A secular Japan? The continuing debate on religion in Japanese Society
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 PM to 7:00 PM
- Venue
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Room
- Khalili Lecture Theatre (KLT)
- Event type
- Lecture
About this event
Speaker: Dolores Martinez (Emeritus Reader in Anthropology, SOAS)
Photo: Masked Ise dancer performing for Kuzaki's Hi-matsuri (Kuzaki-cho, Toba City, July 1985)
JRC Meiji Jingu Autumn Lecture 2022
The Japan Research Centre Meiji Jingu Autumn Lecture is sponsored through the generosity of the Meiji Jingu-Intercultural Research Institute.
Abstract
Looking back over 40 years of research on and writing about Japan, Dr Martinez argues that discussions of religion in Japan might benefit by examining how secular Japan is, rather than asking whether Japanese should be labelled ‘a religious society’. Ranging from her own fieldwork in the 1980s on Buddhist and Shinto rituals in a Japanese diving village to the work of others on the concept of shūkyō, the rise of new religions, changing funeral rites, and the ubiquity of spiritual and ceremonial traditions in Japanese society, her lecture aims to explore the possibility that Japan should best be described as a secular society.
Event Recording
Speaker Biography
Dolores Martinez is an Emeritus Reader in Anthropology with special reference to Japan, SOAS. For her DPhil in Anthropology, she lived and worked in a Japanese diving (ama) and fishing village. While her fieldwork centred on gender, maritime anthropology, tourism, and ritual, over the years her research primarily has come to focus on the Japanese media, particularly films. She is the author of Identity and Ritual in a Japanese Diving Village and Remaking Kurosawa, and has edited or co-edited various books relating to Japanese society, religion, popular culture, gender, and sports. Her most recent co-edited book, Recreating Anthropology (with David Gellner) was published this year.
Organiser: SOAS Japan Research Centre
Contact email: centres@soas.ac.uk
