TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

The Future of Japanese Studies?
Researching and Teaching Transnational Contingencies
At the age of 21, after dropping out of a degree in medicine and working for a year tofund my move to the United Kingdom, I started university all over again. This time,
however, I chose to learn about something I truly liked: Japan. I believe that today’sundergraduate students in Japanese Studies around the world carry fundamentally no
different incentives than I did nearly twenty years ago. Some may have perhaps clearer
ideas (than I had at the time) about what they want to do with a bachelor in JapaneseStudies. But they all, like me, share a fascination with one or more aspects of the “Japan”
which they may have visited as tourists, read about online, in books or manga, or heardof through teachers, friends or family.
The “Japan” of the 21st century is, nevertheless, not the same. And I do not mean here
Japan, as a nation, which like other nations around the world, remains subject to both
local and global forces of history. I mean the “Japan” that is taught and researched inJapanese Studies. That “Japan” has shifted, and this has naturally impacted on every oneof its subfields, such as “Japanese religion,” the multidisciplinary field that has now
become my main speciality. What has happened to “Japanese religion” as an area of
research and teaching is a good example of the shifts I am talking about, and which I
nevertheless believe continue to offer new opportunities for Japanese Studies from 2020and beyond.
In this essay, I identify two challenges and show through my research and teachingexperience how these can be overcome and lead to new developments of the field ofJapanese Studies and to new contributions that Japanese Studies can make to scholarly
research and higher education in general.
To begin with, I should note that the term I used to refer to my speciality, “Japanesereligion,” is not even an accepted term anymore. As illustrated by the change of title ofthe fifth edition of the longest running textbook on religion in Japan1, researchers who
try to argue that there is something particularly “Japanese” about religion in Japan
would today face criticism for a simple reason: the orientalist and culturally essentialist
H. Byron Earhart’s Japanese Religion: Unity and Diversity was first published in
1969, but in its fifth edition published in 2014, the author changed the title to Religion
in Japan (Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage).
1

1

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

undertone that has become since the 1980s the object of critic of post-colonial theory
and practice in academia worldwide. Any study that assumes a cultural particularism
from its outset would be now widely viewed as methodologically (if not ideologically)
flawed. This criticism has perhaps become one of the biggest challenges faced by
Japanese Studies (and Area Studies) research in at least the last 30 years, but I believethat this criticism has also created, during that same period, significant opportunities forJapan-related research to influence the theoretical direction of other establisheddisciplines.
In the field of Religious Studies, Timothy Fitzerald’s The Ideology of Religious Studies(Oxford University Press, 2000) attacked the entire scholarly field for its allegedunscholarly and theologically-informed basis, and, despite the criticism it received, wasundoubtedly catalyst for a renewed wave of influential critical research that has changed
the way we look at and even teach about religion. Worthy of note here is that Fitzerald’s
argument partly stems from his critique of the application of the concept of “religion” inJapan, to which he dedicates one-fifth of his monograph. Indeed, it would not be an
exaggeration to say that the Japanese case-study has substantially contributed to thedebate about the failings of our European and Christian-centric understandings ofreligious phenomena. For example, the fact that shūkyō was a Meiji-era neologism
meant to translate a very specific idea of “religion,” one that was belief-based,
monotheistically inclined and private, is now a common example mentioned in
introductory classes of religious studies that deal with the difficulty of defining“religion.” It is in this sense that I argue that the essentialism for which Japanese Studies
were once criticized can be replaced by a critical comparativism that uses Japan as acase study to re-examine each discipline’s most fundamental concepts and theories. And
this, not by assuming that Japan is an exceptional outlier, but by carefully analysing thespecific historical circumstances that have led to Japan being subject to the same global
transformations as other parts of the world, albeit (sometimes) under different disguises.
Henceforth, the rise of Japanese Studies as a source of critical knowledge is what I
would identify as one of the two roles the field will/needs to play in 2020 and beyond,and to which I want to continue to contribute through my research on alternative
religion in contemporary Japan.
Alternative religion has been traditionally associated with the rise of new religious
movements (NRMs), which from the nineteenth century onwards sprang up around the2

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

globe in response to a multitude of factors, including the rise of the modern nation, theauthority of a scientific worldview, and the appearance of modern media. The scholarly
study of Japanese NRMs has significantly contributed to our understandings of therelationship between religion and modern society, politics, and more recently,(especially after the Aum affair) violence. Alternative religion, however, does not haveto be limited to religious organisations that, compared to older religious traditions,present perhaps novel structures, beliefs and practices. Religion, in general, has been in
constant rejuvenation, adaptation and reinvention throughout history; thus, what has
been happening in the last 200 years is not a uniquely modern phenomenon. Rather,what may be especially significant in the modern period is how alternative currents
within established religious cultures have become much more visible and consequently
more easily turned to objects of criticism, because of the current information age. In my
research, I argue that this phenomenon, together with the multitude of factors that
continue to contribute to religious innovation today, has resulted in highlighting“alternativity” as an essential quality of religion, one that does not only concern new
religious groups, but the way religion is constantly discussed, consumed and sometimes
rejected in opposition to an imagined “mainstream,” which may be another form of
religion, or the “secular,” or the “scientific,” and depending on specific cases, the“political,” “the effectively therapeutic,” the morally business-like,” “the legal”, and soon. What I am arguing, in brief, is that despite the often-criticised notion of “religion asa universal category,” the term owes its alleged universality not to its ubiquity per se,
but its alternativity. In other words, whether or not we agree on the fact that “religion” is,in general, a modern invention, or whether or not we agree that “religion” is a Westerninvention, today’s “religion’s” foremost characteristic lies in the way it is imagined,
discussed and practiced as an alternative to something else. It is in this alternativity that
we can find today religion’s political authority, social role and individual attractiveness.
My argument stems from research conducted on the practice of spiritual therapists incontemporary Japan. By “spiritual therapists,” I refer to practitioners of techniques that
allegedly provide complementary and alternative (to science or other similar practices)means of overcoming personal issues, across the entire spectrum of social, physical andmental distress. This type of “therapies” is usually rejected by the scientific communityand criticised by the mainstream media for the irreproducibility of the effects they claim
to provide. They have, nevertheless, experienced temporary media attention throughout
the twentieth century, most recently under the label supirichuaru (spiritual), which in
the first decade of the twenty-first century was popularised by television personality and3

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

self-proclaimed spiritual counsellor, Ehara Hiroyuki. Various theories tried to explain
what seems to have been a sudden turn towards (but, in fact, just enhanced visibility of)a contemporary spirituality discourse that has been critical of religious organisations
and has centred on individual, physical and mental betterment. Scholars across theglobe linked this “spiritual, but not religious” discourse to the post-WWII rise of
consumer culture, the privatisation of religion, but also the privatisation of healthcare,education and other services which once had been the monopoly of the state. Also, inJapan, the rise of the supirichuaru has scholarly been connected with a post-Aum
climate of anti-religious sentiment, coupled with a post-bubble social malaise popularly
expressed as “the lost decade” (now already “the lost two decades”).
Japan, however, continues to present a case study that challenges this approach tointerpreting cultural constructs such as today’s non-organised, albeit “alternative,”
spirituality as the next stage in a unilinear historical development from church-centredsocieties, to nation-based societies, and then to consumer-based societies. JapaneseStudies scholars have not only shown that Japan was already modern before the often
mentioned turning point of the year 1868, but they have even questioned the idea that anindividual/”consumer”-based attitude to religious practice did not exist before“modernity,” albeit Meiji Japan. In other words, Japan has been a very good source of
criticism of theories linking modernisation to religious transformation, by showing how
a religious market offering several options, sometimes within the same religious
traditions (such as Buddhism), preexisted the advent of an alleged capitalist ethos ofself-transformation. Japanese history is filled with religious leaders presenting
alternative interpretations of both common and rare doctrines, and religious seekers
producing self-made scenarios of individual salvation.
More importantly for the future direction of the field of religious studies, Japan
continues to present an especially rich field of knowledge of the transnational andtrans-“disciplinary” (in general, not in the scholarly sense) flow of ideas and practices
that have characterised religious transformations since the nineteenth century. Recent
research, has for example, examined the mutual impact between evolutionary theory
and Modern Japanese Buddhism2, or between the global environmentally conscious
discourse and the association of Shinto with a nature-friendly/animistic religious core3.
G. Clinton Godart. 2017. Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine: Evolutionary Theory andReligion in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press and the Weatherhead
2Institute at Columbia University.
Aike P. Rots. 2017. Shinto, Nature and Ideology in Contemporary Japan: Making

3

4

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

In my own research, a transnational outlook remains essential when I delve into theglobal historical factors behind the rise of spiritualism and, in general, occultism, among
popular masses and intellectuals of (post)industrialized nations, such as Japan. The
simple fact that, as I have shown in my research, the majority of spiritual therapies inJapan are either direct imports or adaptations from North American settings impels me
to place Japan within a wider transnational network of alternative religious ideals. This
network has, as I have also shown, included South and Southeast Asia as well, areas that
continue to function as a source of orientalist inspirations, as the expansion of activities
of some of my informants in those locales demonstrates.
In summary, I argue that the future of research on religion in Japan, and JapaneseStudies in general, lies precisely in uncovering the global, transnational nature of what
until recently was far too simplistically called “Japanese” (religion). In my case, forexample, I want to understand better not only how discourse about “alternative religion”
was transnationally produced, but also how this continues to have a real impact on
Japanese daily life. For example, how does media discourse on Japanese politicians’
religious affiliations or practice deemed “occult”, albeit “unusual,” impact on theircareer? How do lawyers in Japan deal today with cases of embezzlement or fraudcommitted by spiritual therapists and other religious practitioners who the publicconsiders “non-legitimate”? How do these trends compare with or are inspired by, forexample, European discourse on minority religions’ rights and trials of cases ofinfringement of religious freedom?
After nearly 200 years, the focus of studies of religions has finally turned away fromtrying to describe the autonomous nature of “religion,” to trying to understand thecomplex entanglement of religion with other aspects of human life on a global scale. In
the same way, I argue that the future of Japanese Studies lies not in trying to describe“Japan” as a distinct entity, but in developing a better picture of the transnational
character of that same “Japan” we used to (and still) consider worth studying.
To do what I propose above a second important challenge presents itself for JapaneseStudies today: that is research methodology training. In recent years, several symposia
in which the future of Japanese/Area Studies was debated revealed a lack of researchmethods training for students who spend their entire university life in Area Studies
departments. Some scholars continue to argue that Japanese Studies only provide
Sacred Forests. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
5

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

language training, and if students want to be “properly” trained in researching on/inJapan, they should join a discipline-based department, such as sociology or history or
economics. The reality, however, is that as a multidisciplinary field of studies, the studyof Japan needs a multidisciplinary, or even better, a transdisciplinary outlook. The
problem is that, even though such outlook has been honed by scholars in the field andperhaps talked about in individual classes around the globe, the transdisciplinary
methods that Japanese Studies scholars often use to gather and analyze data, have notbeen diligently fleshed out and systematized so that they can be employed forpedagogical purposes. To be clear, I am not arguing that Japanese Studies employ
research methodology specific to Area Studies; I am only claiming that the way
Japanese Studies scholars combine existing research methods in their work has yet to besystematically recorded and turned into knowledge resources for the new generations ofJapanese Studies students.
To my knowledge, there are currently only three4 sources of information regarding
research methods for students and scholars interested in Japan, and they are all, perhaps
unavoidably, emphasising the practical and ethical aspects of conducting fieldwork inthis country. Although these all make invaluable and highly recommended reading, I
personally had wished that authors write more about how their general knowledge on
Japan (not limited to the Japanese language), informed not only the way they proceededwith data collection, but also the way they interpreted that data beyond the frameworksof their respective disciplines. If indeed, Japan deserves the production of dedicated“how-to-do-fieldwork” texts, it should also deserve material that teaches specificallystudents of Japanese Studies how to integrate the knowledge that they have accumulated
on various aspects of Japan into their research. This may sound superfluous, consideringthat most teachers expect students to pick up automatically what they need tounderstand the topic at hand from what they have already learned. Yet, I argue that thisis not a straightforward task, for two reasons.
Firstly, it strikes me as paradoxical that there are students or graduates of JapaneseStudies who can produce high-quality research on certain Japanese phenomena but
Bestor, Theodore C., Patricia G. Steinhoff and Victoria Lyon Bestor, eds. 2003. Doing
Fieldwork in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‛i Press; the special issue “Politics
and Pitfalls of Japan Ethnography: Reflexivity, Responsibility, and Anthropological
Ethics” in Critical Asian Studies Volume 39 Number 4 (2007); and Levi McLaughlin.
2010. “All Research is Fieldwork: A Practical Introduction to Studying in Japan as a
Foreign Researcher.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 30/1, No. 10 (26 July).
4

6

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

remain entirely biased or simply ignorant regarding everything else related to Japan. I
am not claiming that it is possible to become a specialist in everything “Japanese.” I am
arguing that Japanese Studies are more than Japanese language training coupled with an
overview of “Japan”; Japanese Studies ought to provide opportunities for students toconsider how their interest or research in a specific domain impacts on the objectivity,
self-reflexivity and criticality with which they need to learn and employ knowledge
about other domains of Japan (and beyond).
Secondly, I am not alone in arguing that we need more integration in the way weconduct research and teach about our findings. In the last 25 years, the academic
community has been calling for new modes of knowledge production that are morepractical, transdisciplinary, heterogeneous, transient and reflexive5. Today even an entire
field of Transdisciplinary Studies is dedicated to a systematic recording of
methodologies used in successful multidisciplinary projects so that these may be
reproduced for the benefit of other projects in different settings. This is perhaps the only
way to achieve the societal impact that scholarly research and teaching around the world
are increasingly required to reach today.
Having spent my post-PhD career in the Japanese higher education system, I can say
from experience that the possibilities that Japanese Studies could provide for theenhancement of pedagogical methodologies used in, for example, General Education,
Liberal Arts Education and other curricula that offer multidisciplinary content in Japanare limitless. The reason is very simple: Japanese Studies are from the outset a sort of“General Education about Japan.” Japanese Studies curricula teach various subjects,
each of which may be talking conceptually about a different “Japan,” but they all
ultimately ask from students to “put the dots” together and to a relative degree form
their own “Japan.” Arguably this is rarely stated in such an explicit way, but JapaneseStudies graduation projects, regardless of their topic, require from the student to doexactly that: to interpret a phenomenon through the “Japan”-prism they should haveacquired throughout their studies. In other words, contrary to monodisciplinary degrees
that ask students to focus on a specific subarea of the discipline for their research in the
final year, Japanese Studies undergraduates cannot be “allowed” to put “Japan” aside
when they write their dissertations. It is as if, every time they write their graduation
project, sociology students, instead of applying certain sociological theories toSee, for example, Michael Gibbons et al. 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The
Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London: Sage.
5

7

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

understanding the phenomenon of their choice, had to rethink what “society” means andhow it is holistically related to that phenomenon.
My argument is simply that Japanese Studies are inherently integrative, and can, byextent, form the basis for transdisciplinary methodology training that can be employed
to help students in multidisciplinary faculties to “find their feet,” “connect the dots,”and integrate disparate knowledge into specific research projects. To be more precise,
this can be achieved by following three principles, based on the work of one of two of
my PhD supervisors, Professor V.T. King6, to which I have been adhering in myteaching and which I would like to further develop in the rest of my career:(a) the need to travel across borders and political, ethnic, geographical anddisciplinary boundaries to show how“Japan” has to become a contingent device
and to encourage students to consider, think about and even experience that
contingency through class exercises, debates and collaborative projects.
(b) always consider the historical perspective of concepts, phenomena, theories
and popular discourse about any “Japanese” subject.
(c) keep in mind the bigger, transnational picture and how the topic “fits” as aJapanese case-study to a bigger or lesser degree with the rest.
Higher education itself has become increasingly transnational. Japanese Studies
education cannot be built on assumptions of a monoethnic/monocultural student
audience anymore. As I have come to understand in my work, teaching must becollapsed onto the audience. By this, I do not mean that Japanese Studies need to always
respond to what the students want to hear about Japan. I mean that considering thesignificant variation in the socio-cultural background, disciplinary interests and career
hopes of today’s student bodies, Japanese Studies need to also mirror that variation in
the way “Japan” is conceived, taught and researched. In this day and age, where theemphasis on interactive, project-based, collaborative learning has taken centre-stage inpedagogical policies, I foresee no difficulty in combining the transdisciplinary outlook
of Japanese Studies with the pluralities of our student body, and to develop a more
applied, integrative, and reflective “spin” to our field.

These are based on the three guiding principles of what Professor V.T.King has called“jobbing social science methodology” (see Victor T. King. 2009. “Borneo Studies:
Perspectives from a Jobbing Social Scientist.” Akademika 77: 15-40).
6

8

TIFO 30th Anniversary Essay Contest
Ioannis Gaitanidis

In summary, like “religion,” “Japan” has become a contingent concept worthy including
in questions that ask not “what?” but “how?”. It is not that “religion” or “Japan” do notbear meaning anymore. It is that their meaning lies more into how these concepts arefabricated and used, rather than in what they substantially refer to. Contingency andhistorical relativism have become essential in our work as researchers and educators.
There is no reason not to integrate research methodology and ethics that take these into
account to pedagogical work, and vice versa. In arguing this, I am reminded that one of
the foremost scholars of religious studies of the last forty years, Jonathan Z. Smith, wasapparently famous for preferring to teach undergraduate rather than postgraduate
students, because they questioned him on the most fundamental ideas, helping him andthemselves (through his answers) to make knowledge their own. Education comes to lifeat the moment of tension generated by the double sense of "fabrication," for it means
both to build and to lie, claimed Smith7. I cannot agree more.

Christopher I. Lehrich (ed.). 2012. On Teaching Religion: Essays by Jonathan Z.
Smith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.14.

79