In Japanese, muen kuyo refers to spiritual aid generated in situations where the deceased no longer has any living relatives to provide him or her offerings, as well as to mourning and consolatory practices made on behalf of those who are perceived to have met violent deaths in war, accidents, natural disasters, and other acutely unfortunate circumstances. It is widely known and applied in situations where the spirits of the dead are thought to be suffering (kurushimu shisha). Viewed as a unique, dynamic soteriological system that emerged in East Asia and spread throughout all levels of society, the practices collectively referred to as shisha kuyo ("spiritual aid for the dead") are characterized according to two aspects: A) a focus on filial piety and ancestral duties, and B) concern with spiritual relief for those who have died with lingering regrets or animosity. It is the latter-spiritual relief for suffering spirits, of which muen kuyo is the primary manifestation-that has provided the driving force behind this system as a whole. Building upon a thorough consideration of the structure and historical development of muen kuyo, this paper argues that its inherent musha (unlimited) and mushu (unaided) organic dynamism has provided shisha kuyo practices with the momentum necessary to penetrate greater society.

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This paper deals with responses of religious people and scholars to the earthquake and tsunami in northeastern Japan. Great numbers of people fell victim to the powerful earthquake and ensuing tsunami that hit the Tohoku region of northeastern Honshu on 11 March. The response to the disaster was immediate. Among those who became involved in the relief efforts were people of religion, and a number of religious organizations set up disaster response centers on the very same day, quickly dispatching the first contingents of relief workers. The various Buddhist, Shinto, Christian, and other religious organizations soon became engaged in efforts to ascertain the safety of their followers and give them support. The surviving temples, shrines, and churches in the stricken region became places of temporary refuge and facilitated efforts by patrons, parishioners, and local residents to support one another. At the time of a disaster, temples, shrines, churches, and other religious organizations' buildings showed the power of the place as an emergency shelter and an activity base. They hold "resource power," "human power," and "religious power." Some scholars of religion have been involved in support activities with religious people as well as research on their activities in response to the disaster. This paper points out the importance of the collaboration of religious people and scholars.

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The Hurricane Katrina disaster that struck New Orleans and the states of Louisiana and Mississippi on the Gulf of Mexico coast on August 29, 2005 stimulated numerous types of religious responses. Some were individualized spiritual responses, and others were congruent with the outlooks of specific religious congregations. Some responses were expressions of negative religious coping, in that the disaster was seen as God's punishment for sins. This punitive theodicy (explanation of why God allows people to suffer) did not prevent many people and congregations from organizing relief efforts. However, punitive theodicies articulated by outsiders who had no intention of helping were actually means to promote particular political and theological agendas. Most of the religious responses to the Katrina disaster were expressions of positive religious coping, in which people took comfort in a higher power, sought to help others, and adopted thoughtful theological explanations that did not blame the victims. A compassionate and empathetic listening presence was a great help to Katrina victims, whether or not it was motivated by religious views.

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Die Naturkatastrophe zerstort nicht nur Stadte oder Kraftwerke usw, sondern auch unser Naturverstandnis bekommt dadurch einen Riss. Dieser Riss versteckt sich gleich durch viele Informationen uber das warum der Naturkatastrophe. Diese Lage bezieht sich tief darauf, was Heidegger von dem Spruch des Herakleitos abliest: "Die Natur mag es gern, sich zu verstecken." Heidegger verdeutlicht, dass die Ubermacht der Naturkraft sich erst dann enthullt, wenn der Mensch an seiner eigenen Macht scheitert. Dasjenige, was wir in der Kernkraftwerkkatastrophe bei dem Erdbeben am 11. Marz im Jahre 2012 erfahren haben, ist genau dieses Zerbrechen der Menschenkraft. Eine solche Krise, wie sie die Radioaktivitat uns bringt, ereignet sich unvermeidlich, mit der Modernisierung, durch den Mechanismus der Industrialisierung. Die moderne Gesellschaft ist in diesem Sinne eine katastrophe Gesellschaft. Jean-Luc Nancy sagt, eine derartige Naturkatastrophe konne in der gegenwaertigen Naturwelt nicht geschehen, es sei vielmehr eine zivilisatorische Katastrophe. Klar zeigt dies die Konstellation der Sozialisierung der Natur. Trotzdem mussen wir aus der Erfahrung der Naturkatastrophe den grundlichen Einspruch dagegen vernehmen, dass wir die Natur als ein Phanomen innerhalb der Gesellschaft annehmen.

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We can divide various meditations on evil (especially, natural evil) in this world between a narrower theodicy that aims to justify God's goodness, and a larger theodicy that protests against the existence of evil. This article considers what resources a larger theodicy should include on philosophy of religion. About natural evils, we do not only humble ourselves, but also we protest and complain. According to the sociology of religion, under these protests and complaints lie a requirement of the meaning of the evil. Michel Henry claims that this meaning of evil should be classified as the outer meaning of evil and the inner one of suffering, which can be inserted into the transcendental structure of one's life. On the other hand, Negri interprets the protest on the outer suffering of evil as the moment of the protest (or rebellion) to the rational measure according to which we take the evil as unjust, and further, as the moment of an ontological becoming of both subject and world which involves a dismeasure which exceeds the rational measure.

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Without scientific knowledge, the people of pre-modern societies in Japan, as elsewhere, tried to understand and come to terms with the occurrence of natural disasters through their association with the actions of transcendent beings (kami). In ancient Japan, natural disasters were interpreted as messages, that is, vengeful curses, from the kami. With the establishment of a systematic cosmology which came with the broad reception of Buddhism during the middle ages, the causes of catastrophes came to be explained in terms of the law of cause and effect according to which punishment and salvation were delivered by the kami. With the onset of the early modern period, the sense of reality inherent in perceptions of the presence of those fundamental beings declined, and the salvation of the dead could no longer be entrusted to the system provided by the otherworldly kami. For this reason, people came to terms with catastrophes as natural disasters that must be faced. Rituals and customs, carried out over long periods, were put in place to raise the unfortunate dead to the status of ancestral spirits. In addition to a shift from the traditional world in which kami, the living and the dead coexisted toward a shutting out of the latter group, the process of "modernization" brought with it a restructuring of society around the exclusive rights and interests of human beings. The experience of the Great East Japan Earthquake has been an opportunity to reconsider the path ahead, and to reconsider responses to catastrophe which display the modern tendency to focus on the concerns of the living to the exclusion of those of the dead.

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Soon after being hit by a disaster, the local clergies in the West spring to action as a disaster chaplain as a matter of course. They support survivors through spiritual and religious care while maintaining good relations with secular healthcare teams and government. After the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, many clergies in Japan supported survivors in many ways and people still need their help. They have provided activities around death, grief care, prayer and counseling to console people for their grieving and anxiety. Four cases are shown in this paper to study about how we can establish a system for disaster chaplain in Japan. The clergies in the cases have interfaith relations, do not aim to proselytize, and provide religious care. Before the next disaster happens, we need to have 1) interfaith organizations and common standards for chaplains, 2) relationships of mutual trust with healthcare teams and government, 3) an examination on the quality and effect of religious care, and 4) a system that takes into account the diversity of each community.

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This paper reconsiders the thought of Nagai Takashi (1908-1951). It takes up his own thoughts and his critique of Takahashi Shinji's "Urakami Holocost discourse," focusing on his engagements in the campaigns of the Sino-Japan War and his occupational exposure as a radiologist as significant moments for his understanding of the deaths from the atomic bomb in Nagasaki. Nagai understood the contingency of life as "the providence of the divine Father" after experiencing combat seventy-two times and returning from the border zone between life and death. On the other hand, he did seek the purpose of death from his fear of "dying like a dog (Inu-jini)." Besides, he accepted his own imminent death as a martyrdom for science after suffering from leukemia because of his occupational exposure to radiation, and being told he did not have more than three years of life left. This also opened the way for his acceptance of the sacrifice of those who died from the dropping of the A-bomb. At the end of this paper I discuss the essence of his "Urakami Holocaust discourse" and found that Nagai tried to discriminate the border between life and death through consolation for the souls of the dead, and to encourage the survivors to rehabilitate and renew their lives after the nuclear bombing.

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People often suffer from aphasia due to the destruction of their thought-processes in a disaster or a catastrophe. People must learn, however, to represent the experience externally by producing new thoughts and words in order to overcome such painful circumstances. In this article, we call suffering from aphasia "the critical state of words to be reproduced," in which new words and thoughts need to be reproduced, so as to represent the ruined world. We discuss the case of Minamata disease as an example of a catastrophe; we especially study the case of Hongan-no-kai (Club of the Original Vow), which is loosely organized and made up of patients. Its members pray for victims and represent their own experiences of the Minamata disease incident by using some religious words; a life, a soul, etc. By focusing on the event and facing "the critical state of words," through which they represent their own experience and hand the words over to others, we will find that the event can be regarded as a path to regeneration or salvation, and will reveal a relation between the event and religion.

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After the great earthquake in the Hanshin-Awaji area in 1995, many religious orders and religionists were engaged in relief activities. The traditional festivals and newly invented rituals united and encouraged the sufferers. Religion greatly contributed to the recovery of the stricken society in this disaster. Has religion been able to maintain the gains it made at the height of the disaster? It is true that memories of grief and fear would gradually fade with time, so have religionists continued their work in taking care of the sufferers? It should be valuable to study the situation of religions in previously stricken areas, because religion must be active in a social crisis. It would seem that currently in Hanshin-Awaji, religionists such as Buddhist priests are deeply involved in their regular religious duties. The only work they do with regard to the earthquake is to hold annual memorial services. On the other hand, some of the new memorial rituals which sufferers themselves had invented still prevail. A sense of solidarity between sufferers of past and present great earthquake disaster is emerging.

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It is generally accepted that the flood story of Noah and its Mesopotamian predecessors are of the same genealogy. However, the story in the Bible differs from the Mesopotamian myths woven in the polytheistic milieu. The flood myth in the eleventh tablet of The Epic of Gilgamesh is told by Utanapishti, who had survived the ancient flood, to Gilgamesh, the hero seeking eternal life. At the assembly of the gods, the supreme god Enlil decides to cause a flood, but the wisdom god Ea contrives to have Utanapishti to build a ship and rescue the seed of the living. After the flood, Enlil, accused of his thoughtlessness by Ea, repents of his fault and bestows the survived human being eternal life. After Utanapishti has told this story, he declares that there is no possibility to gain eternal life at the "modern" time, because there is no one to summon the divine assembly for that purpose. On the other hand, God (Yahwe or Elohim in Hebrew) in the Bible regrets the creation of human beings and decides to destroy them by causing a flood, but God himself orders Noah to build a ship and rescue the seed of the living. After the flood, God concludes a covenant with Noah and promises not to cause a flood again. And Noah goes on to live a very long time.

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