In the West, Buddhism as a “world rejecting” religion based on ascetic renunciation and non-economic spirituality is often invoked as a default narrative, and in many Buddhist cultures, immateriality is indeed promoted as a symbolic ideal of authenticity. Economy and materiality, however, are inherently part of Buddhism. This is notably the case in Japan, where monasteries, temples, and associations throughout history have been wealthy organizations. Contemporary temple Buddhism, however, faces economic threats from secularization, non-Buddhist ritual business, and new religious movements (
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
Alles, Gregory D. 2009. “Religious Economies and Rational Choice: On Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith.” In M. Stausberg (ed.), Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion, London: Routledge, 83–98.
Astley, Trevor. 1995. “The Transformation of a Recent Japanese New Religion: Ōkawa Ryūhō and Kōfuku no Kagaku.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22(3–4): 343–380.
Baffelli, Erica. 2011. “Charismatic Blogger?: Authority and New Religions on the Web 2.0.” In Erica Baffelli, Ian Reader, and Birgit Staemmler (eds.), Japanese Religions on the Internet: Innovation, Representation and Authority, New York: Routledge, 118–135.
Baffelli, Erica. 2016. Media and New Religions in Japan. New York: Routledge.
Benavides, Gustavo. 2004 “Economics.” In Robert E. Buswell, Jr. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Buddhism, vol. 1, New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 243–246.
Benavides, Gustavo. 2005. “Economy.” In Donald S. Lopez Jr. (ed.), Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 77–102.
Bond, Kevin. 2014. “The ‘Famous Places’ of Japanese Buddhism: Representations of Urban Temple Life in Early Modern Guidebooks.” Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 43(2): 228–242.
Borup, Jørn. 2008. Japanese Rinzai Zen Buddhism — Myoshinji, A Living Religion. Leiden: Brill.
Borup, Jørn. 2016. “Propagation, Accommodation and Negotiating Social Capital: Jodo Shinshu Responses to Contemporary Crises.” Japanese Religions 40(1–2): 85–107.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. Practical Reason. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bowler, Kate. 2013. Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bruce, Steve. 2011. Secularization: In Defence of an Unfashionable Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Carlson, Matthew. 2014. “Kōmeitō, Sōka Gakkai, and Money in Japanese Politics.” In George Ehrhardt, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed (eds.), Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 163–186.
Coleman, James S. 1988. “Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital.” American Journal of Sociology 94: 95–120.
Collcutt, Martin. 1981. Five Mountains: The Rinzai Zen Monastic Institution in Medieval Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Collins, Randall. 1997. “An Asian Route to Capitalism: Religious Economy and the Origins of Self-Transforming Growth in Japan.” American Sociological Review 62(6): 843–865.
Covell, Stephen G. 2005. Japanese Temple Buddhism: Worldliness in a Religion of Renunciation. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Covell, Stephen G. 2012. “Money and the Temple: Law, Taxes and the Image of Buddhism.” In Inken Prohl and John K. Nelson (eds.), Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religions, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 159–176.
Dobbelaere, Karel. 2001. Soka Gakkai: From Laymovement to Religion. Salt Lake City: Signature Books.
Durkheim, Émile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Duteil-Ogata, Fabienne. 2012. “Emerging Burial Spaces and Rituals in Urban Japan.” In Natacha Aveline-Dubach (ed.), Invisible Population: The Place of the Dead in East-Asian Megacities, London: Lexington Books, 50–71.
Ehrhardt, George, Axel Klein, Levi McLaughlin, and Steven R. Reed (eds.). 2014. Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley.
Falk, Monica Lindberg. 2007. Making Fields of Merit: Buddhist Female Ascetics and Gendered Orders in Thailand. Copenhagen: NIAS Press.
Foxeus, Niklas. 2017. “Possessed for Success: Prosperity Buddhism and the Cult of the Guardians of the Treasure Trove in Upper Burma.” Contemporary Buddhism 18(1): 108–139.
Gaitanidis, Ioannis. 2010. “Socio-Economic Aspects of the ‘Spiritual Business’ in Japan: A Survey Among Professional Spiritual Therapists.” Religion and Society (Shūkyō and Shakai), 16: 143–160.
Graeber, David. 2001. Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. New York: Palgrave.
Happy Science. 2014. Shōja e ikō. Tokyo: Happy Science.
Horie, Norichika. 2017. “The Making of Power Spots: From New Age Spirituality to Shinto Spirituality.” In Jørn Borup and Marianne Q. Fibiger (eds.), Eastspirit: Transnational Spirituality and Religious Circulation in East and West, Leiden: Brill
Iannaccone, Larry. 2006. “Economy.” In Helen Rose Ebaugh (ed.), Handbook of Religion and Social Institutions, New York: Springer Publishing, 21–39.
Inose, Yuri. 2012. Shinkō wa dono yō ni keishōsareru ka: Sōka Gakkai ni miru jisedai ikusei. Sapporo-shi: Hokkaidō Daigaku Shuppankai.
ipss. 2002. “Population Projections for Japan: 2001–2050.” Tokyo: National Institute of Population and Social Security Research. url: http://www.ipss.go.jp/pp-newest/e/ppfj02/ppfj02.pdf.
Jackson, Peter A. 1999. “The Enchanting Spirit of Thai Capitalism: The Cult of Luang Phor Khoon and the Post-Modernization of Thai Buddhism.” Southeast Asian Research 7(1): 5–60.
Mackenzie, Rory. 2007. New Buddhist Movements in Thailand: Towards an Understanding of Wat Phra Dhammakaya and Santi Asoke. New York: Routledge.
McLaughlin, Levi. 2009. “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University.
McLaughlin, Levi. 2012. “Sōka Gakkai in Japan.” In John Nelson and Inken Prohl (eds.), Brill Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Religion, Leiden: Brill, 269–308.
McLaughlin, Levi. 2015. “Komeito’s Soka Gakkai Protesters and Supporters: Religious Motivations for Political Activism in Contemporary Japan.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 13(40): 1. url: http://apjjf.org/-Levi-McLaughlin/4386.
McLaughlin, Levi. Forthcoming. Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
McCleary, Rachel M. (ed.). 2011. The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Meyer, Birgit, and Dick Houtman. 2012. “Introduction: Material Religion — How Things Matter.” In Birgit Meyer and Dick Houtman (eds.), Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, New York: Fordham University Press, 1–26.
McMullin, Neil. 1984. Buddhism and the State in Sixteenth-Century Japan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Nakano Tsuyoshi. 2010. “Minshō shūkyō toshite no soka gakkai — shakaisō to kokka to no kankei kara.” Shūkyō to shakai 16: 111–142.
Obadia, Lionel. 2011. “Is Buddhism Like a Hamburger? Buddhism and the Market Economy in a Globalized World.” Research in Economic Anthropology 31: 99–121.
Obadia, Lionel, and Donald C. Wood. 2011. “Economics and Religion, Economics in Religion, Economics of Religion: Reopening the Grounds for Anthropology?” Research in Economic Anthropology 31(1): xiii–xxxvii.
Ohnuma, Reiko. 2005. “Gift.” In Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (ed.), Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 103–123.
Palmer, David A. 2011. “Gift and Market in the Chinese Religious Economy.” Religion 41(4): 569–594.
Penner, Hans. 2009. Rediscovering the Buddha: Legends of the Buddha and Their Interpretation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pokorny, Lukas, and Franz Winter. 2012. “Creating Utopia: The History of Kofuku no Kagaku in Austria, 1989–2012, with an Introduction to Its General History and Doctrine.” In Hans Gerald Hödl and Lukas Pokorny (eds.), Studies on Religion in Austria 1: 31–79.
Putnam, Robert D. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Rambelli, Fabio. 2007. Buddhist Materiality: A Cultural History of Objects in Japanese Buddhism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Reader, Ian. 2012. “Secularisation R.I.P? Nonsense! The ‘Rush Hour Away from the Gods’ and the Decline of Religion in Contemporary Japan.” The Journal of Religion in Japan 1(1): 7–36.
Reader, Ian. 2014. Pilgrimage in the Marketplace. New York: Routledge.
Reader, Ian, and George J. Tanabe, Jr. 1998. Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Rowe, Mark M. 2004. Bonds of the Dead: Temples, Burial, and the Transformation of Contemporary Japanese Buddhism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sakurai Yoshihide. 2011. “New Religions: Economic Aspects.” In Birgit Staemmler and Ulrich Dehn (eds.), Establishing the Revolutionary: An Introduction to New Religions in Japan, Hamburg: LIT Verlag, 89–118.
Scott, Rachelle M. 2009. Nirvana for Sale? Buddhism, Wealth, and the Dhammakāya Temple in Contemporary Thailand. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Sihlé, Nicolas. 2015. “Towards a Comparative Anthropology of the Buddhist Gift (and Other Transfers).” Religion Compass 9(11): 352–385.
Shimada Hiromi. 2008. Shin shūkyō ‘bijinesu’. Tokyo: Kodansha.
Shimazono, Susumu. 1998. “The Commercialization of the Sacred: The Structural Evolution of Religious Communities in Japan.” Social Science Japan Journal 1(2): 181–198.
Shimazono Susumu. 2012. “Japanese Buddhism and the Public Sphere: From the End of World War ii to the Post-Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Power Plant Accident.” Journal of Religion in Japan 1: 203–225.
Shūkan daiyamondo [Weekly Diamond] 2016. June, special feature: Sōka Gakkai: 28–52.
Sōka Gakkai Kōhōshitsu 2016. 2016 年活動報告.
Stark, Rodney, and W. S. Bainbridge. 1987. A Theory of Religion. New York: Peter Lang.
Stolz, Jörg (ed.). 2008. Salvation Goods and Religious Markets: Theory and Applications. Bern: Peter Lang, 2008.
Tsukada, Hokata, and Ōmi Toshihiro. 2011. “Religious Issues in Japan 2010. A Deluge of ‘Religious’ Information on New Religions, Power Spots, Funeral Services, and Buddhist Statues.” Bulletin of Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture 35: 24–47. url: https://nirc.nanzan-u.ac.jp/nfile/1998.
Tsukada, Hokata. 2012. “Cultural Nationalism in Japanese Neo-New Religions: A Comparative Study of Mahikari and Kōfuku no Kagaku.” Monumenta Nipponica 67(1): 133–157.
Ukai Hidenori. 2015. Jiin Shōmetsu. Tokyo: Nikkei BP Sha.
Walsh, Michael J. 2007. “The Economics of Salvation: Toward a Theory of Exchange in Chinese Buddhism.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75(2): 353–382.
Warner, R. Stephen. 1993. “Work In Progress Toward a New Paradigm for the Sociological Study of Religion in the United States.” American Journal of Sociology 98(5): 1044–1093.
Wieczorek, Iris. 2002. Neue religiöse Bewegungen in Japan. Eine empirische Studie zum gesellschaftspolitischen Engagement in der japanischen Bevölkerung. Hamburg: Institut für Asienkunde.
Yamada Naoki. 2010. Shinshūkyō to manei. Kazeisarenai ‘kyōdai saisen bako’ no himitsu. Tokyo: Takarajimasha.
Yamada Naoki. 2012. Kane to shūkyō. Tokyo: Tetsujinsha.
Yui, Monami. 2015. “Try Before You Buy a Coffin: Death Business Thrives in Japan.” Bloomberg.com, 15 December. url: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-15/try-a-coffin-for-size-the-death-business-is-thriving-in-japan.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 2188 | 187 | 23 |
Full Text Views | 458 | 9 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 314 | 18 | 0 |
In the West, Buddhism as a “world rejecting” religion based on ascetic renunciation and non-economic spirituality is often invoked as a default narrative, and in many Buddhist cultures, immateriality is indeed promoted as a symbolic ideal of authenticity. Economy and materiality, however, are inherently part of Buddhism. This is notably the case in Japan, where monasteries, temples, and associations throughout history have been wealthy organizations. Contemporary temple Buddhism, however, faces economic threats from secularization, non-Buddhist ritual business, and new religious movements (
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 2188 | 187 | 23 |
Full Text Views | 458 | 9 | 2 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 314 | 18 | 0 |