Esotericism in East Asia

Chienhui Chuang is Associate Professor at Kobe Women's University, Japan. Her research focuses on Theosophical movements, internationalism, and cultural exchange in modern East Asia.Sangyun Han is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies at Tohoku University, Japan. Her dissertation examines the entanglements between the Western New Age movement and Japanese esoteric buddhism.Julian Strube is Professor of Religious Studies at Göttingen University. He works on religion and politics from a global historical perspective with a focus on India, East Asia, Europe, and North America.

• Introduction: What is “Esotericism” in East Asia? Historical and Methodological Perspectives, Chienhui Chuang (Kobe Women’s University, Japan), Sangyun Han (Tohoku University, Japan), and Julian Strube (University of Göttingen, Germany)Part 1: Naming and Framing the “Esoteric” and “Occult”1. Darkness, Strangeness, and Monstrosity: The Affectiveness of Kaii in Japanese Studies of the “Occult”, Ioannis Gaitanidis (Chiba University, Japan) 2. Western Esotericism with Chinese Characteristics: Translations and Translators in the People’s Republic, Davide Marino (University of Göttingen, Germany) 3. The Heresy of History: The Category of Gishi in Modern Japanese (Oc)culture, Orion Klautau (Tohoku University, Japan) 4. Who Talks About Esoteric Shinto, and Why?, Avery Morrow (Brown University, USA) 5. For Now We See Through a Distorted Lens, Darkly; in Search of Buddhist Master, Toshio Akai (Kobe Gakuin University, Japan) 6, Delineating the “Esoteric”: The Development of the “Identity of the Purport of Perfect and Esoteric Teachings” (enmitsu itchi) in Medieval Tendai Buddhism, Takahiko Kameyama (Kyoto University, Japan) Part 2: Reconfiguring Esotericism through Politics and Transnationalism7. The Theosophical Movement and Asian Unity: Perspectives from Pre-War China and Japan, Chienhui Chuang (Kobe Women’s University, Japan)8. Japan’s Occult Monsters: Esotericism and the New Left in Post-1960’s Japan, Hidehiko Kurita (Bukkyo University, Japan)9. The Transformation of Korean Dahnhak through Globalization: The New Age Movement and the Worldwide Expansion of Dahn World, Mitsuaki Sassa (Ritsumeikan University, Japan)10. The Healing Spirit in Korea, James Flowers (Kyung Hee University, South Korea)

Global religious history offers a powerful scholarly lens through which our understanding of the evolution of religious concepts and religio-historical trajectories is reshaped. This important volume does precisely that. It is a pioneering collection in the study of global esotericism.