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Tag Archives: Japan

Christianity Meets State Shinto in Meiro Koizumi’s “Today My Empire Sings”

September 27, 2017 Leave a Comment

Jeremy Woolsey This story is a stark reminder of continuing taboos surrounding the emperor in contemporary Japan and the difficulties artists face in challenging them.

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Teaching True Believers

May 25, 2016 Leave a Comment

Jolyon Baraka Thomas The religious studies classroom is a strange place. Whether one teaches in a public university or a private one, the subject matter demands that students set aside personal commitments in order to engage with religion both critically and respectfully.

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Training The Religious Memory

December 08, 2015 Leave a Comment
Waiting: Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, Japan

Jolyon Baraka Thomas There is nothing quite so touching (or quite so irritating) as having a total stranger slump against you in a deep sleep on a Tokyo train. Like the Internet, Tokyo trains are equally intimate and anonymous. They are spaces where one encounters fellow Tokyoites in all their wacky fashion, their frenetic mobile phone gaming, their inane conversations, their drunken abandon. Tokyo trains are raucous in the evenings and eerily silent during the day. They are often uncomfortably crowded, but they are nevertheless a place to temporarily let down one’s guard. I’ve actually boarded the Yamanote circle line and ridden it all the way around the city just so I could sneak in an hour-long nap.

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Tongue in Cheek, Just in Case

June 13, 2015 1 Comment
Japanese shrine, 2014. Photo by "dewd82." Available via CC0 Public Domain and PixaBoy.

Jolyon Baraka Thomas Few people would think that the essence of Japanese religion could be encapsulated in an advertisement for antivirus software, but then again few people outside of Japan have seen this video.

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Field Notes on Drinking at a Buddhist Bar

March 26, 2015 1 Comment
Vow's Bar Business Card (front) by Jolyon B. Thomas

Jolyon Baraka Thomas

We are pretty familiar with how Tokyo’s neighborhoods reward the adventurous, so when Three and I met up for drinks in Nakano on an autumn evening in 2012, we struck out for one of the small side streets near the station instead of walking down the larger shopping arcade directly across from the station exit.

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