrowing, and competition among ancient and medieval groups that modern scholarship has studied primarily in terms of assumed differences between “Hinduism” and “Buddhism.”

Death and New Life in (the Study of) East Asian Religions

Death and New Life in (the Study of) East <scp>A</scp>sian Religions

Review of: Ugo Dessì, Japanese Religions and Globalization

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Ugo Dessi, Japanese Religions and Globalization London and York: Routledge, 2013 [Routledge Studies in Asian Religion and Philosophy]. 191 pages. $140.00. isbn 978- 0-415-81170-5.Japanese religions are increasingly shaped by global influences, their leaders actively incorporate global themes into their religious discourse, and they clearly seek to influence other cultures beyond the Japanese archipelago. Yet, very few stud- ies have considered the interactions between Japanese religions and globalization. Ugo Dessi's monograph not only represents an effort to address this gap, but also provides a solid foundation for the understanding of these complex dynamics.The book ambitious in both scope and theoretical perspective, as Dessi integrates his previous work to an array of approaches to religion and cultural globalization to propose a typology of fourteen modes in which Japanese religions participate in global dynamics. He applies this typology to a broad diversity of case studies covering almost all Japanese religious expressions, both in and outside Japan: traditional Buddhism, Shinto, new religions, and even New Age-like phenomena like macrobiotics and Zen meditation. For each type in his framework, which I summarize below, Dessi gener- ally provides in-depth material, systematically linlcing the evidence to insights from the social sciences, religious studies, and Japanese studies. Drawing from sources in English, Japanese, and German, Dessi demonstrates an admirable lcnowledge of Japa- nese religions, which he combines with recent sociological theories.The volume, however, is not a comprehensive overview of religion in contem- porary Japan, but an analysis of the global implications of several selected case stud- ies in terms of the typology presented (10). Furthermore, Dessi acknowledges the possibility that the types outlined in his theoretical framework appear combined in certain phenomena, or even that different typologies may be valid in a given socio- religious context.In an effort to avoid the risk of cultural bias, chapter 1 addresses two method- ological issues: the definition of religion, and the periodization of globalization. First, Dessi reviews a number of definitions of religion, questioning both Western/ Christian-informed definitions that prove problematic in the Japanese context, as well as extreme critiques that reject the concept of religion or overemphasize Japa- nese emic understandings. For Dessi, religion a social subsystem that controls access to both worldly and otherworldly goods through the authority of some super-empirical agency (16). This working definition would take into account the characteristics of the Japanese religious culture, while it embraces a broader variety of empirical phenomena... that are perceived by most Japanese people as 'non-religious' (16). Secondly, Dessi critiques social science theories that conceive globalization as deriving from Western modernity, and builds upon the Oriental globalization thesis to suggest that Japan was involved in global dynamics before the Meiji period, given the archipelago's historical integration into the area of influence of China-the leading global power until the nineteenth century. Accordingly, pro- cesses of relativization, hybridization, and functional differentiation were already at work in Japan before the extensive import of Western modern culture. The focus of the book, nonetheless, on the contemporary period of accelerated globalization.Chapter 2 analyzes Japanese religions' global-minded attitudes toward other reli- gions. It first discusses the claims of religious pluralism (type 1) in the Religious Summit at Mount Hiei arranged by the Tendaishu ... and other Japanese reli- gious organizations, as well as interreligious activities promoted by Rissho Koseikai .... Beyond their pluralistic claims, however, examples taken also from the Japan Buddhist Federation (Zen-Nihon Bukkyokai . …