Religion and Tourism in Japan: Intersections, Images, Policies and Problems

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This book argues that the relationship between religion and tourism in Japan provides an example of secularization, counteracting scholarship that claims tourism increases religious activity. Although the Japanese constitution prohibits the state from promoting religion, the book shows how state agencies nonetheless encourage people to visit religious sites, by presenting them as manifestations of a shared heritage redolent of a real yet vanishing Japan, in ways that distance them from religion. It examines theoretical understandings of religion and tourism and presents case studies of famed pilgrimage routes and temples, showing how Zen monasteries are now tourist brands and pilgrimages are the focus of TV entertainment programmes and portrayed as opportunities to eat sweets. It also shows why priests acquiesce in such matters, examining the nationalistic rhetoric of nostalgia and unique heritage that underpins the promotion of religious sites.

Author Bio

Ian Reader is Professor Emeritus at the University of Manchester, UK. His prime areas of research are on religious dynamics in the contemporary world, with a special focus on Japan, on pilgrimage and on the links between religion and violence. He is the author of numerous books, articles and chapters about such issues, including Pilgrims Until We Die: Unending Pilgrimage in Shikoku, co-authored with John Shultz, (2021) and Dynamism and the Ageing of a Japanese "New" Religion, co-authored with Erica Baffelli (Bloomsbury, 2019).