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Introduction

Introduction As indicated in the title, the articles in this special section look at religions “through the lenses of gender” (Mikaelsson 2004: 299). They look at the ways in which notions of gender—the differentiation between men, women and other constructions of sexual identity—are at work at the level of individuals, institutions, and discourses in religions of modern and contemporary Japan. In more concrete terms, attention is directed at lived religion rather than doctrinal concepts. How are gender codes applied to justify discrimination, or conversely, to support women’s (self-)empowerment in the Japanese context? How do they affect religious identities, and how are they consolidated, deconstructed or changed in religious discourses? As an analytical category, gender is frequently conceived as a critical term that points at unequal social conditions resulting from the above-mentioned differentiation. “The category of gender … was developed in order to think about how social systems, cultures, and religions, for example, were gender coded and how these codes impacted upon women and men” (Juschka 2005: 230). Consequently, feminist theory emphasizes the need to disclose the “power element in the dynamics of gender construction” (Mikaelsson 2004: 299) on various levels of social life. The hierarchical relations inherent to the http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Religion in Japan Brill

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Publisher
Brill
Copyright
Copyright 2015 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
ISSN
2211-8330
eISSN
2211-8349
DOI
10.1163/22118349-00402011
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

As indicated in the title, the articles in this special section look at religions “through the lenses of gender” (Mikaelsson 2004: 299). They look at the ways in which notions of gender—the differentiation between men, women and other constructions of sexual identity—are at work at the level of individuals, institutions, and discourses in religions of modern and contemporary Japan. In more concrete terms, attention is directed at lived religion rather than doctrinal concepts. How are gender codes applied to justify discrimination, or conversely, to support women’s (self-)empowerment in the Japanese context? How do they affect religious identities, and how are they consolidated, deconstructed or changed in religious discourses? As an analytical category, gender is frequently conceived as a critical term that points at unequal social conditions resulting from the above-mentioned differentiation. “The category of gender … was developed in order to think about how social systems, cultures, and religions, for example, were gender coded and how these codes impacted upon women and men” (Juschka 2005: 230). Consequently, feminist theory emphasizes the need to disclose the “power element in the dynamics of gender construction” (Mikaelsson 2004: 299) on various levels of social life. The hierarchical relations inherent to the

Journal

Journal of Religion in JapanBrill

Published: Jan 1, 2015

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