The Department of Japanese Religion and Intellectual History received a generous grant from the Toshiba International Foundation to organise a series of lectures by early-career scholars based in Japan.
Please check this page regularly for updates to this project.
Frontier Religious Studies: A Lecture Series Showcasing Japanese Religious Studies in English
In August 2025, the International Association for the History of Religions, the world’s second-largest academic community dedicated to Religious Studies (after the American Academy of Religion), elected Fujiwara Satoko, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Tokyo, as its president. This is the first time a Japanese scholar has occupied such a prestigious role since IAHR’s founding in 1950. This landmark event and the increasing participation of scholars based in Japan in international conferences of religious studies associations (the Japanese delegation at the 2025 IAHR World Congress was the largest ever, with more than 70 participants) showcase increased international interest in research on religion conducted in Japan and highlight an urgent need for more high-quality research that is being conducted in Japan to reach international audiences. This project aims to offer a platform to disseminate recent, high-quality research that has, until now, only been available in Japanese to the academic world outside of Japan, and to foster a new generation of Japanese scholars who will contribute to expanding this field of study outside of Japan.
In 2026, the following 6 lectures will take place in hybrid format (on campus, in Sendai and online, on Zoom) and will also be livestreamed on YouTube through this website.
- Aya Ōba (Joetsu University of Education), 27 June 2026 (Sat.).
- Bunya Tamaoki (Kyoto Prefectural University), 31 July 2026 (Fri.).
- Yūnosuke Kimura (Tohoku University), 9 October 2026 (Fri.).
- Haesun Park (Ritsumeikan University), 4 December 2026 (Fri.).
- Yūki Watari (Bukkyo University), 11 December 2026 (Fri.).
- Kengo Takei (Musashino University), 29 January 2027 (Fri.).