Japan's Preoccupation with Religious Freedom
Jacqueline Stone
"Japan's Preoccupation with Religious Freedom" examines the role that religious freedom played in transnational interactions between Japan and the United States, with a particular focus on their relationship during the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952). Through careful investigation of primary sources such as religious journals, parliamentary proceedings, and police records, the project first demonstrates that religious freedom actually existed in a substantive sense in prewar and wartime Japan. Second, it shows that the universalist interpretation of religious freedom that emerged during the Occupation played a crucial and hitherto largely overlooked role in the early construction of human rights language.
Assistant in Instruction, Tibetan Buddhism, Spring 2012 Assistant in Instruction, The Buddhist World of Thought and Practice, Fall 2011 Assistant in Instruction, The Religions of China, Spring 2011
Monograph 2012 Drawing on Tradition: Manga, Anime, and Religion in Contemporary Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Articles and Book Chapters Solicited “Religions Policy during the Allied Occupation of Japan [provisional title],” Religion Compass (slated for Summer 2014 issue). 2012 “Horrific ‘Cults’ and Comic Religion: Manga after Aum,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 39(1): 127–151. 2009 “Religion and Japanese Film: Focus on Anime.” In The Routledge Companion to Religion and Film, ed. John Lyden, 194–213. London: Routledge. 2008 “Manga to shūkyō no genzai: ‘Nijū seiki shōnen’ to nijūisseiki no shūkyō ishiki.” Gendai shūkyō 2008: 120–142. 2007 “Shūkyō Asobi and Miyazaki Hayao’s Anime [abridged].” In The Religion and Film Reader, ed. Jolyon Mitchell and S. Brent Plate, 183–193. London: Routledge. 2007 “Shūkyō Asobi and Miyazaki Hayao’s Anime.” Nova Religio 10(3): 73–95. Reviews and Service Publications In press “Review: Benjamin Dorman, Celebrity Gods: New Religions, Media, and Authority in Occupied Japan,” Nova Religio. In press “The Concept of Religion in Modern Japan: Imposition, Invention, or Innovation?” (a comparative review of Hoshino Seiji, Kindai Nihon no shūkyō gainen: shūkyōsha no kotoba to kindai and Jason Ānanda Josephson, The Invention of Religion in Japan), Religious Studies in Japan 2013. 2013 “Records of Allied Operational and Occupation Headquarters, World War II,” Dissertation Reviews: Fresh From the Archives, 4 March 2013 (http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/2012). 2013 “Archives on the Allied Occupation of Japan,” Dissertation Reviews: Fresh From the Archives, 4 February 2013 (http://dissertationreviews.org/archives/1906). 2010 “What would Jesus and Buddha do … on holiday?” The Guardian, “Comment is Free: Belief,” http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/dec/22/jesus-buddha-... 2010 “Review: Mark W. MacWilliams, ed. Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime,” Asian Ethnology 69(1): 188–190. Conference Proceedings 2013 “Facing Forward, Looking Back: Religion and Film Studies in the Last Decade” (with Joseph Kickasola, John C. Lyden, S. Brent Plate, Antonio Sison, Sheila J. Nayar, Stefanie Knauss, and Rachel Wagner), Journal of Religion and Film 17(1) http://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/jrf/vol17/iss1/32/. 2010 “Seiyō kara mita Nihon eiga no shūkyōsei.” In Kokusai kenkyū fōramu: Eiga no naka no shūkyō bunka: hōkokusho, ed. Inoue Nobutaka, 35–46. Tokyo: Kagaku Kenkyūhi hojokin/kiban kenkyū (A) “Daigaku ni okeru shūkyō bunka kyōiku no jisshitsuka o hakaru shisutemu kōchiku,” dai 2 gurūpu.
Fulbright-IIE Doctoral Research Fellow, Japan, 2012–2013
Review Editor, H-Shukyo, 2012–2014 term