Levi Mclaughlin
Biographic Data
| ID | 3786967 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Levi Mclaughlin |
| GIVEN NAMES | Levi |
| FAMILY NAME | Mclaughlin |
| SIGNATURE | MCLAUGHLIN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | North Carolina State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9590-0631 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 23 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2003 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Introduction: Behind the Scenes of Media and Legal Responses to the Abe Assassination
Since the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has seen a flood of media and legal responses to connections between religion and politics. However, there has been little analysis to date of how we know what we know about developments in religion, law, and politics in Japan that were precipitated by this shocking event. These articles by Saitō Masami and Ioannis Gaitanidis contribute novel inquiries into local-level j…
The Abe Assassination and Japan’s Nexus of Religion and Politics
The shocking murder of Japan’s former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzō Abe by a gunman motivated by anger at the politician’s ties to the controversial Unification Church sparked a massive outcry that amplified long-standing anxieties about religion in Japan. This article surveys reasons for persistent tensions between a Japanese public that tends to reject self-identifying as religious and the influence of religion-affiliated organizations on Japa…
Faith in Mount Fuji: The Rise of Independent Religion in Early Modern Japan, By Janine Anderson Sawada
Journal Article Faith in Mount Fuji: The Rise of Independent Religion in Early Modern Japan, By Janine Anderson Sawada Get access Faith in Mount Fuji: The Rise of Independent Religion in Early Modern Japan By Janine Anderson Sawada University of Hawai`i Press, 2022. 294 pages. $68.00 (hardcover), $28.00 (paperback), $24.99 (e-book). Levi McLaughlin Levi McLaughlin North Carolina State University [email protected] Search for other works by this au…
Sources of Disaster: A Roundtable Discussion on New Epistemic Perspectives in Post-3.11 Japan
On 16 March 2021, the Teach311 + COVID-19 Collective (www.teach311.org) hosted a virtual roundtable discussion entitled “Sources of Disaster: New Epistemic Perspectives in Post-3.11 Japan.” The event brought together scholars and students researching the history and anthropology of Japan to explore how the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster of 11 March 2011 (3.11) changed our ways of knowing the world. The roundtable focused on…
Beethoven and Buddhism in a Japanese Religion: Culture as Cultivation in Soka Gakkai
Why is the museum at the headquarters of the lay Japanese Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai full of pianos? How did Gakkai members in Japan come to revere the compositions and ethos of Ludwig van Beethoven as means of defending Buddhist orthodoxy? And how did this Buddhist organization come to rely on classical music as a key form of self-cultivation and institution building? This article draws on ethnographic engagements with musicians in Soka G…
The Aesthetics and Emotions of Religious Belonging: Examples from the Buddhist World
The articles in this special issue illuminate the importance of aesthetics, affect, and emotion in the formation of religious communities through examples from the Buddhist world. This introduction reads across the contributors’ findings from different regions (China, India, Japan, and Tibet) and eras (from the 17th to the 21st centuries) to highlight common themes. It discusses how Buddhist communities can take shape around feelings of togethern…
Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form
A growing body of research describes connections between religion and economic activity through the language of commodification and marketization. Although this scholarship rightly challenges the assumption that religion is or should be divorced from worldly concerns, it still relies on distinctions between religion and the economy as isolable, reified entities. Rejecting this binary approach as untenable, we argue that studying the corporate for…
Japanese Religious Responses to Covid-19: A Preliminary Report
As the novel coronavirus swept Japan, religious practitioners of all types responded. This article provides an overview of early-stage reactions by individuals and organizations affiliated with Buddhism, Shinto, New Religions, and other religious traditions in Japan. It features interviews with Japanese clergy and lay followers who contended with social distancing and more dire consequences of COVID-19, and it contextualizes their responses withi…
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan
Soka Gakkai is Japan's largest and most influential new religious organization: It claims more than 8 million Japanese households and close to 2 million members in 192 countries and territories. The religion is best known for its affiliated political party, Komeito (the Clean Government Party), which comprises part of the ruling coalition in Japan's National Diet, and it exerts considerable influence in education, media, finance, and other key ar…
Women in Japanese Religions by Barbara R. Ambros
Reviewed by: Women in Japanese Religions by Barbara R. Ambros Levi McLaughlin (bio) Women in Japanese Religions. By Barbara R. Ambros. New York University Press, New York, 2015. x, 237 pages. $89.00, cloth; $17.00, paper. Those of us who teach courses on religion in Japan share a constant frustration: depressingly few of the English-language readings we can assign to undergraduates discuss women. In fact, given the primary sources in translation …
Hard Lessons Learned: Tracking Changes in Media Presentations of Religion and Religious Aid Mobilization after the 1995 and 2011 Disasters in Japan
Salvage and Salvation: Guest Editors' Introduction
Komeito's Soka Gakkai Protesters and Supporters: Religious Motivations for Political Activism in Contemporary Japan
Recently, adherents of the lay religious organization Soka Gakkai have taken to the streets and the Internet to rebuke Komeito, the junior member of the ruling government coalition and the party founded by Soka Gakkai, for abandoning peace advocacy. This article places the recent protests in historical and doctrinal context as it introduces perspectives from within Soka Gakkai to complicate easy assumptions about adherents' ideology, and it sugge…
Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan
Kōmeitō: The Most Understudied Party of Japanese Politics
What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11? Part 2: From Religious Mobilization to “Spiritual Care”
Buddhist, Christian, Shinto, and other religious responses to devastation in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters in northeast Japan have included a great deal more than providing material aid and seeing to the ritual needs of the dead and the bereaved. This article considers ways in which burgeoning collaborations of religious professionals, clinical care workers, and academics are crafting a public persona of re…
What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11? Part 1: A Brief Survey of Religious Mobilization after the Great East Japan Earthquake Disasters
This article serves two principal purposes: 1) to survey the many rescue, relief, and reconstruction initiatives undertaken by Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, and New Religious organizations in the two years since the March 2011 disasters that devastated northeast Japan, and 2) to introduce electronic and print resources to readers interested in learning more about specific religious disaster response campaigns. The pragmatic aid efforts carried out…
Sōka Gakkai in Japan
This chapter discusses the contemporary characteristics and historical development of Sōka Gakkai, or the 'Value Creation Study Association', a group that began in 1930s Japan as a society of educators and grew into a postwar religious mass movement. Though Sōka Gakkai is commonly characterized as a lay movement within the Nichiren Shōshū Buddhist tradition, it is much more than a Buddhist organization and is instead heir to what the author chara…
Did Aum Change Everything? What Soka Gakkai Before, During, and After the Aum Shinrikyo Affair Tells Us About the Persistent “Otherness” of New Religions in Japan
Scholars share a broad consensus that the Aum Shinrikyō subway attacks in March 1995 fundamentally shifted prevailing attitudes against "religion" in Japan.However, comparison with the case of Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest active "new religion, " complicates this view.In this article, I provide a counter-narrative to the argument that "Aum changed everything" by showing that public officials' strategies against Aum Shinrikyō from 1995 emerged in l…
Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan – By Nancy K. Stalker
When Tengu Talk: Hirata Atsutane's Ethnography of the Other World – By Wilburn Hansen
WHEN TENGU TALK: HIRATA ATSUTANE'S ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE OTHER WORLD . By Wilburn Hansen . Honolulu : University of Press , 2008 . Pp. vii + 268 . Cloth, $54.00 . Hansen addresses an undervalued aspect of early modern Japanese intellectual history, namely inquiries into the supernatural by Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843). Atsutane was a seminal scholar of kokugaku, or Nativism, who promoted the reestablishment of Japan's “ancient ways” as he denigrated …
All Research is Fieldwork: A Practical Introduction to Studying in Japan as a Foreign Researcher
Article summaryThis is a short, pragmatic guide designed to assist researchers, particularly graduate students and other novice scholars, through initial stages of Japan-based study. All of the advice here is designed to help researchers address what they should do, how they should do it, and the long-term dividends they can enjoy through careful conduct in the field
Faith and Practice: Bringing Religion, Music and Beethoven to Life in Soka Gakkai
This paper presents research on the activities of a symphony orchestra organized by Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest new religious movement. Examples drawn from the author's experience as a musician and researcher within the group illustrate that the members' activities are a fusion of Buddhist practice, value inculcation and musical expression. The latter informs their religious experience, manifest on the one hand as Western musical elements infuse…
Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form
A growing body of research describes connections between religion and economic activity through the language of commodification and marketization. Although this scholarship rightly challenges the assumption that religion is or should be divorced from worldly concerns, it still relies on distinctions between religion and the economy as isolable, reified entities. Rejecting this binary approach as untenable, we argue that studying the corporate for…
Salvage and Salvation: Guest Editors' Introduction
The Aesthetics and Emotions of Religious Belonging: Examples from the Buddhist World
The articles in this special issue illuminate the importance of aesthetics, affect, and emotion in the formation of religious communities through examples from the Buddhist world. This introduction reads across the contributors’ findings from different regions (China, India, Japan, and Tibet) and eras (from the 17th to the 21st centuries) to highlight common themes. It discusses how Buddhist communities can take shape around feelings of togethern…
Hard Lessons Learned: Tracking Changes in Media Presentations of Religion and Religious Aid Mobilization after the 1995 and 2011 Disasters in Japan
Faith and Practice: Bringing Religion, Music and Beethoven to Life in Soka Gakkai
This paper presents research on the activities of a symphony orchestra organized by Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest new religious movement. Examples drawn from the author's experience as a musician and researcher within the group illustrate that the members' activities are a fusion of Buddhist practice, value inculcation and musical expression. The latter informs their religious experience, manifest on the one hand as Western musical elements infuse…
Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto, and the Rise of New Religions in Imperial Japan – By Nancy K. Stalker
When Tengu Talk: Hirata Atsutane's Ethnography of the Other World – By Wilburn Hansen
WHEN TENGU TALK: HIRATA ATSUTANE'S ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE OTHER WORLD . By Wilburn Hansen . Honolulu : University of Press , 2008 . Pp. vii + 268 . Cloth, $54.00 . Hansen addresses an undervalued aspect of early modern Japanese intellectual history, namely inquiries into the supernatural by Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843). Atsutane was a seminal scholar of kokugaku, or Nativism, who promoted the reestablishment of Japan's “ancient ways” as he denigrated …
All Research is Fieldwork: A Practical Introduction to Studying in Japan as a Foreign Researcher
Article summaryThis is a short, pragmatic guide designed to assist researchers, particularly graduate students and other novice scholars, through initial stages of Japan-based study. All of the advice here is designed to help researchers address what they should do, how they should do it, and the long-term dividends they can enjoy through careful conduct in the field
Sōka Gakkai in Japan
This chapter discusses the contemporary characteristics and historical development of Sōka Gakkai, or the 'Value Creation Study Association', a group that began in 1930s Japan as a society of educators and grew into a postwar religious mass movement. Though Sōka Gakkai is commonly characterized as a lay movement within the Nichiren Shōshū Buddhist tradition, it is much more than a Buddhist organization and is instead heir to what the author chara…
Did Aum Change Everything? What Soka Gakkai Before, During, and After the Aum Shinrikyo Affair Tells Us About the Persistent “Otherness” of New Religions in Japan
Scholars share a broad consensus that the Aum Shinrikyō subway attacks in March 1995 fundamentally shifted prevailing attitudes against "religion" in Japan.However, comparison with the case of Soka Gakkai, Japan's largest active "new religion, " complicates this view.In this article, I provide a counter-narrative to the argument that "Aum changed everything" by showing that public officials' strategies against Aum Shinrikyō from 1995 emerged in l…
What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11? Part 2: From Religious Mobilization to “Spiritual Care”
Buddhist, Christian, Shinto, and other religious responses to devastation in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters in northeast Japan have included a great deal more than providing material aid and seeing to the ritual needs of the dead and the bereaved. This article considers ways in which burgeoning collaborations of religious professionals, clinical care workers, and academics are crafting a public persona of re…
What Have Religious Groups Done After 3.11? Part 1: A Brief Survey of Religious Mobilization after the Great East Japan Earthquake Disasters
This article serves two principal purposes: 1) to survey the many rescue, relief, and reconstruction initiatives undertaken by Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, and New Religious organizations in the two years since the March 2011 disasters that devastated northeast Japan, and 2) to introduce electronic and print resources to readers interested in learning more about specific religious disaster response campaigns. The pragmatic aid efforts carried out…
Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan
Kōmeitō: The Most Understudied Party of Japanese Politics
Komeito's Soka Gakkai Protesters and Supporters: Religious Motivations for Political Activism in Contemporary Japan
Recently, adherents of the lay religious organization Soka Gakkai have taken to the streets and the Internet to rebuke Komeito, the junior member of the ruling government coalition and the party founded by Soka Gakkai, for abandoning peace advocacy. This article places the recent protests in historical and doctrinal context as it introduces perspectives from within Soka Gakkai to complicate easy assumptions about adherents' ideology, and it sugge…
Hard Lessons Learned: Tracking Changes in Media Presentations of Religion and Religious Aid Mobilization after the 1995 and 2011 Disasters in Japan
Salvage and Salvation: Guest Editors' Introduction
Women in Japanese Religions by Barbara R. Ambros
Reviewed by: Women in Japanese Religions by Barbara R. Ambros Levi McLaughlin (bio) Women in Japanese Religions. By Barbara R. Ambros. New York University Press, New York, 2015. x, 237 pages. $89.00, cloth; $17.00, paper. Those of us who teach courses on religion in Japan share a constant frustration: depressingly few of the English-language readings we can assign to undergraduates discuss women. In fact, given the primary sources in translation …
Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan
Soka Gakkai is Japan's largest and most influential new religious organization: It claims more than 8 million Japanese households and close to 2 million members in 192 countries and territories. The religion is best known for its affiliated political party, Komeito (the Clean Government Party), which comprises part of the ruling coalition in Japan's National Diet, and it exerts considerable influence in education, media, finance, and other key ar…
Why Scholars of Religion Must Investigate the Corporate Form
A growing body of research describes connections between religion and economic activity through the language of commodification and marketization. Although this scholarship rightly challenges the assumption that religion is or should be divorced from worldly concerns, it still relies on distinctions between religion and the economy as isolable, reified entities. Rejecting this binary approach as untenable, we argue that studying the corporate for…
Japanese Religious Responses to Covid-19: A Preliminary Report
As the novel coronavirus swept Japan, religious practitioners of all types responded. This article provides an overview of early-stage reactions by individuals and organizations affiliated with Buddhism, Shinto, New Religions, and other religious traditions in Japan. It features interviews with Japanese clergy and lay followers who contended with social distancing and more dire consequences of COVID-19, and it contextualizes their responses withi…
Sources of Disaster: A Roundtable Discussion on New Epistemic Perspectives in Post-3.11 Japan
On 16 March 2021, the Teach311 + COVID-19 Collective (www.teach311.org) hosted a virtual roundtable discussion entitled “Sources of Disaster: New Epistemic Perspectives in Post-3.11 Japan.” The event brought together scholars and students researching the history and anthropology of Japan to explore how the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power plant disaster of 11 March 2011 (3.11) changed our ways of knowing the world. The roundtable focused on…
Beethoven and Buddhism in a Japanese Religion: Culture as Cultivation in Soka Gakkai
Why is the museum at the headquarters of the lay Japanese Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai full of pianos? How did Gakkai members in Japan come to revere the compositions and ethos of Ludwig van Beethoven as means of defending Buddhist orthodoxy? And how did this Buddhist organization come to rely on classical music as a key form of self-cultivation and institution building? This article draws on ethnographic engagements with musicians in Soka G…
The Aesthetics and Emotions of Religious Belonging: Examples from the Buddhist World
The articles in this special issue illuminate the importance of aesthetics, affect, and emotion in the formation of religious communities through examples from the Buddhist world. This introduction reads across the contributors’ findings from different regions (China, India, Japan, and Tibet) and eras (from the 17th to the 21st centuries) to highlight common themes. It discusses how Buddhist communities can take shape around feelings of togethern…
The Abe Assassination and Japan’s Nexus of Religion and Politics
The shocking murder of Japan’s former Prime Minister of Japan Shinzō Abe by a gunman motivated by anger at the politician’s ties to the controversial Unification Church sparked a massive outcry that amplified long-standing anxieties about religion in Japan. This article surveys reasons for persistent tensions between a Japanese public that tends to reject self-identifying as religious and the influence of religion-affiliated organizations on Japa…
Faith in Mount Fuji: The Rise of Independent Religion in Early Modern Japan, By Janine Anderson Sawada
Journal Article Faith in Mount Fuji: The Rise of Independent Religion in Early Modern Japan, By Janine Anderson Sawada Get access Faith in Mount Fuji: The Rise of Independent Religion in Early Modern Japan By Janine Anderson Sawada University of Hawai`i Press, 2022. 294 pages. $68.00 (hardcover), $28.00 (paperback), $24.99 (e-book). Levi McLaughlin Levi McLaughlin North Carolina State University [email protected] Search for other works by this au…
Introduction: Behind the Scenes of Media and Legal Responses to the Abe Assassination
Since the July 2022 assassination of former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, Japan has seen a flood of media and legal responses to connections between religion and politics. However, there has been little analysis to date of how we know what we know about developments in religion, law, and politics in Japan that were precipitated by this shocking event. These articles by Saitō Masami and Ioannis Gaitanidis contribute novel inquiries into local-level j…
Sociology (13 works) · Japanese History and Culture (12 works) · History (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Political science (10 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Religious studies (7 works) · Buddhism (6 works) · Art (5 works)