In 2012, Kim Jong-il, the “beloved leader” of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, died. As power passed to his son Kim Jong-un (the third generation of the Kim family to exercise dominion over the now impoverished nation), intelligence analysts and media pundits began their inevitable cycle of conjecture, anticipating power struggles and the possibility for a fundamental political realignment in the region. In this essay, Brian Cumings suggests something of the short-sightedness of these speculations, and argues that any effort to understand the political transition in North Korea must take into account long-standing patterns in religion, culture and politics. These patterns represent, not some unchanging template — Kim Jong-un's notable departure from the Confucian mourning ritual observed by his father suggests as much — but a repertoire of authoritative symbols, the materials out of which the regime will construct a “usable past” by which to characterize and respond to the challenges of the present. Awareness of the traditional repertoire that makes up this “usable past” may not allow us to predict with certainty how individuals and societies will behave, but it will certainly help us to understand why they behaved as they did.

In his Sociology of Religion, Max Weber suggested that one of the significant social impacts of religious ideas was to be found in what he called “the problem of theodicy,” the effort to reconcile a vision of cosmic order with the suffering, injustice and waste that marks so much of human experience. Among these religious responses to the problem of evil, he included the doctrine of karmic cause and effect, a notion that has since become commonplace in Western popular discourse. As the following piece by Brian Victoria suggests, karma theory has often been used by those in positions of authority, not simply to explain, but to justify social inequality and oppression. In his survey of twentieth-century Japanese writings on karma and society, Victoria describes some of the ways in which Buddhist doctrines like karma were placed explicitly in service to the state. The idea that our experiences in this life are the result of our actions in a past life was put to use, not only to dismiss calls to social and economic equality, but to redirect responsibility for the death and devastation caused by war from political leaders to the victims themselves. As he notes, however, dissenting voices have argued for a very different view, one more in keeping with Buddhist injunctions to compassion.

Despite its far-reaching influence (for better and for worse), the doctrine of karmic cause-and-effect is hardly the only religious resource on which modern Japanese have drawn to grapple with suffering and evil. Reflecting on the devastating aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear catastrophe in and around Fukushima, Brian Victoria describes some of the religious ideas and practices that have continued to shape Japanese responses to disaster. Buddhist temples hold a virtual monopoly on the Japanese funeral industry, but Buddhist doctrine - which affirms suffering as a feature of all experience - also offers a framework within which to make sense of pain and loss. Yet, as he notes, the Buddhist tradition is not alone in this respect. Not only do Shinto shrines join Buddhist temples in offering protective rituals and amulets designed to avert catastrophe, but Shinto religious ideas provide a framework for understanding and reacting to disaster, if not always in the most socially progressive fashion. He finds that, like the Buddhist law of karma, the Shinto notion of ritual impurity (tsumi) has led to regrettable cases of discrimination, as those exposed to the “pollution” of radiation are shunned by society. Yet these unfortunate instances are matched by inspiring stories of those, like the abbot of Joenji temple in Fukushima, whose religious commitments have led him to compassionate service.

The 2011 tsunami and nuclear disaster at Fukushima has encouraged comparisons in many quarters with the tragic experience of Minamata more than 55 years earlier, when mercury-poisoned industrial runoff caused widespread illness and death in the human and animal populations. Rather than viewing these disasters as the unfortunate side effects of modern industrial capitalism (to be addressed, in the capitalist view, with financial compensation) Yoneyama Shoko draws on Minamata victim's advocate Ogata Masato to imagine a more humane and life-affirming vision of our obligations to one another. In crafting his response to the Chisso Corporation and the Japanese government, Ogata (who eschewed financial compensation) drew on elements of the popular Japanese religious heritage to affirm an ethos of interdependence and the responsibility that follows. This can be seen, for example, in Ogata's use of the term tsumi, an indigenous Japanese category of ritual impurity that encompasses both physical pollution and moral transgression. Combining notions of “defilement” and of “sin,” tsumi is a principle that (as Brian Victoria notes) has justified some in shunning the victims of chemical or radioactive contamination. Ogata, however, employs the traditional imagery of tsumi to describe, not the victims of pollution but its perpetrators, thereby presenting ecological damage as a profoundly moral matter, one that cannot be reduced to economic impacts or financial compensation.

Rising 3776 meters above the Kanto plain, the volcanic cone of Mt. Fuji is Japan's tallest mountain. Its size, location, and its striking symmetry have all contributed to its standing, since at least the medieval period, as a paradigmatic mountain in Japanese religion and aesthetics, inspiring religious observances, poetry and the graphic arts. As Byron Earhart demonstrates, however, the significance of a symbol lies in the history of its employment, of the ways its meaning is appropriated and contested over time. Surveying the imagery of Mt. Fuji in propaganda, advertising and popular culture over roughly four decades, he suggests the ways in which this mountain — as a symbolic representation of Japan itself — was employed by both the Japanese government and the Allies as a symbol of the Japanese homeland. During the occupation, images of Fuji were initially censored by the Allies, who were wary of its nationalist implications, while American troops employed the image in their insignia, symbolically capturing the Mountain as the Allies had captured Japan itself. Eventually, of course, images of the mountain returned to the public sphere, serving again as a symbolic stand-in for Japan, but now as a peacetime commercial power.

Yi Sunsin (1545-1598) was perhaps the most highly successful military commander of Korea's Chosŏn dynasty, earning particular regard for his naval engagements during the sixteenth-century invasion of Korea by Japanese dictator Toyotomi Hideyoshi. It should perhaps be unsurprising that Admiral Yi, a symbol of Korean defiance of Japanese aggression, would take on fresh significance in the years following World War II, as Korea worked to reimagine itself after a generation of Japanese occupation. The following article by Saeyoung Park describes the ways that Hyŏnch'ungsa - one of many small Chŏson-era shrines dedicated to Yi Sunsin - was transformed into the first national shrine following President Park Chung Hee's rise to power in a 1961 coup d’état. Over an eight-year period, the shrine architecture, its commemoration rituals and the surrounding countryside was transformed into an evocation of South Korea as a modern power, even as its connections with the sixteenth-century continued to be emphasized.

When we speak of “religion,” we often associate it first and foremost with matters of belief: to be “religious” is commonly understood in terms of the doctrines we accept, and the extent to which our actions are rooted in those doctrines. Indeed, our behavior (whether ethical or ritual) often makes sense precisely in the context of the religious world(s) we inhabit. As we found in Part I of this reader, religious traditions provide some of our most fundamental orientations to the world, profoundly shaping how we understand and respond to our experiences, even as those experiences influence the way we perceive the meaning of our traditions.

Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933) was a multi-talented educator, poet and author of the Taisho era. In his introduction, Roger Pulvers describes him as “a dilettante typical” of his time, combining a profound appreciation for all the world's culture (he was an devotee of Beethoven, and translated more than one of his own works into Esperanto) with a deep commitment to the Buddhist tradition. His short story “Indra's Net,” for example, demonstrates a number of the trajectories of this fascinating character. The protagonist — an archaeologist at work unearthing the Buddhist artifacts of the ancient Silk Road — carefully describes the geological features of the Tsela Pass even as he seeks to affirm his community with the Buddhist culture of that place in a cosmic epiphany replete with heavenly beings. As the afterward by Jane Marie Law indicates, the core images of this story are grounded less in the personal idiosyncrasies of its author, however, than the canonical symbolism of the Avatamsaka Sutra (Kegon-kyō), a scripture that teaches the fundamental interconnectedness of all beings and all experiences. It is this image of “Indra's Net” that helps to locate, not only the story's protagonist, but one suspects, Miyazawa himself, in a larger world, a vision in which the diversity of societies and the physical environment is grounded in a fundamental unity, one not entirely incompatible with the imperialist trajectories of his day.

The disciplines of “area studies” (exploring the language, culture and religious traditions of particular geographic regions) have always been bound up with geopolitics and perceptions of national interest. Not only does academic (and popular) interest in these studies wax and wane according to their role in contemporary politics, but their basic assumptions and orientations are often strongly influenced by those interests. In Michael Penn's interview with Cemil Aydin, they discuss the rise and decline of Japanese Islamic Studies during the 1930s and 40s. Aydin suggests that the preconceptions of Islamicists during that period were strongly shaped by the geopolitical image of Japan as a leading light in Asian efforts to throw off the yoke of Western imperialism. For these scholars, the monotheistic roots of Islam - shared with both Judaism and Christianity - often seemed to be in tension with the twentieth-century political context of much of the Islamic world, which struggled with the domination of Western powers in ways not unlike Asia. Despite the changes in Japanese Islamic Studies since the end of the Pacific War, this perspective (so very different from many of the preconceptions that drive Islamic Studies in the Western academy) not only helps us understand some of the distinctive features of Japanese images of Islam, but may provide a useful vantage from which to re-evaluate our own images of this tradition.

The present paper examines the military chaplaincy in the context of a problem which has long intrigued researchers, namely the reasons for the rapid growth of the Christian (Protestant and Catholic) churches in 1950-80s South Korea compared to Japan or Taiwan. The author suggests that, whereas a general answer to the question may be the use of Christianity as a de facto state ideology in the years 1948-1960 and its functioning as an ideology of capitalist modernisation in the 1960s-80s, a particularly important part of government-induced Christianization of South Korea was the institution of military chaplaincy. In 1951-1968, Christians—despite being a numerical minority!—monopolized the chaplaincy in the military, and fully utilised this monopoly, “solacing ” vulnerable youth forcibly conscripted for military service and making many “church family members”. The loyalties won in such a way, often lasted for life, thus providing the churches with new recruits and the hard-core anti-Communist state—with docile anti-Communismt Christian subjects.

The history of Islam in Japan dates back roughly a century (the first Japanese to go on pilgrimage to Mecca did so in 1910, and the earliest Japanese mosque dates to 1935). The largest growth in the numbers of Muslims living and worshipping in Japan took place during the so-called “bubble economy” of the 1990s, when foreign workers (many from Islamic countries) entered Japan for employment. Despite subsequent restrictions placed on such workers, a number remained in Japan, marrying Japanese citizens and starting families. In his interviews with Muslim foreign workers and Japanese converts to Islam, Kawakami Yasunori suggests something of the intersection of personal experience and political context shaping this newest chapter in the history of Japanese religion. Even as some Japanese join the Islamic community as converts, and Muslim groups put down roots by building mosques and other long-term institutions, some Muslims retain a sense of connection with their countries of origin, and consider returning for the sake of their children's traditional upbringing.

A descendant of the Hokkaido Ainu people, Chiri Yukie (1903-1922) became versed in the oral tradition of kamuy yukar (songs of the gods) from a young age. At the encouragement of the linguist Kindaichi Kyŏsuke, she transliterated and translated these songs into Japanese. Her Ainu shin'yŏshŭ (Ainu Songs of the Gods) was published posthumously in 1923. The following translation presents the author's preface, as well as a song attributed to the owl, patron deity of the village (kotan kor kamuy). In the former, Chiri shares both her nostalgia for a lost Ainu past, and her hope that her heritage will be preserved by sharing it with a Japanese-speaking audience. In the latter, we find a depiction of Ainu ritual, one that revolves around the notion of animals as both deities and the prey of hunters - after choosing to fall to an arrow, the owl is invited to stay with the impoverished family of the boy who shot it, receiving inau (offerings) and making the household prosper once more. It is a song that speaks, not only to the profound religious significance of animal spirits in hunter-gatherer traditions like that of the Ainu, but offers a commentary on the shifting nature of social fortunes - something of which Chiri seems to have been poignantly aware. It is hard not to view, in her recounting of an ancient hunting ritual, a thinly veiled commentary on the fate of her people - though reviled by their neighbors, both once had wealth and distinction, a state to which they may yet return through the proper veneration of the deity (kamuy).

Andre Vltchek has written more than one article for The Asia-Pacific Journal demonstrating the rise of militant Islamic nationalism in Indonesia, in refutation of many Western media outlets and statements in U.S. foreign policy that would characterize the country as a bastion of human rights and religious moderation in the Islamic world. In the article reproduced here, he indicates several strands that come together to form the religious climate in the most populous Islamic nation in the world. In at least some instances, the rise of intolerance appears to be a matter of religious orthodoxy in the strict sense of the word: for example, the Ahmadiyah sect, a minority group that posits the existence of prophets after Muhammad, has faced concerted pressure by mainstream Islamic groups (who have declared them heretical) and by the government itself (which has prohibited them from publicly spreading their doctrines on the basis of their “deviant” views). Other instances - like the anti-pornography laws of 2008 - seem to combine calls for Islamic sexual morality with opposition to the traditional dress of minority ethnic groups like the Balinese, while offering sweeping new censorship powers to the government.

The Yasukuni shrine is a rich focal point for myth-making, by the shrine's supporters as well as its critics. In the following essay, Mark Selden examines the reciprocal action of war memory and nationalism at Yasukuni, placing the distinctive features of the shrine as a religious focal point for national identity in the context of broader trends in twentieth- and twenty-first-century nationalisms. As he notes, the “alchemy” by which the horrors of war are transformed into memories of a glorious past represents a central feature, not only of the Yasukuni shrine, but of war memorials the world over. Indeed, his consideration of war memorials and ossuaries constructed in Okinawa - under the auspices of Okinawan villages, the Japanese government and the U.S. military occupation - suggests something of the complex dynamics at work in the enshrinement of memory and the shaping of national identity.

In 1978, Yasukuni enshrined the spirits of 14 Class A war criminals as “martyrs,” after which Emperor Hirohito (and, from his accession to the throne in 1989, Emperor Akihito) ceased making visits to the shrine. Nevertheless, visits by prominent elected representatives (most notoriously, the annual visits by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro on the anniversary of Japan's surrender) have continued, stirring international protest and internal legal challenges. As the following article suggests, at stake in these challenges is not only the constitutionality of such visits, but also the meaning of enshrinement itself. If, as legal arguments contend (and the Osaka High Court affirmed), shrine visits by Koizumi took place in his official capacity as Prime Minister, this represents a violation of the separation of religion and state power affirmed in the post-war Constitution. At the same time, these official visits imply to many at least tacit governmental support for the policies of the shrine, which not only works to glorify Japan's imperialist past, but also enshrines a number of names (including those of former Taiwanese and Korean colonial subjects) over the strong objection of surviving relatives.

Among the many groups for which the Yasukuni Shrine raises important questions is Japan's Christian population. In 1988, for example, the Japanese Supreme Court rejected the claim of Nakaya Yasuko, the Christian widow of an officer in Japan's Self Defense Force, who objected on religious grounds to her husband's enshrinement as a Shinto deity at a shrine affiliated with Yasukuni. Yet, as John Breen's survey of Catholic responses to Yasukuni indicates, relations between Christian authorities and the shrine are often complex. At one level, of course, is a basic theological question: to what extent can Catholics participate in rituals associated with non-Christian religious traditions? Interestingly, the Vatican (in a continuation of policies set down when Yasukuni was an institution of State Shinto) affirmed that Catholics may, in fact, participate in such rituals, insofar as those rites serve as expressions of patriotism. At the same time, however, Yasukuni has raised criticism from the Catholic Bishops in Japan, especially regarding the threat posed by government support of the shrine to the constitutional separation of religion and state power. Catholic politicians and intellectuals, meanwhile, run the gamut from outright apologetics for the shrine to advocacy for a more secular memorial. In his concluding comments, Breen carefully outlines the various issues at stake, and suggests that no simple solution is likely to address them all.