SUVANNABHUMI (수완나부미)

Korea Institute for ASEAN Studies (부산외대 아세안연구원)
권호 표지

Southeast Asia in Japan's Spiritual Market: The Sacralization of Exoticism

  • Received : 2016.04.16
  • Accepted : 2016.06.09
  • Published : 2016.06.30
Download PDF
⟨ Previous Next ⟩

Abstract

From the migrant care-workers arriving in Japan from the Philippines and Indonesia to support the depleted social support system for the large population of the elderly (Ogawa 2012) to the increasing number of retiring Japanese embarking on long-stay tourism in Malaysia (Ono 2015), the Japanese image of Southeast Asia as an exotic destination offering cheap labor in return for official development assistance seems to be fading away. Yet these changes are not necessarily reflected in the way contemporary Japanese, especially those who belong to the global, "spiritual-but not-religious" (Fuller 2001) population, think of and "consume" Southeast Asia in their daily lives. Using three case-studies, spiritual tours, Thai massage, and an NGO founded by a Japanese spiritual therapist, this paper argues that in Japan's large spiritual market, which targets people seeking alternative ways to express their religiosity, the old-fashioned colonial exoticism of Southeast Asian narratives were integrated in a totalizing discourse, in which Japan remains the exceptional outlier (Tanaka 1993), a country still claimed to be "advanced" both spiritually and economically.

Keywords

References

  1. Albanese, Catherine L. 2007. A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  2. Avenell, Simon. 2014. What is Asia for Us and Can We Be Asians? The New Asianism in Contemporary Japan. Modern Asian Studies, 48: 1594-1636.
  3. Bender, Courtney. 2010. The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  4. Borup, Jorn. 2015. Easternization of the East? Zen and Spirituality as Distinct Cultural Narratives in Japan. Journal of Global Buddhism, 16:70-93.
  5. Cealo, Gayuna. 2005. Watashi wa watashi: Gayuna Cealo no Shidoroku. Tokyo: Chigensha.
  6. DuBois, Thomas David, ed. 2009. Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
  7. Fuller, Robert C. 2001. Spiritual But Not Religious: Understanding Unchurched America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  8. Gaitanidis, Ioannis. 2010. Socio-Economic Aspects of the 'Spiritual Business' in Japan: A Survey among Professional Spiritual Therapists. Shukyo to Shakai, 16: 143-160.
  9. Gaitanidis, Ioannis. 2011. At the Forefront of a 'Spiritual Business': Independent Professional Spiritual Therapists of Japan. Japan Forum, 23(2): 185-206.
  10. Gaitanidis, Ioannis. 2012. Spiritual Therapies in Japan. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 39(2): 353-385.
  11. Gaitanidis, Ioannis. 2013. Seishin ryōhō no iryōka: supirichuaru serapii no bunseki kara. Panel presentation at the 72nd Annual Conference of the Japanese Association of Religious Studies. Tokyo: Kokugakuin University.
  12. Gaitanidis, Ioannis and Aki Murakami. 2014. From Miko to Spiritual Therapist: Shamanistic Initiations in Contemporary Japan. Journal of Religion in Japan, 3(1): 1-35.
  13. Goto, Ken'ichi. 2003. Tensions of Empire: Japan and Southeast Asia in the Colonial and Postcolonial World. Ohio: Ohio University Press.
  14. Goto-Jones, Christopher. 2014. Magic, Modernity, and Orientalism: Conjuring representations of Asia. Modern Asian Studies, 48(6):1451-1476.
  15. Hammer, Olav. 2015. New Age. The Occult World. Christopher Partridge, ed. 372-381. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
  16. Hoover, Stewart M. 2006. Religion in the Media Age. London: Routledge.
  17. Horie, Norichika. 2013. Narrow New Age and Broad Spirituality: A Comprehensive Schema and a Comparative Analysis. New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion. Steven J. Sutcliffe and Ingvild Saelid Gilhus, eds. 99-116. Durham: Acumen Publishing
  18. Ichiyanagi, Hirotaka, ed. 2006. Okaruto no teikoku: 1970 nendai no Nihon o yomu. Tokyo: Seikyusha.
  19. Iida, Junko. 2013. Holism as a Whole-body Treatment: The Transnational Production of Thai Massage. European Journal of Transnational Studies, 5(1): 81-111.
  20. Isomura Kentaro. 2007. Supirichuaru wa naze hayaru no ka. Tokyo: PHP Shinsho.
  21. Joyce, Colin. 2007. Yokoso, Ehara warudo e. Newsweek May 16. 46-55.
  22. Kan, Naoko. 2010. Pawa supotto toshite no jinja. Kenji Ishii, ed. 232-252. Tokyo: Pelican-sha.
  23. Langford, Jean M. 2002: Fluent Bodies: Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
  24. Leheny, David. 2006. Think Global, Fear Local: Sex, Violence, and Anxiety in Contemporary Japan. Cornell: Cornell University Press.
  25. Martin, Alex. 2009. The Past, Present and Future of Fortune-telling. The Japan Times, April 21. http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2009/04/21/reference/the-past-present-and-future-of-fortunetelling/ (Accessed June 08, 2016).
  26. Ogawa, Reiko. 2012. Globalization of Care and the Context of Reception of Southeast Asian Care Workers in Japan. Southeast Asian Studies, 49(4): 570-593.
  27. Okamoto, Ryosuke. 2015. Seichi Junrei: Sekai isan kara anime no butai made. Tokyo: Chuo-shinsho.
  28. Ono, Mayumi. 2015. Commoditization of Lifestyle Migration: Japanese Retirees in Malaysia. Mobilities, 10(4): 609-627.
  29. Owen, Suzanne. 2008. The Appropriation of Native American Spirituality. London: Continuum.
  30. Partridge, Christopher. 2013, Occulture is Ordinary. Kennet Granholm and Egil Asprem, eds. 113-133. Contemporary Esotericism. Sheffield: Equinox Publishing.
  31. Peng Er, Lam, ed. 2013. Japan's Relations with Southeast Asia: The Fukuda Doctrine and Beyond. London: Routledge.
  32. Rose, Nikolas. 1998. Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  33. Shimoda, Hikaru. 2013. Memorializing the Spirit of Wit and Grit in Postindustrial Japan. Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George, eds. 242-256. Japan since 1945: From Postwar to Post-Bubble. London: Bloomsbury.
  34. Singleton, Mark. 2010: Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  35. Sunami, Eihiko and Kazumasa Nishioka. 2007. Cealo no michi: Gayuna Cealo, hito no michi no oshie. Tokyo: Chigensha.
  36. Srivinas, Tulasi. 2010. Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalization and Religious Pluralism through the Sathya Sai Movement. New York: Columbia University Press.
  37. Srivinas, Tulasi. 2012. The Sathya Sai Baba movement. Olav Hammer and Mikael Rothstein, eds. 184-197. The Cambridge Companion to New Religious Movements. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  38. Tanaka, Stefan. 1993. Japan's Orient: Rendering Pasts into History. California: University of California Press.
  39. Van der Deer, Peter. 2009. Spirituality in Modern Society. Social Research. 76(4): 1097-1120
  40. Watanabe, Chika. 2015. Porous Persons: The Politics of a Nonreligious Japanese NGO. Michael Rectenwald, Rochelle Almeida and George Levine, eds. 271-285. Global Secularisms in a Post-Secular Age. Berlin: De Gruyter,.
  41. Yoshinaga, Shin'ichi. 2015. The Birth of Japanese Mind Cure Methods. Christopher Harding, Iwata Fumiaki, Yoshinaga Shin'ichi, eds. 76-102. Religion and Psychotherapy in Modern Japan. London: Routledge.