Therapy, Spirituality, and East Asian Imaginaries

Ioannis Gaitanidis is an Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Global and Transdisciplinary Studies, Chiba University (Japan). He is the author of Spirituality and Alternativity in Contemporary Japan: Beyond Religion? (2022). Luis Fernando Bernardi Junqueira is a D. Kim Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. He is a global historian of science, medicine, and religion in China, with extended interests in the histories of psychology and alternative medicine in modern East Asia and South America. Avery Morrow is a PhD candidate in Religious Studies at Brown University. His research broadly covers new religious movements and occultism in Japan from 1868 through the present day. He is currently finishing a major research project on the integration of a popular faith healing movement into modern Shinto ideology. Sangyun Han is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies, Tohoku University. Her research focuses on the history of modern Japanese religion, especially the relationship between the ‘Occult Boom’ of the 1970s and Japanese esoteric Buddhism. She has recently published “Historicizing the (Oc)cultic Milieu: Mikky. in 1970s Japan” (Religious Studies in Japan volume 7, 2024).

• List of figures and tables, Acknowledgements, Note on naming, use of italics and other conventions,Therapy, Spirituality and East Asian Imaginaries: An Introduction, Section 1: Circulation of 'East Asian' Concepts, Chapter 1: How Qi Became Energy: Parapsychology, Soviet Science and Chinese Acupuncture in the 1970s, Chapter 2: Finding Kyo in Shiatsu Spaces: Sensing the Global Movement of Embodied Knowledge, Chapter 3: Capturing the Moment of Kimochi-ii: Transnational Flows and the Transformation of Qigong in Japan, Section 2: Circulation of Therapeutic Narratives, Chapter 4: Five-Element Acupuncture in 1960-80s Britain: In Pursuit of Alternative Treatment with Body-Mind-Spirit, Chapter 5: From Eden to Aquarius: 'Oriental Medicine', Natural Healing and the Market of Self-Care Books in Brazil in the 1970s, Chapter 6: Buddhist Self-Help Healing Narratives and the Meditative Turn, Section 3: Alternative Therapies Across Epistemic Fields and Professions, Chapter 7: A Collaboration Between Mother and Baby: Sophrology in a Japanese Maternity Clinic and the Making of Medical Knowledge, Chapter 8: The Influence of Traditional Chinese Medicine on Brazilian Naturology, Chapter 9: Constructing a Modern Esoteric Buddhist Breath Therapy, Section 4: Alternative Therapies and National Identities, Chapter 10: Ki Sury.n in South Korea: Reclaiming the Term Pigwahakch.k (Unscientific) to Challenge Scientific Supremacy, Chapter 11: Nationalism and the Legitimacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Macau: Colonial Legacy and Contemporary Imaginaries.

"This volume offers critical thoughts and documentary descriptions of transcultural movements that have shaped and continue to shape the world. Anyone interested in the ongoing discourse on Orientalism vs. Occidentalism will find much food for thought... Individual chapters could be quite useful as assigned readings for undergraduate and graduate courses on modern martial arts, the history of modern medicine, globalization, and Buddhist Studies."Jeffrey Kotyk, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany