Research Areas and Projects

Gender and Religion in Contemporary Japan

Religions contribute to the creation, legitimization and dissemination of gender images by means of their myths, their practices of inclusion and exclusion, and by means of their doctrinal traditions. In Japan as well as in other countries, conservative gender roles are often passed on in religious traditions; especially in Buddhism and Shintō women are excluded from particular offices and forms of praxis. At the same time, Japanese feminism has a long history, and with the "Third Basic Plan for Gender Equality" (2010) at the latest, gender equality became an official political goal of the Cabinet. How does this alleged change in values reflect back on religious communities? Has it led to changes in gender discriminating structures or doctrinal discourses? How do gender conceptions affect the self-understanding of religious experts, and what are these conceptions like? These questions are examined with a special focus on contemporary Buddhism, placing particular emphasis on the example of ordained Buddhist women.

Medicine and Religion in Contemporary Japan

In modern differentiated societies, religion and medicine are regarded as two subsystems with their respective semantics and differing functions: religious agents aim at "salvation", medical agents aim at curing illness. However, these borders seem to be increasingly permeable in contemporary Japan. Whereas some religious communities run their own biomedical hospitals and have thus established their position in the field of medicine, others promise to cure illness by means of their religious practices or have developed their own forms of diagnosis and therapy in close relation to their specific worldview. Against this background, the focus of my research are Buddhist and new religious therapeutical activities combining religious and medical language, as well as claims for salvation and medical cure.

New Religions

The propagation and individual appropriation of moral norms are fundamental to nearly all new religions in Japan. Notwithstanding the diversity of their doctrines and rituals, most of them share a similar set of virtues which are referred to as „everyday ethics“ (seikatsu rinri) by Fujii Takeshi. Building on the so called "popular morality" (tsūzoku dōtoku, Yasumaru Yoshio) prevalent in late Edo era (1600-1868), this ethics rests on moral norms such as discipline, frugality, modesty, diligence etc. In many new religions, moral instruction is characterized by individualization, i.e., it addresses the single believer in his / her concrete living conditions. Based on these observations, my research focuses on reconstructing communicative strategies that are applied within new religions in order to initiate and guide the individual appropriation of moral norms.

Research Projects

Spiritual Healing in Japan and Switzerland

Project Lead

Prof. Dr. Dorothea Lüddeckens, University of Zürich
Prof. Dr. Monika Schrimpf, University of Tübingen

Project Staff

Eri Itō 伊藤絵里, Hokkaidō University in Sapporo, Japan
Yurina Hayashi 林由梨奈, Hokkaidō University in Sapporo, Japan
Tomoko Schlüter シュルーター智子, Hokkaidō University in Sapporo, Japan
Selina Bloch, University of Zürich, Switzerland
Anne-Christine Halter, University of Zürich, Switzerland

Project Description

Spiritual Healing, referred to as “Geistheilung” or “spirituelles Heilen” in Switzerland and “supirichuaru hīringu” スピリチュアル・ヒーリング in Japan, is a healing method that falls into the category of “alternative medicine.” Both its supply and demand seem to have increased over the past twenty years.
In Japan and Switzerland, it is notably common for spiritual healing to be practised by women. Within both countries, the practice generally takes place outside of the state-sponsored healthcare systems and is largely shaped by recent religious and ideological movements and influences.
The range of concepts of health, illness, and healing backed by spiritual healers is rather wide. They work with “spiritual forces,” viewing and experiencing their abilities in a special relationship to the spiritual world, energies and/or the universe. These are abilities and insights that complement the scientific worldview or offer an alternative to it.
The Aim of the Project is to better understand the perspectives, interpretations, and experiences of spiritual healers with regard to gender-specific aspects, and with regard to the social and medical situation caused by COVID-19. For this purpose, semi-structured interviews with healers from both countries have been conducted, transcribed, and analysed since 2021.
Initial interim results already show the diversity within the countries, and context-specific differences between Japan and Switzerland, but also overlapping narratives, patterns of interpretation, and accounts of experiences. One contextual difference, for example, lies in the very different degree to which a critical gender discourse is diffused in Swiss and Japanese society respectively.
In the conversations in both countries, semantics and narratives were strongly influenced by a popular scientific psychotherapeutic discourse. "Feeling", "emotions" and "intuition" play a crucial role for the women healers. Another similarity is that almost all of them have acquired and practise many different healing methods. From the healers' point of view, however, it is not primarily a certain "technique" that matters, but they themselves, as a person with personal abilities and their respective individual relationship with their clients. Great importance is attached to emphasising that the clients themselves must take responsibility for their healing and inner development.
Whereas in the Swiss conversations, almost all healers talked about the "fear" and "anxieties" of their clients, in the Japanese conversations the women pointed out that when they are clients themselves, they can speak differently with men and women, and much more bluntly and directly with men than with women.
A commonality becoming more and more apparent is the diversity witnessed among representatives of the scene not only regarding their spiritual concepts and practices, but also considering their attitudes towards COVID-19. While some of them are sceptical of measures such as vaccination based on their alternative medical worldview, others are very much in favour of it. In the Swiss context, reference is often made to the right of self-determination; in both countries, those healers who do not wish to be vaccinated mainly trust in their personal resilience.