Religious Studies: A Global View

science even among traditional humanistic disciplines. The study of bioethics

is one example within the field of religious studies. With this new focus,

religious studies is once again facing a challenge to serve public and national

interests without losing its critical stance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This chapter owes much to material, information and advice given by Noriyoshi

Tamaru, Hidetaka Fukasawa, Kazutoshi Seki and Eiki Hoshino.

NOTES

1 For earlier attempts to survey the field, see, among other works, Japanese

Association for Religious Studies 1959 and Pye 2003.

2 For example, according to the 2000 World Values Survey, 23.1 percent of

Japanese respondents say that they are faithful. (The choices were ‘faithful’, ‘not

faithful’, ‘atheist’, ‘have no idea’, ‘no answer’). This is the second lowest among

the 60 countries surveyed. The same survey indicates that 12.0 percent of

Japanese respondents are atheists. On the other hand, only 8.4 percent say that

they have not been to any church, temple, or shrine at all lately (Dents2004:

192–94).

3 According to polls held shortly after World War II, more than 50 percent of

respondents said that they had faiths (Ishii 1997: 4). It can be assumed, therefore,

that a larger number of Japanese regarded themselves as faithful before then,

but there is no record. Skeptical intellectuals were, among all, rationalists who

thought religion was unnecessary in modernizing Japan. Even those who were

affiliated with Christianity were often either liberal Christian, such as Unitarians,

or ‘non-church Christians’ (mukyÿkaiha) (Tsuchiya 2005: 52–60).

4 It may be more natural in the West to call the third approach ‘interpretive’ or

‘hermeneutical’, but I intentionally use the word, ‘understanding’, since, as I will

argue below, the approach is adopted by both phenomenologists and sociologists

of religion.

5 Japanese scholars of religion have had this idea since their earliest days.

Celebrating the 25th anniversary of the beginning of modern religious studies

in Japan, they said, whereas ‘religious studies in advanced countries has generally

been confined to historical studies and is still bearing theological overtones, or

even remaining to be a mere branch of theology’, ‘[our] religious studies has

been independent institutionally, advocating the critical and scientific study of

religions from the beginning’ (Kinenkai 1931: 311).

6 Such sectarian studies include: traditional Buddhist studies that originated in the

sixth century, when Buddhism was introduced to Japan; Confucian studies

(jugaku) as the study of the Chinese classics that flourished during the Edo period

(1603–1868); and National Learning (kokugaku) in the same period, a nativistic

philological study of ancient texts, which influenced the formation of State Shintÿ.

Besides the individuals mentioned in the text, hajagakuand kyÿsÿhanjaku

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SATOKO FUJIWARA