EurAsia Academy in Tokyo - Workshop on Japanese Religions

[Brigitte Pickl]

Dear colleagues,

I am pleased to announce an online Workshop "Religions in Early Modern and Modern Japan – Resilience of Marginalized Religious Groups" taking place on 18 March 2026, 16:00-19:00 JST. 

https://www.oeaw.ac.at/ikga/veranstaltungen/event-detail/religions-in-early-modern-and-modern-japan

The advent of Christianity in Japan had a significant impact on religious policies on the national and regional level, affecting not only Christians but also almost all other religious groups in Japan to a certain extent. The banning of Christianity led to the passing of legislation that granted Buddhist temples significant power over the population. This power shift triggered regional anti-syncretic religious reforms that, on the one hand, aimed to emancipate Shinto from Shinto-Buddhist amalgamation and, on the other, targeted religious traditions that were regarded as syncretic. Religious policies that were initially conceived in the seventeenth century had a lasting impact well into the modern period. This workshop will examine religions and religious traditions and practices that experienced oppression by the authorities at some point. The individual presentations will focus on two groups that were targeted by religious policies.

Speakers:

Carla Tronu Montané (Institute of Science Tokyo): Christian Confraternities before and after the prohibition of Christianity in 1614

Brigitte Pickl-Kolaczia (Austrian Academy of Sciences): Mountain ascetics’ resilience in the face of religious reform in eastern Japan

Dunja Sharbat-Dar (University of Bochum): Facing Chaos with the Cross: Japanese Christians and resilience in times of disaster and crisis

Please register for online participation: https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/meeting/register/W5aJPQyMQomCwQt4o78lkw

 

This workshop is part of the EurAsia Academy Tokyo organized by the Cluster of Excellence: EurAsian Transformations. https://www.oeaw.ac.at/eurasian-transformations/